This is Not Hyperbole. Fiji really doesn't have a word for it.

Linguistic relativity states that a person's language(s), through its vocabulary and structure, shapes the way that person habitually perceives reality, thinks, and behaves. In Real Life, this theory is usually misunderstood and, as a result, highly controversial; it comes in a semi-infinite variety of interpretations, some of which are trivially false ("if you don't have a word for it, you can't think about it"), some trivially true ("it's a lot easier to speak intelligibly about things you've got words for"), and many untested, possibly untestable.^note Hypotheses in science are defined as being testable and falsifiable. That means none of these things count as hypotheses until you've come up with an experiment to test them with. People go right on saying "hypothesis" when they mean "conjecture"; linguists get really mad, nobody learns anything, and We Keep Using That Word anyway. In actuality, linguistic relativity refers only to how people casually and habitually approach reality. According to the theory, language does not keep anyone from consciously taking the effort to meditate and focus upon something for which he or she knows no words; rather, the theory points out the eminently logical point that people doing so will have to construct new terms if none already exist in their language and, naturally, their native language(s) will shape how they do so.

Regardless, this makes for an interesting device in fiction, particularly for characterizing a Planet of Hats through their vocabulary (grammatical structures can also indicate a certain way of thought, but vocabulary is easier to write about without a comprehensive background in linguistics). For instance, one can characterize a very warlike race by saying that they have no words for "peace" or "surrender" but plenty for "war" and "hate"; conversely, the inhabitants of a pacifist Utopia may lack a word for "war" or "hate" but many for "love".

This sort of thing also shows up frequently on lists of Little Known Facts, the most common version being "the Eskimos have [some large number] words for snow" (Not exactly.^note English may actually have more words for frozen water. Inuktitut has two base words for snow, but it is a polysynthetic language, meaning new words are more easily created at need from existing ones.) On the other hand, Americans do have a large number of words for "being drunk."^note However, many of these words are regional slang words, and may not be recognized as meaning "being drunk". For example, an English-speaking person from outside the United States might interpret the phrase "totally wasted" not as "very drunk", but rather "thin and starving", or more literally as "wasting his life." Meanwhile, Americans might think "totally pissed" means "extremely angry" rather than "really drunk", like the British do.

The idea that language equals thought also raises the possibility of a novel form of Mind Control — restricting people's thoughts by forcing a different language on them. A limited form of which is the staple of Real Life propaganda — such as when followers of a particular leader always refer to him by an evocative nickname. If you meet aliens speaking a Starfish Language, you may be in for some truly strange psychology. Black Speech is a related trope, in which the sound of a language reflects some aspect of the speakers' character.

Note that a common variant is that the language has some terminology for the concept. It could be more clunky — the Proud Warrior Race Guy might explain peace being 'time after fighting', or more humorously 'a long period of time in which you and your allies are not fighting your enemies and their allies, and in which it is acceptable to trade for needed goods and attend the same social gatherings without fighting'. Or it might be outright borrowed from another language which already has a word for it (a common occurrence in real life languages). It still gets across the point that the concept is not one encountered commonly in a culture, but does not make them look like complete morons. After all, it should be possible to describe any concept in any language — it's just that some languages might require a very long description where others use a single word. Another subversion is that they have no words for something very familiar to them — "they have no words for war... because they've never stopped warring long enough to think about it".

Also note that most instances of this trope implicitly equate languages with their words, which is a failure to understand even basic linguistics. Linguists see languages as grammars, systems of rules according to which people can form complex expressions (sentences, phrases, words) out of smaller, discrete parts (morphemes, phonemes). The more solid versions of the linguistic relativity are about how grammar, not words, influence thought. People consciously invent new words or adopt foreign ones all the time, in an offhand manner without any effort, which in Real Life enormously weakens the "they can't think X because they have no word for X" trope. People, on the other hand, rarely consciously invent new grammatical tenses for their language, much less invent new obligatory grammatical rules for things like evidentiality.

Subtrope of The Power of Language.

Examples subpages:

• Literature

Other examples: