WORDS

 

The concept I most want you to carry away from this chapter with you is this one:  Words shape reality--more of that alternative reality stuff we talked about in Lesson 3.  Now the point is that the words you know and use do influence what you can perceive and remember.  We can’t notice things we don’t have a frame of reference for.  That means the better your vocabulary, the richer your everyday experience. 

 

Our relationship to language

The textbook tells us that language uses us just as much as we use language.  What does that mean?  It means that the words to which we have access (the ones we know) can reinforce, influence, even change what we think and feel.  The language forms we use to describe an event determine how we experience it; and we will then remember it consistent with the linguistic expression we used to store it away.

 

The relationship between culture and language

Here’s an example:  in most Arab languages, there is no word for privacy.  In fact, there are no words for private ownership or private places.  What gives here?  In fact, in most Arab cultures, there has been no need for these words because the concept of privacy doesn’t exist.  Culture shapes language:  we don’t bother coming up with words we have no use for.  If privacy isn’t even on the radar screen, then we don’t need a word for it.  But then language also shapes culture:  as long as we don’t have a word for privacy, there’s no way to think about privacy.  That insures that it will stay off the radar screen.  You can’t easily think about things you don’t have words for. 

 

Your book says language shapes culture shapes language.  That’s right.

 

I read an interesting story that illustrates this point with the example above.  A woman wrote that she was traveling alone in an Arab country.  One night she went down to her hotel dining room for dinner; because she planned to dine alone, she took a book with her.  As she was happily eating and reading, a gentleman approached her and asked if it would be all right if he sat with her.  She said, “No, thank you.  I’d rather eat alone tonight.”  He sat down and began to engage her in conversation.  She feared her peace and quiet were coming to an end, so she said, “Really, I’d rather you didn’t join me.  I want to eat alone.”  But he stayed . . . and stayed . . . and stayed.

 

Later, she told her story to a friend who was a native of the country.  He explained what went wrong.  First, as an American, she expected her table to be private, that is, hers and hers alone as long as she stayed in the restaurant.  Remember that the culture she was in doesn’t have a concept of privacy; tables don’t “belong” to anyone really.  So it was perfectly acceptable for the gentleman to sit down at her table; it wasn’t really hers at all.  Secondly, he had no frame of reference for wanting to sit all alone at a table and eat.  Last, in Arab culture, a denial is expected and is simply part of being polite.  No one takes a first refusal seriously.  If she really didn’t want the man to join her, the woman should have shouted, “No, damn it!  I want to eat alone!”  He would then have gotten her message and left her.  We Americans say, “Oh no!  I couldn’t be so rude.”  But, in fact, that is polite in that culture.

 

There are many other pretty easy-to-see examples that demonstrate the effect of culture and language on one another.  Many languages use all sorts of euphemisms (nice sounding words for things we’d rather not think or talk about) for things to do with dying.  The ancient Egyptians called cemeteries the beautiful place.  Before you start laughing at them, think of all the ways we avoid saying dead person at a funeral in our culture.  We talk about the deceased, the dearly beloved, the dearly departed.  We hardly ever say dead person or corpse.  We call a mortician (from the Latin word mort which means death) a funeral director.  We say that Aunt Martha passed, passed over, passed on, expired (I always think of a magazine subscription when I hear this), slept away, departed, went to God, went to heaven, met her Maker, kicked the bucket, tipped over.  We hardly ever say she died.  Why is this?  It helps us to avoid thinking too closely about dying.  Now that’s OK, but recognize how these words can prevent us from coming to terms with a death too.

 

The Victorians in England (around the turn of the 20^th century) were fairly repressed about sex and anything to do with body functions.  They were so careful not to talk about such things that many a young woman went to her marriage bed knowing only that something very unpleasant was about to happen to her, but having not the least idea what that something was.  It was so important not to talk about anything that might inflame the passions that we would almost need a scorecard to keep up with the language changes.  The basic rule was that you couldn’t say any word that referred to a body part that was kept decently covered.  Understand this meant pretty much everything except the head and hands.  (Even hands were somewhat off limits; a gentleman was never supposed to touch the bare hand of a woman unless they were married or close relatives.  Other gentlemen could touch her hand only if she wore gloves, which many women did whenever they were outside their homes.)  So you couldn’t say leg, even if you were referring to the leg of a table.  You called it a limb.  And they got so carried away that they began to make little skirts to cover the legs of furniture, just so no one would get too excited at the sight of a shapely piano leg.  This is why the alternative term, drumstick, came into use for a chicken leg.  Wouldn’t do to say a word like leg at the dinner table!  (This is also why people started to refer to the breast of chicken as white meat.  Lord knows, if you couldn’t say leg, you’d better not be going around saying breast in polite company!)

 

Things in our culture have gotten pretty complicated when we’ve tried to come up with polite words for various parts of the body too.  The English a long time ago called the buttocks the arse.  That came through the years as ass, at one time a perfectly polite and acceptable name.  Eventually this came to be too direct a reference to the body part in question.  So we called it a butt (short for buttocks).  Of course, pretty soon that word was tainted by its association with the actual part of the body; so we tried seat.  Soon this was too old-fashioned and we tried derierre.  Good choice; anything you want to say sounds classier in French—same reason we call underwear lingerie in expensive department stores.  Nowadays we’re using all sorts of it’s-back-there-where-you-can’t-really-see-it references like back side and behind.  Interesting how words move from OK to unacceptable and back again.

