Overview

Popular readings of Benjamin Lee Whorf's principle of linguistic relativity focus almost exclusively on the controversial notion that language constrains or determines thought. Recent scholarship has only begun to assess the creative epistemological and pragmatic dimensions of Whorf's theory of language, and their compatibility with the ideas of his contemporaries in rhetoric, philosophy, and psychology. This book provides a new reading of Whorf which situates his writings among those of Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and Wittgenstein. Exploring the ramifications of linguistic relativity for rhetorical theory, the philosophy of language, and interlingual discourse analysis, the author re-accentuates Whorf's belief in the need to overcome linguacentrism and ethnocentrism through an enlightened multilingual awareness.

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9780820433431

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'Rhetorical Implications of Linguistic Relativity' is a fascinating and timely study on an important topic. It critically discusses contrastive rhetorical theory within the contexts of language, literacy, and rhetoric. In doing so, Kristopher Kowal has lucidly evaluated several major European and North American thinkers and the relevance of their work to the focus of Kowal's book - contrastive discourse... Kowal has done a splendid job of relating theory to practice and produced a well-argued volume on a topic that has generated considerable interest in several fields including language learning, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and the study of world Englishes. This volume is a welcome resource produced by a scholar with excellent crosscultural and interdisciplinary credentials. (Braj B. Kachru, Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Director and Professor, Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois, Editor, World Englishes)

Author Information

The Author: Kristopher H. Kowal is an associate professor of English in the Graduate College of Western Languages and Literature at Tamkang University, Taiwan. A writer and frequent speaker at international conferences, he received his M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Southern California and his Ph.D. in Languages, Literacy, and Rhetoric from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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