Radical Linguistics in an Age of Extinction
September 13, 2014 7:29 AM Subscribe
Modern linguistics is founded on a radical premise: the equality of all languages. “All languages have equal expressive power as communication systems,” writes Steven Pinker. “Every grammar is equally complex and logical and capable of producing an infinite set of sentences to express any thought one might wish to express,” says a recent textbook. … Where native speakers are concerned, no language, dialect, or accent can meaningfully be described as primitive, broken, or inferior.
I'm not sure it's straying into Whorfianism. It's more like being a native. The whole last part, and all of the actual suggestions for action, are based in the idea that language determines thought.
There's also the unquestioned idea that ethnic identification is a good thing, apparently because some guy called Michael Walzer thinks so. Personally, I want to see some hard justification if you're going to encourage tribalism, and I have never seen any.
... and every time I read about how important it is to preserve languages, cultures, or ethnicities, and especially when writers start comparing it to preserving species, it makes me suspect the writer of wanting to put people in zoos. Or at least of wanting to force some minority group to be forever at a disadvantage in engaging with the larger world, so that other people can benefit from that minority group's "unique outlook".
This guy at least avoids directly calling for that sort of thing. But he does talk about "group rights" in a way that makes me afraid that maybe he thinks cultures have rights. And he says some kind of dubious things about choice and consent, in a way that makes me think he has sympathy for giving cultures permission to override what people want. It's not explicit, but it sounds like a dog whistle.
Time to repeat that people, not groups, cultures, institutions, or other abstractions, are both the primary items of moral value and the only moral agents.
posted by Hizonner at 8:48 AM on September 13, 2014 [9 favorites]
There's also the unquestioned idea that ethnic identification is a good thing, apparently because some guy called Michael Walzer thinks so. Personally, I want to see some hard justification if you're going to encourage tribalism, and I have never seen any.
... and every time I read about how important it is to preserve languages, cultures, or ethnicities, and especially when writers start comparing it to preserving species, it makes me suspect the writer of wanting to put people in zoos. Or at least of wanting to force some minority group to be forever at a disadvantage in engaging with the larger world, so that other people can benefit from that minority group's "unique outlook".
This guy at least avoids directly calling for that sort of thing. But he does talk about "group rights" in a way that makes me afraid that maybe he thinks cultures have rights. And he says some kind of dubious things about choice and consent, in a way that makes me think he has sympathy for giving cultures permission to override what people want. It's not explicit, but it sounds like a dog whistle.
Time to repeat that people, not groups, cultures, institutions, or other abstractions, are both the primary items of moral value and the only moral agents.
posted by Hizonner at 8:48 AM on September 13, 2014 [9 favorites]
I think the main reason I would like to see languages preserved is that I find delight in idiom. I have a fondness for the Shetland dialect. ("I had ta gang oot dis mornin so I put da mutton on an left hit ta sonker," which I think means "I had to go out this morning so I put the mutton casserole on to cook.") Maybe different ways of saying the same thing are equivalent, but sometimes one way is poetry and another way is merely instruction.
posted by SPrintF at 9:06 AM on September 13, 2014
posted by SPrintF at 9:06 AM on September 13, 2014
I'm a little dubious about the claim in the article that "English (with all its technical varieties) is said to be adding up to 8,500 words per year". Seems to me that the only way that could possibly be true is if you're counting things like formula-based chemical names, which to me falls into the Eskimo-words-for-snow (of which Franz Boas himself was in fact the originator) category of misleading claims about the sizes of vocabularies based on agglutination.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 9:15 AM on September 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by strangely stunted trees at 9:15 AM on September 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
I'm a little dubious about the claim in the article that "English (with all its technical varieties) is said to be adding up to 8,500 words per year".
Indeed. I'm a little dubious about any claim made in the unfootnoted passive voice. And round numbers.
posted by IndigoJones at 9:29 AM on September 13, 2014 [6 favorites]
Indeed. I'm a little dubious about any claim made in the unfootnoted passive voice. And round numbers.
posted by IndigoJones at 9:29 AM on September 13, 2014 [6 favorites]
"And round numbers."
Only round numbers could be used, as it's much "noisier" than 1 words per year. They're simply saying that in recent years the language has increased by 8500+/-250.
For a language with 350 million native speakers, this hardly seems like a lot. How many words it contains depends upon (in a way) "what your definition of 'is' is". The OED lists a quarter of a million distinct words; the Global Language Monitor counts one million words. The latter also claims a new word is made every 100 minutes or so; at that rate, well over 5,000 words a year are added.
So 8,500 is fairly reasonable, if perhaps on the high side (since the more generous language association still falls short of that estimate).
