Abstract

The ideas of Benjamin Lee Whorf are equally relevant to the disciplines of linguistics and rhetorical theory. His principle of linguistic relativity was primarily a critique of the ethnocentrism of Western positivistic science which saw itself as the final word in matters of ontology and epistemology, and which marginalized languages and cultures that were different from the "Standard Average European" ideal. When he is reread alongside his contemporaries M. M. Bakhtin, L. Vygotsky, and L. Wittgenstein, Whorf is seen to be a philosopher of language whose ideas are increasingly relevant to current-day educators. Traditional readings of Whorf that do not consider the context in which he wrote his essays lead to incomplete views of language, thought and culture. The new reading of Whorf given in this dissertation provides a fuller theoretical framework for understanding the semantics and pragmatics of counterfactuality in Chinese English, as well as the role of ideology in interdisciplinary scholarship