Concetti, relativismo e strategie flessibili

Abstract

Recent cross-linguistic and laboratory studies have confirmed significant correlations between linguistic diversity and different cognitive behaviour of participants, or ‘whorfian-effects’, in many conceptual domains including objects, time, space, actions, colours, numbers, and emotions. Some of these effects, however, have been shown to be ‘shallow’, as they disappear when tasks or stimuli are adequately altered. This result is sometimes interpreted as a partial disconfirmation of whorfianism, in favour of universalist-inclined positions. This paper defends the view that shallow whorfian effects are not failures in confirming whorfianism, but rather evidence for the view according to which conceptual tasks are performed by recruiting ad hoc strategies, some of which are intrinsically linguistic, and some are not. Concepts are neither language-dependent nor language-independent, but rather flexible to what they are used for.