LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Abstract

The linguistic relativity hypothesis (LRH), otherwise known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (SWH), has been passionately debated for more than five decades. It has gone through a renewed expansion in anthropological, scientific and social interest. Numerous attempts have been made to attest or refute the moderate version of the theory without producing conclusive results. This study analyses the history of the LRH and attempts to clarify its effectiveness and weakness in English language teaching. The method  employs in paper is secondary type as a result of it's full  dependency on sources of information from ready-made materials such as academic journals, textbooks, periodicals and internet sources. The result of this study show linguistic relativity hypothesis has a great influence in shaping learners way of thinking in an official setting such as a class room. Therefore, then it has implications in language teaching and learning and so the argument of this paper is seemed to be valid within the context of applied linguistic which contributes to the exist literature in the coliseum.