There is no doubt that culture and language are somehow, but how exactly? Of course the answer isn't going to be very simple. For me, I think it is perhaps as complicated as nature and nurture.
Most will find this familiar: phenotypes, or expressed traits, are usually attributed to genotypes, that is, genetic make-up. So, if you are tall, people might say that you inherit that trait from your tall parents (nature). Or they may say that as a child, you were given excellent nutrition and you are a swimmer (nurture). So far, so good. Nature and nurture appear to be independent forces that both influence particular traits of a person, so the combination of the two somehow causes that particular trait to be expressed, right? Well, not quite. There are several reasons for this. First, the journey from genotype to phenotype is not as straightforward as it appears to be. Genes are transcribed to proteins. The proteins are involved in cascades of biological pathways which can be very complex. For this reason geneticists talks about having certain genes pre-dispose one to have certain disease with certain level of probability, since having those genes does not mean that you definitely will get the disease. Exceptions to this, among others, are diseases caused directly by protein defects, like sickle-cell anaemia. Second, nature and nurture are not mutually exclusive, as people tend to think. Certain genes are expressed in response to environmental signals.
So, language and culture. The detour above is necessary to picture the complexity in more concrete notions.
If you think about it, language can be seen as a subset of culture. But this is getting complicated if you consider that language is the only medium of communication. Consider language as categorising things under different labels, then perhaps you will wonder: perhaps the way people categorise things influence culture in some way? In fact, linguists have something along this line: linguistic relativity, a.k.a. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which suggests that language affects cognition. A famous example of this is the large number of words that the Inuit have for snow. It has been suggested that since the Inuit, a subset of the Eskimos, live in the Arctic, somehow they need more terms to describe different kinds of snow that an average English speaker doesn't need. Sadly, this example is not factual, but it gives you some kind of idea on what linguistic relativity means.
Update: Language Log highlighted the a lot of occurrences of this here and here. The latter links to here, here, here and here.
In Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Party is enforcing a language called Newspeak. As Winston realised, the vocabulary of Newspeak is getting narrower instead of otherwise. This aims to limit. Rebellion against the Party would be ultimately impossible since the words are not enough to convey the idea. By controlling language, the Party controls thoughts. This is the very idea of linguistic relativity.
If you remember, the Greeks have at least 4 different terms for love. I am not going to say that the Greeks have more expertise in the area of love, but it seems that they have thought about it a little deeper. It is really difficult in concluding based on whether there are too many or lack of certain words, as discussed at length here. So give it a little thought yourself.
Speaking about the Greeks, you have probably heard that Greek has numerous number of tenses, a lot more than English. This suggests that their notion of time is very different. Indeed, you will be surprised to know that the time element is secondary in their tenses. The primary consideration is 'kind of action' (aktionsart). Not to say that time is not important to them. They have two distinct terms for time: chronos (quantitative) and kairos (qualitative). And don't get me started on their philosophical embellishments.
On the other hand, Malay/Indonesian and Mandarin languages do not really have proper tenses. On a related note, do you know that English does not have a future tense? No, no, will is a present-tense modal, my friend.
Another big thing that I notice is English pronouns. Why does 'I' has to be capitalised? How come there is only 'you' for both singular and plural second-person pronoun?
(By the way, there used to be a singular second-person pronoun. That would be 'thou'.)
I have a certain crazy hypothesis for these pronoun phenomena, i.e. the West tips more towards individualism than socialism. Well: singular first-person is capitalised; third-person pronouns are distinguished based on genders (note that they aren't in some languages); second-person pronouns no longer need to be differentiated (presumably because outside 'I', it doesn't matter whether whether it is plural or singular). To put some contrast, in Malay/Indonesian language, there are two kinds of 'we'. Consider there are three people in a room: A, B, C. A is talking to B. When referring to himself and C, A would use 'kami'. But when referring to all of them, A would use 'kita'. Both would be translated to 'we' in English. Sticking to my hypothesis, the East values togetherness much more that different collectives need to be differentiated.
Finally, I'm taking example from another language that I'm familiar with: Javanese. This language is really unique because it also has something like English verb irregulars. As you know, irregular English verbs typically have 3 distinct forms: infinitive, past and past participle (eat, ate, eaten). But in Javanese, it is not only the verbs, but almost all words have 3 forms, categorised under different levels of politeness (of course this is a nightmare for any linguist, since you have to learn thrice as many vocabularies -- only the language syntax is the same, thank goodness for that). It is very easy to see what culture the Javanese has, isn't it? Obviously, the Javanese hold societal hierarchy in high esteem, just like the Japanese, which manifests in their extensive usage of honorifics. As if that's not enough, the Javanese also has different words for fruits, their trees and their seeds. There are also another set for animals and their offspring. For example: mango, mango tree, mango seed, right? The Javanese would call them: pelem, mangkono, pelok, respectively. This one is also easy to understand why. Agriculture and raising livestock are vey much part of their livelihood, thus their need to have very specific terms.
Certainly, if you know more than one languages, you would also have noticed that language and culture are indeed intertwined. So don't take idiosyncrasies of a language for granted.
Notice them. Ask why.
