title: Linguistic Relativities: Language Diversity and Modern Thought
author: John Leavitt
description: '... a must-read for anyone concerned with the language-thought interface.' Asifa Majid, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics<br /><br />'This volume has an intriguing, not wholly transparent title. It is a stimulating account of three distinct topics, the first belonging to linguistic theory (what is linguistic relativity?), the second to the history of linguistics (how is/was language diversity treated in linguistic thought?), and the third to the history of philosophy (in what way does/did a philosophical perspective contribute to clarifying these questions?).' Giulio Lepschy, Modern Language Review<br /><br />'I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in the relation between language and thought, linguistic diversity and to everyone who is seriously concerned with the development of central issues in the field of linguistics.' Katerina Stathi, Languages in Contrast
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  **Vagueness**
  
   **Bertrand Russell**
  
   **1923**
  
  Reflection on philosophical problems has convinced me that a much larger
  number than I used to think, or than is generally thought, are connected with
  the principles of
  
  symbolism, that is to say, with the relation between what means and what is
  meant. In dealing with highly abstract matters it is much easier to grasp the
  symbols (usually words) than it is to grasp what they stand for. The result of
  this is that almost all thinking that purports to be philosophical or logical
  consists in attributing to the world the properties of language. Since
  language really occurs, it obviously has all the properties common to all
  occurrences, and to that extent the metaphysic based upon linguistic
  
  considerations may not be erroneous. But language has many properties which
  are not shared by things in general, and when these properties intrude into
  our metaphysic it becomes altogether misleading. I do not think that the s