Warning: some numbers were rounded off in this post.
posted by IAmBroom at 10:22 AM on September 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
Only round numbers could be used, as it's much "noisier" than 1 words per year. They're simply saying that in recent years the language has increased by 8500+/-250.
For a language with 350 million native speakers, this hardly seems like a lot. How many words it contains depends upon (in a way) "what your definition of 'is' is". The OED lists a quarter of a million distinct words; the Global Language Monitor counts one million words. The latter also claims a new word is made every 100 minutes or so; at that rate, well over 5,000 words a year are added.
So 8,500 is fairly reasonable, if perhaps on the high side (since the more generous language association still falls short of that estimate).
Warning: some numbers were rounded off in this post.
posted by IAmBroom at 10:22 AM on September 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
fuller diffidently sends up languagehat signal.
posted by jfuller at 10:31 AM on September 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by jfuller at 10:31 AM on September 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
Seems to me that the only way that could possibly be true is if you're counting things like formula-based chemical names, which to me falls into the Eskimo-words-for-snow (of which Franz Boas himself was in fact the originator) category of misleading claims about the sizes of vocabularies based on agglutination.
Or, you know, it could be due to the massive explosion of "New Englishes" around the world.
In any case, for all of the "Oh, no, Whorf!", there is a "Neo-Whorfian" school popping up, with researchers like Guy Deutsche showing that, at the very least, a language can nudge you towards a particular way of thinking (as opposed to determining which would be a strong Sapir-Whorf). And, anecdotally, I've heard tell of speakers of languages with evidential systems say that they feel like they're missing something when they speak English and, in fact, in contact situations, you often see speakers "importing" their evidential system into their second language; see the Balkans.
And that second bit is important-- it's not necessarily the case that the death of a particular language system will cause the loss of particular linguistic elements-- the speakers may well bring it with them-- and it's equally true that the loss of a language is not equivalent to the loss of culture. But it is true that you do lose something when you lose a language.
If anybody's interested in learning about the economics and politics of language loss (and especially some introspection on how many times, this is discussed from the point of view of privileged speakers who have lost, or whose ancestors lost, their mother tongue, i.e., nearly all non-Anglo-Saxon Americans), I highly recommend reading Salikoko Mufwene's work. His review of Language and Poverty (.pdf) outlines the issues pretty nicely.
posted by damayanti at 10:40 AM on September 13, 2014 [4 favorites]
Or, you know, it could be due to the massive explosion of "New Englishes" around the world.
In any case, for all of the "Oh, no, Whorf!", there is a "Neo-Whorfian" school popping up, with researchers like Guy Deutsche showing that, at the very least, a language can nudge you towards a particular way of thinking (as opposed to determining which would be a strong Sapir-Whorf). And, anecdotally, I've heard tell of speakers of languages with evidential systems say that they feel like they're missing something when they speak English and, in fact, in contact situations, you often see speakers "importing" their evidential system into their second language; see the Balkans.
And that second bit is important-- it's not necessarily the case that the death of a particular language system will cause the loss of particular linguistic elements-- the speakers may well bring it with them-- and it's equally true that the loss of a language is not equivalent to the loss of culture. But it is true that you do lose something when you lose a language.
If anybody's interested in learning about the economics and politics of language loss (and especially some introspection on how many times, this is discussed from the point of view of privileged speakers who have lost, or whose ancestors lost, their mother tongue, i.e., nearly all non-Anglo-Saxon Americans), I highly recommend reading Salikoko Mufwene's work. His review of Language and Poverty (.pdf) outlines the issues pretty nicely.
posted by damayanti at 10:40 AM on September 13, 2014 [4 favorites]
Eskimo-words-for-snow (of which Franz Boas himself was in fact the originator) category of misleading claims about the sizes of vocabularies based on agglutination.
Just as a footnote to this, Boas did not make misleading claims about words for snow. The original quote and its surrounding context here on pages 25-26. It's relevant to TFA, because Boas is simply pointing out that there are no languages with more 'primitive' lexical morphology (read on to the paragraph about holophrasis). A specialist here more or less validates those examples and the "fairly modest claim" Boas is making.
It's Whorf who very slightly exaggerated the number of examples but more importantly misunderstood Boas to be saying that there was no general word for what we call snow, when my understanding (informed by a linguist who'd studied one dialect) is that aput/apun isn't just snow on the ground but also snow as a thing in general.
Just incidentally, neither of them were using this example as an illustration of vocabulary size--to Whorf, the key point was whether or not there was a general cover term / umbrella term for what we call snow. There was, and he was wrong, but the vocabulary size misunderstanding wasn't really his fault either. Folks can read the full context for his point here on page 216--start with the paragraph that begins "Hopi has ..." And Whorf actually wrote a brief grammar of Mishongnovi Hopi, so those examples are probably reasonable (Malotki notwithstanding).
posted by Monsieur Caution at 10:52 AM on September 13, 2014 [5 favorites]
Just as a footnote to this, Boas did not make misleading claims about words for snow. The original quote and its surrounding context here on pages 25-26. It's relevant to TFA, because Boas is simply pointing out that there are no languages with more 'primitive' lexical morphology (read on to the paragraph about holophrasis). A specialist here more or less validates those examples and the "fairly modest claim" Boas is making.
