Linguistic determinism v. linguistic relativity:

I think that the theory of linguistic relativity (Jandt, 2013, p.138) is an evolution of linguistic determinism, where the belief that “language structure controls thought and cultural norms” (p.137) is challenged by the fact that cultures are not completely closed off.  In modern times people of differing cultures have the ability to travel and experience new culture.  Linguistic determinism is unable to explain how language is expanded by the experiencing of new cultures.  To explain this phenomenon, we turn to the theory of linguistic relativity, “culture is controlled by and controls language” (Jandt, 2013, p.138), to understand that with new cultural experiences our language will be expanded accordingly, and conversely, with the expansion of new language we then have the ability to expand our culture proportionately (Davidson, 2013, October 8).

“Steinfatt (1989), in an extensive review of the literature, argues that the basis of linguistic relativity is that the difference between languages is not what can be said but what is relatively easy to say” (Jandt, 2013, p.138); does this work with my hypothesis that linguistic relativity is an evolution of linguistic determinism?  If we focus on just the easy to say, are we not setting ourselves up for failure in communications by oversimplifying our language?  This ideology does not account for experiential equivalence (or lack thereof), “if an object or experience does not exist in your culture, it’s difficult to translate words referring to that object or experience into that language when no words may exist for them” (Jandt, 2013, p.143).