Sounds nice; like you I find the subtitle distressingly Whorfian, but it was no doubt chosen by an editor or marketing person at the publishing house, intending to grab onto vague popular notions. Good to hear that the text itself is subtler. carla (filmigeek) http://filmigeek.net
Actually, I am fairly confident the subtitle would have been Deutscher's own choice, as bait. In the end it worked for me, because having read his first book, I couldn't believe that this one would be a defence of Whorf, whose ideas he does eviscerate. You might enjoy it even more than I, given his frequent references to his mother tongue, Hebrew.
Sounds nice; like you I find the subtitle distressingly Whorfian, but it was no doubt chosen by an editor or marketing person at the publishing house, intending to grab onto vague popular notions. Good to hear that the text itself is subtler.
ReplyDeletecarla (filmigeek)
http://filmigeek.net
Actually, I am fairly confident the subtitle would have been Deutscher's own choice, as bait. In the end it worked for me, because having read his first book, I couldn't believe that this one would be a defence of Whorf, whose ideas he does eviscerate. You might enjoy it even more than I, given his frequent references to his mother tongue, Hebrew.
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