It's Whorf who very slightly exaggerated the number of examples but more importantly misunderstood Boas to be saying that there was no general word for what we call snow, when my understanding (informed by a linguist who'd studied one dialect) is that aput/apun isn't just snow on the ground but also snow as a thing in general.
Just incidentally, neither of them were using this example as an illustration of vocabulary size--to Whorf, the key point was whether or not there was a general cover term / umbrella term for what we call snow. There was, and he was wrong, but the vocabulary size misunderstanding wasn't really his fault either. Folks can read the full context for his point here on page 216--start with the paragraph that begins "Hopi has ..." And Whorf actually wrote a brief grammar of Mishongnovi Hopi, so those examples are probably reasonable (Malotki notwithstanding).
posted by Monsieur Caution at 10:52 AM on September 13, 2014 [5 favorites]
the Global Language Monitor counts one million words. The latter also claims a new word is made every 100 minutes or so; at that rate, well over 5,000 words a year are added.
The Global Language Monitor is not a reputable source.
posted by Thing at 11:22 AM on September 13, 2014 [2 favorites]
The Global Language Monitor is not a reputable source.
posted by Thing at 11:22 AM on September 13, 2014 [2 favorites]
I don't see how you can dismiss attempts to preserve less powerful groups' languages and ways of life as worthless tribalism without even giving a name to the ability of majority groups to ensure that their own languages and ways of life be adopted, preferably exclusively, as a condition of achieving even the most basic success in the societies they dominate. As if the latter were the result of gravity or sunshine rather than human efforts involving historical violence and ongoing societal contempt, economic coercion, and explicitly and implicitly exclusionary language policy. Majority cultures are cultures, majority languages are languages, majority tribes are tribes. The fact that nobody ever has to write an article in their defence doesn't mean that their continuing success is morally neutral.
But he does talk about "group rights" in a way that makes me afraid that maybe he thinks cultures have rights. And he says some kind of dubious things about choice and consent, in a way that makes me think he has sympathy for giving cultures permission to override what people want.
I didn't get that at all. But I do know that powerful cultures all over the world override individual people's desire to get an effective education, understand laws and other official public information, receive competent medical care, make a living, and be adequately represented or even understood in court, as a result of the apparent assumption that citizens who don't speak the language of the powerful (which is not even the majority language, necessarily) don't have the same rights as those who do.
It's wrong for language preservation efforts to treat people like specimens to be locked up in amber until the end of time. It's so very wrong for them to be run by outsiders who don't treat the communities they are working with as partners, don't listen to what those communities want, and don't consider the consequences of the policies they themselves are advocating. But it seems to me that linguists working in this area are at least increasingly aware of this and that ethical practices are more and more a concern for them. (And some linguists and language activists, of course, actually come out of these communities.) Whereas speakers of powerful languages largely remain reluctant to question our superiority, our dominance, and the justice of the policies we come up with and support. It's not languages and cultures in themselves that put speakers and members at a disadvantage. When they have to be given up, it's not painless, it's not without regret, it's not without committing later generations to helpless longing for their lost history (I can tell you from experience), and worst of all, it's not truly necessary. People have made it that way.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 11:51 AM on September 13, 2014 [7 favorites]
But he does talk about "group rights" in a way that makes me afraid that maybe he thinks cultures have rights. And he says some kind of dubious things about choice and consent, in a way that makes me think he has sympathy for giving cultures permission to override what people want.
I didn't get that at all. But I do know that powerful cultures all over the world override individual people's desire to get an effective education, understand laws and other official public information, receive competent medical care, make a living, and be adequately represented or even understood in court, as a result of the apparent assumption that citizens who don't speak the language of the powerful (which is not even the majority language, necessarily) don't have the same rights as those who do.
It's wrong for language preservation efforts to treat people like specimens to be locked up in amber until the end of time. It's so very wrong for them to be run by outsiders who don't treat the communities they are working with as partners, don't listen to what those communities want, and don't consider the consequences of the policies they themselves are advocating. But it seems to me that linguists working in this area are at least increasingly aware of this and that ethical practices are more and more a concern for them. (And some linguists and language activists, of course, actually come out of these communities.) Whereas speakers of powerful languages largely remain reluctant to question our superiority, our dominance, and the justice of the policies we come up with and support. It's not languages and cultures in themselves that put speakers and members at a disadvantage. When they have to be given up, it's not painless, it's not without regret, it's not without committing later generations to helpless longing for their lost history (I can tell you from experience), and worst of all, it's not truly necessary. People have made it that way.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 11:51 AM on September 13, 2014 [7 favorites]
Maybe different ways of saying the same thing are equivalent, but sometimes one way is poetry and another way is merely instruction.
