Language, Thought and Culture (Week 4, Sept 23) PDF

LANGUAGE, THOUGHT AND CULTURE Week 4 (Sept 23) THE NEWSPEAK IN 1984 BY GEORGE ORWELL: ❖ A totalitarian society that takes Ingsoc (English Socialism) as the dominant political system; force people to use a new language ❖ Newspeak, a radically revised version of the English languag...

LANGUAGE, THOUGHT AND CULTURE Week 4 (Sept 23) THE NEWSPEAK IN 1984 BY GEORGE ORWELL: ❖ A totalitarian society that takes Ingsoc (English Socialism) as the dominant political system; force people to use a new language ❖ Newspeak, a radically revised version of the English language from which many meanings available to us today have been removed or reduced (Thomas, et al., 2004, p. 39). Newspeak is developed by ancient english 2  THE NEWSPEAK Why forcing people to use the new language? - control citizen’s mindset “get rid of certain way of thinking” exclude other thoughts especially the opposing thought "The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [English Socialism], but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them 剝離 by indirect method. This was done partly by the invention of new words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever..." It removes the word then can remove the same of certain thinking and can’t express your ideas/belief/ religion through the language (can think but cannot express) 3 QUESTION What can be the underlying premise of the existence of the Newspeak? 4 CAN LANGUAGE WIELD POWER ON US? ❖ “Have you stopped beating your dog?” pre-assumption: you beat your dog before ❖ “Campbell’s soup has 30% less salt.” ❖ “If you use X, your child will do better in school.” ❖ “Don’t think of an elephant!” 5  The limits of my language means the limits of my world. (Ludwig Wittgenstein) Can people think without language? people can also think in visual terms, artistic thinking (can think without language) 7 NOW THINK ABOUT: Why so many words to describe the woods and woodlands? English (especially British English) has many words for woods and woodlands. Here are some: woodlot, carr, fen, firth, grove, heath, holt, lea, moor, shaw, weald, wold, coppice, scrub, spinner, copse, brush, bush, bosquet, bosky, stand, forest, timberland, thicket 8  For greek: they have distinction between these blue colours (specific words to describe) For us: just describe it as ‘light blue’ or ‘dark blue’ BLUE? ghalazio ble dark blue light blue 9 COLOR RECOGNITION? 10 TYPES OF SNOW, RAIN KINDS OF RICE, COCONUTS… Ine (稲 unharvested rice plant); Ha’ao (the light, breathy, misting rain) Kome (米uncooked rice); kili noe (a fine, light rain) Gohan (御飯 cooked rice); a lanipili (a torrential downpour) Okoge (partially scorched boiled pōʻaihale (a rain falling in a shape rice). that would circle one’s home) Hakumai (white rice); gen’mai (brown rice), mochi gome (sticky cake rice). 11 SAUSSURE: LANGUAGE AS A SYMBOLIC SYSTEM OF REPRESENTATION arbitrary nature in human language no logical connection Ferdinand de Saussure 1857 – 1913 12 A linguistic sign/ Langue native speaker of language: we developed a systematic correspondence we store in our mind (as relative to parole) when developing language physical object different written and sound form 13 FOR SAUSSURE, ▪ Speakers of different languages engage in an arbitrary division of reality; that is, ‘different languages cut up reality in different ways’. (shows the language diversity) ▪ Thus, every language can be said to be a particular system of representation that mirrors, and indeed so reinforces, the ‘world’ of its speakers (Thomas et al., 2004, pp. 19 - 21). 14 MAPPING OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE: EARLY STRUCTURALISM national culture matches with national language e.g. if you’re born in France -> you speak French Language studied as a closed Culture studied as a closed system system of signs shared by all of relational structures shared by members of a community of ideal homogeneous social groups in pre- native speakers (e.g., Saussure). indrustralized societies (e.g., Lévi- Shared by a group of people ~ growing up in a Cantonese environment Strauss, Boaz) follow what the people mean you The structure of language as a symbolic system (Saussure) had been mapped on the structure of culture as the principle of organization of primitive societies (Lévi-Strauss) (Kramsh, 2024, p.178). 15 EARLY PRECURSORS TO PROBE LANGUAGE, THOUGHT AND CULTURE – JOHANN HERDER “The Arab in the desert who has around him nothing living except his camel and perhaps the flight of wandering birds can more easily understand the camel’s nature and think that he understands the birds’ cries than we in our abodes. The son of the forest, the hunter, understands the voice of the stag, and the Laplander that of his reindeer … (Herder, in Forster, 2004, p. 67)  EARLY PRECURSORS – HERDER If it be true that we... learn to think through words, then language is what defines and delineates the whole of human knowledge... In everyday life, it is clear that to think is almost nothing else but to speak. Individual to group level Every nation speaks... according to the way it thinks and thinks according to the way it speaks. (Herder, 1960, cited in Kramsch, 2005) one language = one folk = one nation 17 EMERGENCE OF LINGUISTIC NATIONALISM depreciate other languages role of language: if our language is more superior than other languages -> our nation is superior than other nations language has important idealogical meaning, Language can define people Language defines the folk and culture (historical and the modern society as well) Linguistic sentiments arising after the French revolution: Herder: All nations cherish – and are right to cherish – their particular language, their ‘collective treasure’ (Herder’s1772 prize essay Ursprung der Sprache). von Humboldt: ‘…absolutely nothing is so important for a nation’s culture as its language’;... there resides in every language a characteristic world-view... (Von Humboldt, 1988 Addresses to the German Nation by Johann Gottlieb Fichte in 1808 Thus, language as the essence and soul of a nation or culture rules that people should follow Linguistic purism and prescriptivism Implications on national language policy if you use that language, you should follow its rules 18 Now the best-known formulation: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis or Linguistic Relativity 19 LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY – EDWARD SAPIR …Language is a guide to “social reality.” it powerfully conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes. Human thanks to language we were able to speak, think. create etc. beings…are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression in their society...