Word? Def is ability to discern difference b/c the difference is named.?

Question

I attempted to ask this question in the "words" category but no luck thus far. This is an anthropology term and it means: The ability to differentiate differences between objects or classifications because one has a name for that object. Example: One can readily see the difference between aquamarine and turquoise because one knows the words turquoise and aquamarine.

I learned the word a good five six years ago in an anthropology class. We were discussing a group of indigenous people who had multiple names for a certain type of leaf. The researcher wasn't able to discern minute differences in the leaves until she learned some of the names for the leaves.

Answer 1

Perhaps the following has some relevance to your query.

"Sapir–Whorf hypothesis

In linguistics, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (SWH) (also known as the "linguistic relativity hypothesis") postulates a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it. Although known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, it was an underlying axiom of linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir and his colleague and student Benjamin Whorf.

The hypothesis postulates that a particular language's nature influences the habitual thought of its speakers: that different language patterns yield different patterns of thought. This idea challenges the possibility of perfectly representing the world with language, because it implies that the mechanisms of any language condition the thoughts of its speaker community. The hypothesis emerges in strong and weak formulations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir%E2%80...