Most will find this familiar: phenotypes, or expressed traits, are usually attributed to genotypes, that is, genetic make-up. So, if you are tall, people might say that you inherit that trait from your tall parents (nature). Or they may say that as a child, you were given excellent nutrition and you are a swimmer (nurture). So far, so good. Nature and nurture appear to be independent forces that both influence particular traits of a person, so the combination of the two somehow causes that particular trait to be expressed, right? Well, not quite. There are several reasons for this. First, the journey from genotype to phenotype is not as straightforward as it appears to be. Genes are transcribed to proteins. The proteins are involved in cascades of biological pathways which can be very complex. For this reason geneticists talks about having certain genes pre-dispose one to have certain disease with certain level of probability, since having those genes does not mean that you definitely will get the disease. Exceptions to this, among others, are diseases caused directly by protein defects, like sickle-cell anaemia. Second, nature and nurture are not mutually exclusive, as people tend to think. Certain genes are expressed in response to environmental signals.
So, language and culture. The detour above is necessary to picture the complexity in more concrete notions.
If you think about it, language can be seen as a subset of culture. But this is getting complicated if you consider that language is the only medium of communication. Consider language as categorising things under different labels, then perhaps you will wonder: perhaps the way people categorise things influence culture in some way? In fact, linguists have something along this line: linguistic relativity, a.k.a. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which suggests that language affects cognition. A famous example of this is the large number of words that the Inuit have for snow. It has been suggested that since the Inuit, a subset of the Eskimos, live in the Arctic, somehow they need more terms to describe different kinds of snow that an average English speaker doesn't need. Sadly, this example is not factual, but it gives you some kind of idea on what linguistic relativity means.
Update: Language Log highlighted the a lot of occurrences of this here and here. The latter links to here, here, here and here.
In Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Party is enforcing a language called Newspeak. As Winston realised, the vocabulary of Newspeak is getting narrower instead of otherwise. This aims to limit. Rebellion against the Party would be ultimately impossible since the words are not enough to convey the idea. By controlling language, the Party controls thoughts. This is the very idea of linguistic relativity.
If you remember, the Greeks have at least 4 different terms for love. I am not going to say that the Greeks have more expertise in the area of love, but it seems that they have thought about it a little deeper. It is really difficult in concluding based on whether there are too many or lack of certain words, as discussed at length here. So give it a little thought yourself.
Speaking about the Greeks, you have probably heard that Greek has numerous number of tenses, a lot more than English. This suggests that their notion of time is very different. Indeed, you will be surprised to know that the time element is secondary in their tenses. The primary consideration is 'kind of action' (aktionsart). Not to say that time is not important to them. They have two distinct terms for time: chronos (quantitative) and kairos (qualitative). And don't get me started on their philosophical embellishments.
On the other hand, Malay/Indonesian and Mandarin languages do not really have proper tenses. On a related note, do you know that English does not have a future tense? No, no, will is a present-tense modal, my friend.
Another big thing that I notice is English pronouns. Why does 'I' has to be capitalised? How come there is only 'you' for both singular and plural second-person pronoun?
(By the way, there used to be a singular second-person pronoun. That would be 'thou'.)
I have a certain crazy hypothesis for these pronoun phenomena, i.e. the West tips more towards individualism than socialism. Well: singular first-person is capitalised; third-person pronouns are distinguished based on genders (note that they aren't in some languages); second-person pronouns no longer need to be differentiated (presumably because outside 'I', it doesn't matter whether whether it is plural or singular). To put some contrast, in Malay/Indonesian language, there are two kinds of 'we'. Consider there are three people in a room: A, B, C. A is talking to B. When referring to himself and C, A would use 'kami'. But when referring to all of them, A would use 'kita'. Both would be translated to 'we' in English. Sticking to my hypothesis, the East values togetherness much more that different collectives need to be differentiated.
Finally, I'm taking example from another language that I'm familiar with: Javanese. This language is really unique because it also has something like English verb irregulars. As you know, irregular English verbs typically have 3 distinct forms: infinitive, past and past participle (eat, ate, eaten). But in Javanese, it is not only the verbs, but almost all words have 3 forms, categorised under different levels of politeness (of course this is a nightmare for any linguist, since you have to learn thrice as many vocabularies -- only the language syntax is the same, thank goodness for that). It is very easy to see what culture the Javanese has, isn't it? Obviously, the Javanese hold societal hierarchy in high esteem, just like the Japanese, which manifests in their extensive usage of honorifics. As if that's not enough, the Javanese also has different words for fruits, their trees and their seeds. There are also another set for animals and their offspring. For example: mango, mango tree, mango seed, right? The Javanese would call them: pelem, mangkono, pelok, respectively. This one is also easy to understand why. Agriculture and raising livestock are vey much part of their livelihood, thus their need to have very specific terms.
Certainly, if you know more than one languages, you would also have noticed that language and culture are indeed intertwined. So don't take idiosyncrasies of a language for granted.
Notice them. Ask why.
2 comments:
--rexy--
Well Japanese has different ways of counting things depending on their shapes, sizes and thickness!!! It is still a nightmare for me to master those!!!
agree! ha
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