ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the ideas of Benjamin Lee Whorf, some of which remain controversial to this day. It describes his work on the Hopi language—especially how that language represents time—and the critiques that Whorf’s description garnered subsequently, leading to critiques in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s of what came to be called the Whorfian Hypothesis (WH). The chapter also describes the kind of research that emerged in the 1990s that led to a resurgence of scientific interest in the WH. Finally, it looks at sound symbolism—the representation of sound properties of referents in the phonetic makeup of words—an area of research that is indirectly supportive of the WH.
