【正确答案】Eskimos have many different words for different types of snow, Aborigines for different types of sand, and in Arabic one must choose from a whole range of words which are subsumed under the Western category CAMEL. Can you explain these phenomena with your linguistic knowledge?
According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, controversial may it be, our language helps mould our way of thinking and consequently different languages may probably express speakers' unique ways of understanding the world. Following this argument, two important points can be captured in this theory. On the one hand, language may determine our thinking patterns; on the other similarity between languages is relative. For this reason, this hypothesis has alternatively been referred to as Linguistic Determinism and Linguistic Relativity.
This hypothesis is now developed into two versions: a strong version and a weak one. The strong version refers to the claim the original hypothesis suggests, emphasizing the decisive role of language as the shaper of our thinking patterns. The weak version is a modified type of its original theory, suggesting that there is a correlation between language, culture, and thought, but the cross- cultural differences thus produced in our ways of thinking are relative, rather than categorical.
Therefore, when we study the language of a culture, we should not only consider its language, but also be fully aware of factors like: ecological culture, linguistic culture, religious culture, material culture and social culture. Then to some extent, language, especially the structure of its lexicon, reflects both the physical and the social environments of a society.
A good example of this is the word snow in Eskimo and English. The Eskimos have countless words for snow. For them snow is extremely important and so crucial to life that each of its various forms and conditions is names. In English-speaking cultures, snow is far less important and the simple word snow usually suffices the needs. While in Australia, where the Aborigines live is usually dry with lots of sand and it is one of the factors that influence their life. So they need a vocabulary to describe what specifically kind of sand they are talking about. This is the same case for the Arabs having a number of words for camels in their language. We think in a certain way because we speak in that way. Language is a controlling factor which has great power over human beings. As a result, every speaker constructs his own world through the language he speaks.

【答案解析】[解析] 此题考查的是考生对社会语言学中语言与文化、思维之间关系的理解。此题要求考生理解萨丕尔—沃尔夫假设、语言决定论、语言相对论的内容。