See also: computer languages, which can be shown mathematically to be equivalent to one another, yet are a wonderful source of flame wars in the places where their merits are discussed.
posted by localroger at 12:39 PM on September 13, 2014 [2 favorites]
See also: computer languages, which can be shown mathematically to be equivalent to one another, yet are a wonderful source of flame wars in the places where their merits are discussed.
posted by localroger at 12:39 PM on September 13, 2014 [2 favorites]
So, it turns out I have a little perspective on this, as an anglophone immigrant to Quebec, with a child in the French school system (by choice; she actually meets the stringent rules for being allowed into the English system). Quebec has language laws openly and explicitly designed to exclude and discourage languages other than French, and especially English.
Of course, I don't get remotely the full effect of this kind of thing. English is still a dominant language in the rest of the world. (Native) English speakers in Quebec don't tend to lack at least economic power (although they're slowly losing it). I don't lack it personally. But I do live under silly, obnoxious language policies, and sometimes they're a big pain in the ass. And my French is still not great.
I will happily call the Quebec language laws "worthless tribalism"... even though they are a reaction to longstanding disadvantages to French. For a very long time and until the 1970s, French speakers in Quebec were absolutely treated with "societal contempt", at least by the English speakers, who had most of the money and a big share of the political power (the Catholic church had the rest). Francophones also suffered with a ton of institutions that ran in English, regardless of the needs of their clients. The suppression of French was also worthless tribalism. Worthless tribalism begets worthless tribalism.
French still hung on as the majority language, by the way... for like 300 years.
Quebec is actually in kind of a weird place.
Within Quebec, not speaking fluent French is a big economic disadvantage. Actually, no matter how good your French is, not coming from French "stock" is a disadvantage, no matter how much people claim otherwise.
At the same time, Quebec as a whole is economically disadvantaged by clinging to French on an English-dominated continent and in an English-using world economy. The language laws, and the accompanying "French first" attitude, obviously cause serious, ongoing economic damage to the province and anybody who disputes that is deluded. They cause cultural damage, too, although that's less obvious.
... and that's the bottom line as far as I'm concerned. When your ethnic identifications are interfering with your ability to interact with the rest of the world, it is time to jettison your ethnic identifications. My French is slowly getting better; if my work didn't happen to be entirely in English, it would be quite good by now. My kid's French is already better than mine. That's because we need it to interact with those around us. I meet the defintion of an anglophone, but that doesn't define me; I'm not interested in identifying as one.
Nor am I interested in switching to identify as francophone. I'm interested in getting off the whole treadmill, and frankly I think we'd be a lot better off if everybody adopted that attitude. Which means, by the way, that the province of Quebec, and many of its residents, need to get over the French thing, and get over the truly goofy "Québecois nation" thing, and learn the language of those around them. And, as individuals, a lot of them do.
As for "lost history", I don't know what to tell you. I have a whole bunch of ethnic "roots" as recent as 2 or 3 generations back. I also got a heapin' helpin' of childhood indoctrination as an ethnic American(TM). I don't give a damn about any of those, and I don't have any more interest in their history than I do in any other history.
I honestly can't imagine caring about such a thing, and I have no idea how to respond to anybody who does. I can understand that even less than I can understand religion, and religion makes no sense to me.
To me, that seems like just gratuitously clinging to some random irrelevant thing that can only hurt you, and objectively does hurt people all the time all over the world. That stuff causes wars. All the time. It's insane.
I'm afraid that'll offend you or others, but I just don't know how to participate in a discussion like this without putting it out there. Ethnic identifications are bad, m'kay?
posted by Hizonner at 12:43 PM on September 13, 2014 [6 favorites]
Of course, I don't get remotely the full effect of this kind of thing. English is still a dominant language in the rest of the world. (Native) English speakers in Quebec don't tend to lack at least economic power (although they're slowly losing it). I don't lack it personally. But I do live under silly, obnoxious language policies, and sometimes they're a big pain in the ass. And my French is still not great.
I will happily call the Quebec language laws "worthless tribalism"... even though they are a reaction to longstanding disadvantages to French. For a very long time and until the 1970s, French speakers in Quebec were absolutely treated with "societal contempt", at least by the English speakers, who had most of the money and a big share of the political power (the Catholic church had the rest). Francophones also suffered with a ton of institutions that ran in English, regardless of the needs of their clients. The suppression of French was also worthless tribalism. Worthless tribalism begets worthless tribalism.
