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More from "Through the Language Glass"
Oct. 11th, 2012 12:04 pmDiscussing the idea that language doesn't just shape the way we think, but actually prevents us from thinking certain thoughts, Guy Deutscher writes, "Do ignorant folk who have never heard of 'Schadenfreude' find it difficult to understand the concept of relishing someone else's misfortune?" He goes on to add, "Did the ancient Babylonians, who used the same word (arnum) for both 'crime' and 'punishment', not understand the difference?" Well, yes and no: Akkadian, the language of the Babylonians, has multiple words for 'crime', 'sin', and 'error', and multiple words for 'punishment' and 'penalty', so clearly the concepts weren't simply fused. But I found two words which can be used to mean both 'crime' and 'punishment', arnu and ḫīṭu. Perhaps the sense those two particular terms are trying to get across is "responsibility" or "culpability".
Deutscher also describes the use of evidential markers in the Matses language, in which you can't just make a statement - you have to indicate whether you're making that statement based on your direct experience, from inference, conjecture, or hearsay. Imagine the amount of online bullshit that could potentially kill!* Or would we still be careless and gullible? "Can the habits of speech induced by such a language have a measurable effect on the speaker's habits of mind beyond language?" asks Deutscher. He hopes that new methods of studying what goes on upstairs will help answer the question.
Coincidentally, I'm reading Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17 at the moment; like Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue novels, it explores the influence of language on how we think. Elgin's conlang, Láadan, uses evidential markers (and other methods of obliging people to say just what they mean!).
* It'd make life more difficult for someone like Archbishop Jensen, who wouldn't be able to package slander in the linguistic equivalent of foam peanuts: "Now, I think it is true to say - I think it is true to say - it's very hard to get all the facts here because we don't want to talk about it and in this country censorship is alive and well, believe me. So what I'm about to say, I don't want to say because I know I'm going to be hit over the head for the next 100 years about it so - and it's a virulent censorship. Now, I will still go ahead. What I want to say is that as far as I can see by trying to get to the facts, the lifespan of practising gays is significantly shorter than the ordinary, so called, heterosexual man. I think that seems to be the case." OTOH, they'd find a way around it, as Jensen did: "people tell me that it is [true]" (hearsay).
Deutscher also describes the use of evidential markers in the Matses language, in which you can't just make a statement - you have to indicate whether you're making that statement based on your direct experience, from inference, conjecture, or hearsay. Imagine the amount of online bullshit that could potentially kill!* Or would we still be careless and gullible? "Can the habits of speech induced by such a language have a measurable effect on the speaker's habits of mind beyond language?" asks Deutscher. He hopes that new methods of studying what goes on upstairs will help answer the question.
Coincidentally, I'm reading Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17 at the moment; like Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue novels, it explores the influence of language on how we think. Elgin's conlang, Láadan, uses evidential markers (and other methods of obliging people to say just what they mean!).
* It'd make life more difficult for someone like Archbishop Jensen, who wouldn't be able to package slander in the linguistic equivalent of foam peanuts: "Now, I think it is true to say - I think it is true to say - it's very hard to get all the facts here because we don't want to talk about it and in this country censorship is alive and well, believe me. So what I'm about to say, I don't want to say because I know I'm going to be hit over the head for the next 100 years about it so - and it's a virulent censorship. Now, I will still go ahead. What I want to say is that as far as I can see by trying to get to the facts, the lifespan of practising gays is significantly shorter than the ordinary, so called, heterosexual man. I think that seems to be the case." OTOH, they'd find a way around it, as Jensen did: "people tell me that it is [true]" (hearsay).
