linguistic determinism

n. The idea that the ways people perceive the world and think are controlled by the language that they have learned. Thus it was believed by some early in the 20th century that monolingual Hopi speakers who have only one word for flying things could not distinguish among birds, bats, and butterflies. Subsequent research has not confirmed this strong version of the hypothesis, but the notion that language has some guiding effect on thought persists. See also linguistic relativity