French still hung on as the majority language, by the way... for like 300 years.
Quebec is actually in kind of a weird place.
Within Quebec, not speaking fluent French is a big economic disadvantage. Actually, no matter how good your French is, not coming from French "stock" is a disadvantage, no matter how much people claim otherwise.
At the same time, Quebec as a whole is economically disadvantaged by clinging to French on an English-dominated continent and in an English-using world economy. The language laws, and the accompanying "French first" attitude, obviously cause serious, ongoing economic damage to the province and anybody who disputes that is deluded. They cause cultural damage, too, although that's less obvious.
... and that's the bottom line as far as I'm concerned. When your ethnic identifications are interfering with your ability to interact with the rest of the world, it is time to jettison your ethnic identifications. My French is slowly getting better; if my work didn't happen to be entirely in English, it would be quite good by now. My kid's French is already better than mine. That's because we need it to interact with those around us. I meet the defintion of an anglophone, but that doesn't define me; I'm not interested in identifying as one.
Nor am I interested in switching to identify as francophone. I'm interested in getting off the whole treadmill, and frankly I think we'd be a lot better off if everybody adopted that attitude. Which means, by the way, that the province of Quebec, and many of its residents, need to get over the French thing, and get over the truly goofy "Québecois nation" thing, and learn the language of those around them. And, as individuals, a lot of them do.
As for "lost history", I don't know what to tell you. I have a whole bunch of ethnic "roots" as recent as 2 or 3 generations back. I also got a heapin' helpin' of childhood indoctrination as an ethnic American(TM). I don't give a damn about any of those, and I don't have any more interest in their history than I do in any other history.
I honestly can't imagine caring about such a thing, and I have no idea how to respond to anybody who does. I can understand that even less than I can understand religion, and religion makes no sense to me.
To me, that seems like just gratuitously clinging to some random irrelevant thing that can only hurt you, and objectively does hurt people all the time all over the world. That stuff causes wars. All the time. It's insane.
I'm afraid that'll offend you or others, but I just don't know how to participate in a discussion like this without putting it out there. Ethnic identifications are bad, m'kay?
posted by Hizonner at 12:43 PM on September 13, 2014 [6 favorites]
See also: computer languages, which can be shown mathematically to be equivalent to one another
On the dimension of von neumann equivalence.
Which says zero about whether brainfuck and BASIC are equivalent for humans.
posted by rr at 12:44 PM on September 13, 2014 [2 favorites]
On the dimension of von neumann equivalence.
Which says zero about whether brainfuck and BASIC are equivalent for humans.
posted by rr at 12:44 PM on September 13, 2014 [2 favorites]
> computer languages, which can be shown mathematically to be equivalent to one another
C = Logo with Turtlegraphics. Want to see the math?
posted by jfuller at 1:53 PM on September 13, 2014 [3 favorites]
C = Logo with Turtlegraphics. Want to see the math?
posted by jfuller at 1:53 PM on September 13, 2014 [3 favorites]
Language is the thing that people don't value till they lose it. In the US, the rush has always been to learn English, shedding native or immigrant languages. Then you end up with native communities whose culture has been destroyed, as well as businesses and a government that don't understand the rest of the world—a huge handicap even if all you want to do with the rest of the world is sell things to it and counter insurgencies.
The irony is that as the historical situation changes, language policy switches back and forth. In colonial Peru, there were sometimes complaints that the Quechua didn't learn Spanish, but then there was also repression of those who managed to learn it. Learning the conqueror's language meant being able to make official complaints and agitate for native rights, which was a threat to the authorities. (Bruce Mannheim's The Language of the Inka since the European Invasion has much more on this.)
Another irony is that explicitly racist governments were never able to remove language diversity, but modern mobility has done so with frightening quickness. It's easy for people in positions of privilege to think that anyone's life will be improved by abandoning their culture and joining the dominant culture. But as counter-evidence, consider the last five hundred years of history. Lose your culture (starting with its language) and you aren't on a plane of magnificent equality with the colonizers; you're a dirt-poor person at the bottom and the elite still doesn't like you. A Yanomamö tribesman should have the right to go live in a shantytown outside Caracas, but if you really want to improve his life, there are certainly better approaches.
posted by zompist at 1:58 PM on September 13, 2014 [4 favorites]
The irony is that as the historical situation changes, language policy switches back and forth. In colonial Peru, there were sometimes complaints that the Quechua didn't learn Spanish, but then there was also repression of those who managed to learn it. Learning the conqueror's language meant being able to make official complaints and agitate for native rights, which was a threat to the authorities. (Bruce Mannheim's The Language of the Inka since the European Invasion has much more on this.)
