Linguistically Determined Cognitive Discrepancies: A Dive into the Tangier Island Vernacular

The following research discusses an esoteric linguistic philosophy called the Theory of Linguistic Determinism, created by American anthropologists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. The theory holds that thought is subservient to language, and one’s native language is responsible for one’s cognitive processes, perception, and worldview. Additionally, the theory suggests that speakers of contrastive languages will think dissimilarly. Through years of refinement, the theory was modified to become an ideology known as weak linguistic determinism. This adaptation claims that while language impacts cognition, it is not the paramount determinant of thought. All previous studies on the phenomenon were conducted by juxtaposing heterogeneous languages. This created a gap within the scope of available research. Thus, the Researcher conducted a grounded theory analysis to investigate whether or not dialects were also subject to the effects of weak linguistic determinism. The dialect chosen for this study is endemic to a Chesapeake Bay Island known as Tangier. The speakers of the Tangier Island dialect employ a unique semantical idiom called “backwards talk.” Per the logic of linguistic determinism, the Researcher hypothesized that speakers of this dialect who employ this speech idiom would showcase implicit associations opposite to the implicit associations found on the nearby Virginia mainland in response to visual-emotional stimuli. The Researcher found that a statistically significant percent of Tangier Island residents exhibited divergent perceptions from speakers of the ordinary English dialect spoken on the Virginian coast. These findings suggest that weak linguistic determinism is also evident within dialects of a homogenous language.