(w)e see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation (Sapir, 1929, p. 209).American scholar 20 LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY – BENJAMIN LEE WHORF ❖ Student of Sapir at Yale; linguist, and anthropology lecturer at Yale University; ❖ Developing stronger claims, based on comparisons of NAL linguistic structures of Native American languages and Standard Average European (SAE) languages (including English, French, German, etc.); ❖ Viewing the relationship between language and culture as a deterministic one; namely, the social categories we create and how we perceive the events and actions are constrained by the language we speak. 21 FOR WHORF, The background linguistic system (in other words, grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing generate ideas instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas … We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language… We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language… (Carroll, 1956, p. 213). 22  Compare the language: Hopi vs English SUPPORTING EVIDENCE BY WHORF Languages classify items of experience differently. The class corresponding to one word and one thought in language A may be regarded by language B as two or more classes corresponding to two or more words and thoughts. (Carroll, 1956, p. 210) 23 Supporting evidence by Whorf: What are to English differences of time are to Hopi differences in the kind of validity (Carroll, 1956, p. 213). Different focus: syntactic structure English: the time vs Hopi: valid or false degree of truth rather than the timing 24  many people disagree CRITICISMS OF WHORF’S CLAIMS Ekkehart Malotki (1983): Either dubious or incorrect. Steven Pinker (1994): ‘outlandish,’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZDeYe93rFg&list=PL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZDeYe93rFglist=PLFjyteNmcMxBL_OyU3K5UmaUnWaple7hI circular; evidence anecdotal or FjyteNmcMxBL_OyU3K5UmaUnWaple7hI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZDeYe93rFglist=PLFjyteNmcMxBL_OyU3K5UmaUnWaple7hI unreliable. Guy Deutscher (2010): If so, how would you ever learn anything new? 25 SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS language determines thought and that speakers of different languages perceive and think about the world in fundamentally different ways because of the structures of their languages prisoner of the languages we speak ❖ Linguistic Determinism (the prison house view of language) The language we speak determines how we perceive and think about the world. ❑ Language acts like a filter on the world and reality; ❑ Able only to think in the categories that the language provides. ❖ Linguistic Relativism (weak form) language influences thought and perception but does not completely determine them ❑ Different languages encode different categories and speakers of different languages therefore think about the world in different ways; ❑ Language influences our thoughts about reality. 26 STUDIES TRIGGERED BY THE HYPOTHESIS (colour, gender) Lera Boroditsky (2003): grammatical gender ❑ E.g., Key, gendered as feminine in Spanish, and masculine in German. lovely, tiny, magic by native Spanish speakers hard, jagged, awkward by native German speakers https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_langua ge_shapes_the_way_we_think/transcript 27 STUDIES TRIGGERED BY THE HYPOTHESIS ▪ Lenneberg and Roberts (1956): research on colour terms in Zuni and English; inviting participants to circle on this chart all the chips under one category (e.g., “please circle all the red colors”). the boundaries/size are different in different languages ▪ → Zuni data supporting linguistic relativity similar size of range ~20-30 people 28 STUDIES TRIGGERED BY THE HYPOTHESIS independent from the language itself Berlin and Kay’s study on color (1969, 1991) ❖ Data collected from 98 languages, from either native speakers (20 languages) or from existing literature (78 languages); ❖ In all languages, there were at least two, but no more than 11 or 12 basic color terms: 29 REVISITING THE HYPOTHESIS ❖ Guugu Yimithirr ❖ Matses in Peru ❖ If different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about (Deutscher, 2010). 30 CURRENT UNDERSTANDING ❖ Linguistic Determinism (strong form) – largely discarded ❖ Linguistic Relativism (weak form) – generally accepted 31 Now back to the Newspeak 32 POWER, POLITICS & IDEOLOGY George Orwell: “In our age there is no keeping out of politics. All issues are political issues.” to make decision, create values etc. Politics Power Ideology Louis Althusser (1918-1990) 33  NEWSPEAK: LANGUAGE AS THOUGHT CONTROL controls thought The principles of Newspeak are grounded in the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis (Thomas, et al., 2004). By altering the language people speak (Oldspeak), by controlling the discourse, one can change the way reality is perceived through that language, and thus, control how George Orwell (1903 – 1950) another person thinks. Premise: “…at least so far as e.g., Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEU-t-ANpdY thought is dependent on words” 34 ‘By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery’ when the concept of freedom has been abolished?’ ‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten … Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak.’ (Chapt. 5) 35