Another irony is that explicitly racist governments were never able to remove language diversity, but modern mobility has done so with frightening quickness. It's easy for people in positions of privilege to think that anyone's life will be improved by abandoning their culture and joining the dominant culture. But as counter-evidence, consider the last five hundred years of history. Lose your culture (starting with its language) and you aren't on a plane of magnificent equality with the colonizers; you're a dirt-poor person at the bottom and the elite still doesn't like you. A Yanomamö tribesman should have the right to go live in a shantytown outside Caracas, but if you really want to improve his life, there are certainly better approaches.
posted by zompist at 1:58 PM on September 13, 2014 [4 favorites]
Learning Spanish magically transports you to Caracas?
What does it mean to "join a culture", anyway?
Nobody has ever said that learning a dominant language suddenly makes you the darling of a bunch of racists who hated you before. Nor does moving closer to those racists reduce their ability to do you harm.
What learning a language does is to give you the ability to communicate with people you couldn't communicate with before. The more speakers the language has, and the more of them directly around you, the stronger that effect is. And if you only have the resources to learn a limited number of languages, or to teach your children a limited number of languages, then you should obviously choose the ones that give you the most useful communication opportunities.
Maybe that tribesman could use Spanish to sell handicrafts. Or maybe he could use it to write scathing op-eds in the Spanish-language press and overcome injustice. Or maybe he could use it to get laid. Or maybe learning Spanish wouldn't be enough to let him do any of those. Maybe it's more important for him to be able to function better in his current environment, and he doesn't have time to learn Spanish. But not knowing Spanish, in and of itself, sure isn't going to help him.
As for tribal identification, dropping that also doesn't force you to move anywhere, or even to start celebrating a different set of holidays or eating different foods. It just frees your mind from the artificial constraint of thinking "I was born X, so I must behave like Y".
You shouldn't trade that for "I've adopted culture Z, so I must behave like W". You should just drop the whole idea and do what you think best. What you think best will, in fact, be influenced by how you were raised. So? That doesn't mean you should intentionally limit yourself just so you can label yourself with some tribe. That's where the problem comes in.
posted by Hizonner at 2:23 PM on September 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
What does it mean to "join a culture", anyway?
Nobody has ever said that learning a dominant language suddenly makes you the darling of a bunch of racists who hated you before. Nor does moving closer to those racists reduce their ability to do you harm.
What learning a language does is to give you the ability to communicate with people you couldn't communicate with before. The more speakers the language has, and the more of them directly around you, the stronger that effect is. And if you only have the resources to learn a limited number of languages, or to teach your children a limited number of languages, then you should obviously choose the ones that give you the most useful communication opportunities.
Maybe that tribesman could use Spanish to sell handicrafts. Or maybe he could use it to write scathing op-eds in the Spanish-language press and overcome injustice. Or maybe he could use it to get laid. Or maybe learning Spanish wouldn't be enough to let him do any of those. Maybe it's more important for him to be able to function better in his current environment, and he doesn't have time to learn Spanish. But not knowing Spanish, in and of itself, sure isn't going to help him.
As for tribal identification, dropping that also doesn't force you to move anywhere, or even to start celebrating a different set of holidays or eating different foods. It just frees your mind from the artificial constraint of thinking "I was born X, so I must behave like Y".
You shouldn't trade that for "I've adopted culture Z, so I must behave like W". You should just drop the whole idea and do what you think best. What you think best will, in fact, be influenced by how you were raised. So? That doesn't mean you should intentionally limit yourself just so you can label yourself with some tribe. That's where the problem comes in.
posted by Hizonner at 2:23 PM on September 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
at the very least, a language can nudge you towards a particular way of thinkingI'm always astonished that this is still a controversial hypothesis. Yes, human languages are probably all whatever the linguistic version of "Turing complete" is... but that doesn't stop people from saying things like "Why?" without even realizing that there are at least two completely different meanings getting lumped into the same vocabulary. The fallacy of equivocation is language-dependent, and in practice it seems often to be so easy and so subtle that people don't even realize they're committing it!
It probably helped that my schooling led me to discover the "por qué"/"para qué" distinction and the fact that evolution was still controversial at roughly the same time.
posted by roystgnr at 7:34 PM on September 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
I'm not really talking about language preservation efforts like controlling a whole province of a wealthy country and putting slightly silly policies in place in support of your massively dominant and respected world language that also everybody suspects makes you much sexier and more intellectual than them. I'm talking about speaking or otherwise being involved with some language that most people in the world have never heard of or think is dead already and running a small class every two years in a church that will let you use one of their back rooms for free. Making some t-shirts. Doing some research. Organising a lecture attended by as many as eleven people. Asking your grandmother about her childhood. Putting videos of old people you know talking to each other on YouTube. Building your own website. Writing down proverbs and songs. Doing a half hour documentary to be aired on local TV at 11pm. Having a special day at your school. Creating a textbook or a modest dictionary and raising money to have it printed. Writing a letter to the editor when a columnist writes something ignorant about you in the newspaper. Circulating a petition when some government official has another idea premised on the belief that your existence is of no consequence. Not teaching your children that your language is useless and embarrassing. Not letting them believe it when everybody else basically tells them so. Because that's what a lot of language preservation looks like, until somebody with money (or somebody who knows how to ask for money and get it) gets involved. And even then... it's hard to make changes on any level that could actually cost anybody anything.
