[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
I think you have got off track in your effort to argue. My point is that without the cultural understanding the direct translation is meaningless. [/quote]
And my point is that the “cultural understanding” and “direct translation” are one and the same–you can’t have one without the other. Hence I’m not taking things off track just to argue, since this is the very question at hand: what is the connection between language and culture?
But knowing that you can explain the cultural significance in English tells you something about the relation between the two, doesn’t it? It’s a two way street–knowledge about language informs knowledge about culture, not just the other way around.
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To get back to your argument though, when you look at the difference between English and Mandarin say there are huge issues due to the lack of tenses in Chinese. This actually leads you to think about things in a slightly different way. I even find this in Spanish. If I am thinking in Spanish my reaction to things will be different to when I am thinking in English just because the structure is different.[/quote]
Sure, I have no dispute with this. I haven’t been so much “arguing”, but trying to clarify things and get you to say precisely what you mean. All this vague talk about “seeing things differently” and whatnot can be very misleading, especially when it’s slanted to the extreme of suggesting that there are fundamental differences of cultures which make it impossible for someone to really understand another culture’s point of view.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
I think you have got off track in your effort to argue. My point is that without the cultural understanding the direct translation is meaningless.
And my point is that the “cultural understanding” and “direct translation” are one and the same–you can’t have one without the other. Hence I’m not taking things off track just to argue, since this is the very question at hand: what is the connection between language and culture?
Yes I can explain the cultural significance in English but the original question was about the difference between language and culture. This is an example of that.
But knowing that you can explain the cultural significance in English tells you something about the relation between the two, doesn’t it? It’s a two way street–knowledge about language informs knowledge about culture, not just the other way around.
To get back to your argument though, when you look at the difference between English and Mandarin say there are huge issues due to the lack of tenses in Chinese. This actually leads you to think about things in a slightly different way. I even find this in Spanish. If I am thinking in Spanish my reaction to things will be different to when I am thinking in English just because the structure is different.
Sure, I have no dispute with this. I haven’t been so much “arguing”, but trying to clarify things and get you to say precisely what you mean. All this vague talk about “seeing things differently” and whatnot can be very misleading, especially when it’s slanted to the extreme of suggesting that there are fundamental differences of cultures which make it impossible for someone to really understand another culture’s point of view.
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Your point on colours I totally agree with. Whether there is a word for something or not doesn’t necissarily define whether you can conceptualise something. Also I agree that it is a two way street, the culture informs the language as much as the other way round.
Certain phrases in English have been gender neutralised in the UK due to the cultural shift of increased female participation in the workplace. The aim of this was to change further change the culture.
I would still hold though that culture and language whilst closely linked are separate.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Certain phrases in English have been gender neutralised in the UK due to the cultural shift of increased female participation in the workplace. The aim of this was to change further change the culture.[/quote]
I think this is a bit too crude an example, one that misses the more important link. A better example, I think, is the shift in the meanings of certain words. For example, today “Christmas” means something very different than it did even 100 years ago, but this isn’t because anyone made the conscious decision that it’s better to conceptualize Christmas a certain way, but rather because the cultural activities that underlie the understanding of Christmas have changed. One might suggest that when someone utters the word “Christmas” they refer to an institution that while historically connected to the institution referred to a hundred years ago is different. You can bicker about what exactly this means, but the point is there has been a definite shift in the meaning of the word “christmas” because of cultural shifts.
Of course, I’m not arguing with you, just throwing out what I think is a more natural example. To connect with your own example, one might say that the meaning of workplace related jargon changed as more women entered the workforce, whether ostensive changes in the syntax took place or not. When the ostensive changes in syntax did take place, they are only a recognition of a shift in meaning–semantics–which already took place.
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I would still hold though that culture and language whilst closely linked are separate.[/quote]
Of course, depending on what you mean by either term. That’s why I said, in response to the OP, that the question was a bit silly. No one holds that they are the same thing.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
spyoptic wrote:
If a language doesn’t distinguish between two colors, do the people who speak the language think about colors differently than we do? They would have trouble making discriminations between orange and red. The same as people who do not have any pictures in their society would have trouble understanding what object is closer and which is further away in a photograph.
I think Bill already addressed the former point–it’s incorrect. People will not have trouble differentiating two colors just because they lack a word for it. They might have a tendency to no differentiate the two colors if they don’t often have a need to, but that doesn’t mean that their lack of a word for the color somehow fundamentally impairs them from making the distinction. Since that is true, I still don’t see your point. As for the photograph point, I have trouble believing that. You are going to need to actually produce citations or something. My intuition is that depth perception, if developed at all, will carry over to things like photographs easily. [/quote]
Ok, the language - culture thing is just a theory anyway, so I wasn’t making a point just trying to get the OP some thinking material…
boring stuff, but heres the picture depth perception study
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Certain phrases in English have been gender neutralised in the UK due to the cultural shift of increased female participation in the workplace. The aim of this was to change further change the culture.
I think this is a bit too crude an example, one that misses the more important link. A better example, I think, is the shift in the meanings of certain words. For example, today “Christmas” means something very different than it did even 100 years ago, but this isn’t because anyone made the conscious decision that it’s better to conceptualize Christmas a certain way, but rather because the cultural activities that underlie the understanding of Christmas have changed. One might suggest that when someone utters the word “Christmas” they refer to an institution that while historically connected to the institution referred to a hundred years ago is different. You can bicker about what exactly this means, but the point is there has been a definite shift in the meaning of the word “christmas” because of cultural shifts.
Of course, I’m not arguing with you, just throwing out what I think is a more natural example. To connect with your own example, one might say that the meaning of workplace related jargon changed as more women entered the workforce, whether ostensive changes in the syntax took place or not. When the ostensive changes in syntax did take place, they are only a recognition of a shift in meaning–semantics–which already took place.
I would still hold though that culture and language whilst closely linked are separate.
Of course, depending on what you mean by either term. That’s why I said, in response to the OP, that the question was a bit silly. No one holds that they are the same thing.
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Cool, good points there. Gay might well be another word that has a very different meaning to 100 years ago.