Quote:
Originally Posted by Casiopea  They're certainly not going to assume that when you said theory you meant hypothesis. Sure, there is a difference between the two words, but not when it comes to a specific linguistic concept.
I have yet to see your evidence.  |
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
In his book
The Act of Writing (see link above), Daniel Chandler writes the headline "hypothesis", but in the text he refers to it as the Sapir-Whorf theory. Hypothesis and theory in this particular case are used interchangeably. I agree that some "theories" are only known as theories, like Darwin's and Einstein's theories (I've never heard of them as hypotheses), but others (like this one) are referred to as both
t and
h. Maybe it is due to disagreements among linguists. If it had only been a hypothesis
as distinguished from theory, under no circumstances would it have been called a theory, especially not by linguists.