There are communities of people all over the world that have basically been expected to be vaguely ashamed of their selfish need to exist among others for hundreds of years. They've been told that everything about them is wrong and they should be making an effort to change, or at least bring up their children to be different. This doesn't describe every minority community, let alone every individual, but I'm from a relatively wealthy, cosmopolitan, English-speaking Caribbean country, and I feel like those feelings of inferiority are baked into even my society and will never really go away. (Incidentally, there are several dying languages here, though fortunately only one of them is unique to this island AFAIK. I've don't know any of them, but have been involved in documentation projects.)
When a group of people feel inferior and despised, or even if they're just hoping for something better, the impulse to actively support and preserve their languages and cultures is not a precursor to war or a brain dead enactment of some misguided cultural equation. It's an expression of love for the very lives they've lived and for the people they've lived them with. It's a desire for those things to endure in some form even if it means having to personally lift a finger, which so many are lucky enough not to have to do. It's the most basic recognition that if something matters to them, it matters full stop. Most people can't actually afford to have any delusions about how much they need to assimilate in order to succeed in life. But any state or society that values its citizens and its heritage thinks through its policies and resource allocation so that languages and cultures can be recorded and sustained and everybody can have opportunities and be productive without having to feel shame about who they are or anguish about what they're giving up. And also so there will just be more interesting stuff going on and more knowledge about the world, which is fun for everybody.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 9:12 PM on September 13, 2014 [8 favorites]
There are communities of people all over the world that have basically been expected to be vaguely ashamed of their selfish need to exist among others for hundreds of years. They've been told that everything about them is wrong and they should be making an effort to change, or at least bring up their children to be different. This doesn't describe every minority community, let alone every individual, but I'm from a relatively wealthy, cosmopolitan, English-speaking Caribbean country, and I feel like those feelings of inferiority are baked into even my society and will never really go away. (Incidentally, there are several dying languages here, though fortunately only one of them is unique to this island AFAIK. I've don't know any of them, but have been involved in documentation projects.)
When a group of people feel inferior and despised, or even if they're just hoping for something better, the impulse to actively support and preserve their languages and cultures is not a precursor to war or a brain dead enactment of some misguided cultural equation. It's an expression of love for the very lives they've lived and for the people they've lived them with. It's a desire for those things to endure in some form even if it means having to personally lift a finger, which so many are lucky enough not to have to do. It's the most basic recognition that if something matters to them, it matters full stop. Most people can't actually afford to have any delusions about how much they need to assimilate in order to succeed in life. But any state or society that values its citizens and its heritage thinks through its policies and resource allocation so that languages and cultures can be recorded and sustained and everybody can have opportunities and be productive without having to feel shame about who they are or anguish about what they're giving up. And also so there will just be more interesting stuff going on and more knowledge about the world, which is fun for everybody.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 9:12 PM on September 13, 2014 [8 favorites]
Which means, by the way, that the province of Quebec, and many of its residents, need to get over the French thing
Sorry to be so direct, your rants are incredibly tone-deaf, Hizonner. This shouldn't be news to you, but people's core identities and their native language are often deeply entwined. I don't really uinderstand how some people don't get that - lack of experience and sever lack of imagination, I guess. Imagine you lived in a country where no one spoke English and your kids couldn't speak English. Would it be easy for you to just "get over that English thing" and stopped using English altogether?
If you took your own opinions seriously, you'd better study up and get your French up to speed so you can interact with the rest of your world instead of writing lengthy diatribes on Metafilter.
posted by tecg at 9:18 PM on September 13, 2014 [6 favorites]
Sorry to be so direct, your rants are incredibly tone-deaf, Hizonner. This shouldn't be news to you, but people's core identities and their native language are often deeply entwined. I don't really uinderstand how some people don't get that - lack of experience and sever lack of imagination, I guess. Imagine you lived in a country where no one spoke English and your kids couldn't speak English. Would it be easy for you to just "get over that English thing" and stopped using English altogether?
If you took your own opinions seriously, you'd better study up and get your French up to speed so you can interact with the rest of your world instead of writing lengthy diatribes on Metafilter.
posted by tecg at 9:18 PM on September 13, 2014 [6 favorites]
Ethnic identifications are bad, m'kay?
Your comments are an excellent example of the mindset that "people like me are the default, and people like you are not." You seem to think you inhabit some neutral, non-ethnic space because you don't "identify" as an American or an Anglophone, whatever that means.
This is a viewpoint that comes from great privilege. Ethnicity only becomes invisible when your language, your cultural practices, and your beliefs are dominant. You have moved to Quebec so you have some experience being different, but still, your comments put Francophone Canadians into the "other" box, and yourself in the "default" box.
It is amazingly tone deaf, I agree with tecg.
I do research on African languages. Many have been lost because of the direct and indirect results of colonialism. Many remain, while their speakers have lost cultural knowledge and practices. It is in fact offensive to me when people say that these languages should have died, because they have died as the result of incredible social injustice. When people advocate for language death, it is rarely themselves who will bear the cost of that loss; it's those who are already disadvantaged who will bear that loss.
And it's pointless, anyway. Language change is unstoppable. If we wiped out all but one language today, we would have distinct varieties again before too long.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:57 AM on September 14, 2014 [5 favorites]
Your comments are an excellent example of the mindset that "people like me are the default, and people like you are not." You seem to think you inhabit some neutral, non-ethnic space because you don't "identify" as an American or an Anglophone, whatever that means.
This is a viewpoint that comes from great privilege. Ethnicity only becomes invisible when your language, your cultural practices, and your beliefs are dominant. You have moved to Quebec so you have some experience being different, but still, your comments put Francophone Canadians into the "other" box, and yourself in the "default" box.
It is amazingly tone deaf, I agree with tecg.
I do research on African languages. Many have been lost because of the direct and indirect results of colonialism. Many remain, while their speakers have lost cultural knowledge and practices. It is in fact offensive to me when people say that these languages should have died, because they have died as the result of incredible social injustice. When people advocate for language death, it is rarely themselves who will bear the cost of that loss; it's those who are already disadvantaged who will bear that loss.
And it's pointless, anyway. Language change is unstoppable. If we wiped out all but one language today, we would have distinct varieties again before too long.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:57 AM on September 14, 2014 [5 favorites]
As for "lost history", I don't know what to tell you. I have a whole bunch of ethnic "roots" as recent as 2 or 3 generations back. I also got a heapin' helpin' of childhood indoctrination as an ethnic American(TM). I don't give a damn about any of those, and I don't have any more interest in their history than I do in any other history.
You probably care about some things that happen in the world sometimes, right? There are events that mean things to you?
Meaning requires context. Even mundane shit like the word "shit" only means anything to anyone because of a history of using it to refer to a certain unpleasant substance and things analogous to it. Anything that means anything to you, means that because of stuff that happened in the past, ie. "history". If you're not interested in which of your family immigrated from where, that's fine, but if you're not a nihilist, you have some interest in some history.
History is mostly preserved in the form of stories, many of which are not in English. Other people are interested in those histories, which interest you should respect in the way you should basically respect other people. So they want to preserve that history, and even if you take the view that you could translate all of it into English and lose nothing (I don't) you would still end up preserving history at great expense through huge translation efforts -- preserving the original languages whole is more economical, and doesn't assume that English will forever remain the worldwide lingua franca.
posted by LogicalDash at 2:43 PM on September 14, 2014
You probably care about some things that happen in the world sometimes, right? There are events that mean things to you?
Meaning requires context. Even mundane shit like the word "shit" only means anything to anyone because of a history of using it to refer to a certain unpleasant substance and things analogous to it. Anything that means anything to you, means that because of stuff that happened in the past, ie. "history". If you're not interested in which of your family immigrated from where, that's fine, but if you're not a nihilist, you have some interest in some history.
History is mostly preserved in the form of stories, many of which are not in English. Other people are interested in those histories, which interest you should respect in the way you should basically respect other people. So they want to preserve that history, and even if you take the view that you could translate all of it into English and lose nothing (I don't) you would still end up preserving history at great expense through huge translation efforts -- preserving the original languages whole is more economical, and doesn't assume that English will forever remain the worldwide lingua franca.
posted by LogicalDash at 2:43 PM on September 14, 2014
It's kind of strange to tell people to abandon their ethnic identities in a world where national states are still the dominant powers, and where where these states still justify their existence on cultural, historical, linguistic and ethnic lines. The US relies more on historical and cultural lines (at huge expenses: the Pledge of Allegiance, flags everywhere, and, recently, the largest military the world has ever seen), but it's still very much a white, anglo-protestant state, with various degrees of second-classness for people who deviate (very small for whites of European descent who speak English, very large for Blacks and Native Americans).
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 2:59 PM on September 15, 2014
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 2:59 PM on September 15, 2014
« Older Ghostbusting Lovecraft | If I were king for a day, I would ban open-plan... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Thing at 8:20 AM on September 13, 2014 [6 favorites]