 

We can tell what’s important in a culture by the language.  In Russian, there are numerous words for villages, based on whether there is a church in the village.  There is one name for a village without a church, a different name for a village with a church.  There’s also a word for a village that used to have a church, but doesn’t any more.  Looks like churches were pretty important to villagers at one time.  I’ve heard that the Eskimo language has many words for snow, each describing a slightly different kind of snow.  Have you thought much about all the varieties of snow there are?  Probably not.  When we don’t have words for something, we don’t often have thoughts about it either.  Which causes which—the lack of words limiting thoughts or the limited thoughts resulting in a lack of words?  Who knows?  Language shapes culture shapes language.

 

Think about all the words there are in American English for drunk.  I can come up with at least a dozen very quickly.  What does that say about our culture?

 

Language binds people together in a common culture; it determines how and what they can think.  It creates a sense of group identity.  Even when we don’t think much about it, we recognize it.  It has been true across the centuries that conquering peoples frequently try to eliminate the language of the conquered people; this is necessary in order to destroy their sense of identity as a separate people. 

 

Language is important

Think about the whole idea of politically correct language.  We’ve all laughed a time or two at the silly things people get excited about.  What difference does it make what we call things anyhow?  It’s only words.

 

But wait!  If language has the power to shape our thoughts and our experiences and our memories, then maybe it does make a difference what we call things.  At one time in the American south, it was quite socially appropriate to refer to any black man as Boy.  Didn’t need a name, just Boy.  Is this just a word?  Is it true that the word doesn’t make a difference?  Somehow, I think you’d have trouble believing it doesn’t matter. 

 

I remember in my youth that it was very acceptable to refer to a black person as a nigger.  No insult intended.  It was considered a little bit crude in my hometown, but certainly the issue of whether it was insulting never arose.  My husband’s aunt lived in a place where colored person was the term used.  Both terms (and use of the term Boy) convey some sense that this is an inferior person, don’t they? 

 

So what good will it do to make such terms socially unacceptable—politically incorrect?  After all, you can’t legislate attitudes; someone who looks down her nose at people of other races won’t quit just because she can’t say nigger anymore, will she?

 

Actually, maybe you can’t change an individual racist person by insisting she change her language; but it looks as if you can influence an entire racist society.  Since the names nigger  and Boy and colored person became socially unacceptable, attitudes toward the people so labeled have undergone radical change.  Language may not have caused the change, but it certainly led it.

 

If you watch old movies or TV shows, you’ve undoubtedly heard one executive say to another, “I’ll have my girl call your girl and set something up.”  Who are these girls they’re talking about?  They’re adult women.  You can’t call a grown woman a girl any more unless you’re one of the women in question.  Did something like that cause a change in attitudes toward women?  Maybe not, but it led the change. 

 

Sexist and racist language is important because the words we use shape our thinking.  If we’re forced to use different words, we’re also forced to think in slightly different ways.  Different thinking is often just what the doctor ordered.  So while it’s fun to laugh at the excesses of political correctness, don’t get too carried away laughing. 

 

Think for a moment about all the dumb blonde jokes that make the rounds.  Or the Jew jokes.  Or the Catholic jokes.  Or the Arab jokes.  Or woman driver and mother-in-law jokes.  How can a simple joke do harm?  After all, it’s only words.  And of course, we know blondes aren’t really dumb, Jews cheap, Catholics sex-obsessed, Arabs terrorists, women bad drivers, mothers-in-law nasty.  It’s just a joke, for goodness sake!  So what’s the harm? 

 

Let’s say you do know many blonde women—perhaps you are one—and you know for sure that blonde women are not by definition dumb.  So what does it hurt to tell the one about the blonde on the motorcycle?  The answer to that question has to do with the powerful effect of language on thinking.  Will telling just one more blonde joke help to perpetuate for anyone in our society the stereotype of blonde women as stupid and easy sexual targets?  Probably.  That’s why it’s not OK.

 

Language Rules

Most people don’t think of themselves as very good at English.  Maybe you got low grades in English class in high school, or maybe you don’t write beautifully.  Despite all of this, you’ll be surprised to find you’re really quite expert in using English.  Like all languages, there is an infinite number of sentences you can make in English; think of all the ways you can arrange the words you know into unique sentences, sentences no one has ever come up with before.  And yet, it isn’t true that anything goes; and you can tell an acceptable sentence from an unacceptable one.  For example, every native speaker of English knows that the following is not an OK sentence:

 

Goes he to the store.

 

How do you know this?  What’s the rule?  There must be a rule, or at least some of us would think this sentence was just fine.  The thing is, we all know a lot of rules; but we don’t know we know them.  In fact, no one has ever written a comprehensive set of rules for using English.  Even with all the rules someone has managed to write down, there are thousands of situations those rules don’t cover.

 

Here’s an illustration:

 

Let’s say you want to make a sentence about dogs.  Let’s say the dogs are brown, there are three of them, they’re large, and they’re all male.  Let’s try to put the subject of the sentence (about the dogs) together.  Is this OK?

 

The brown three male large dogs . . . .

 

It isn’t, is it?  The words, brown, three, male, and large are all called modifiers—words that modify (or describe) dogs.  Is there a rule about order of modifiers?  Well, let’s try this:

 

The large male brown three dogs . . . .

 

Doesn’t work either, does it?  Try to put things in the proper order for yourself.  I’ll wait here for you . . . . . . .

 

Got it?  Let’s see who all came up with this:

 

The three large brown male dogs . . . .

 

Everyone, right?  Any time everyone spontaneously agrees on how something should be done, there must be a rule, or a set of them.  So what must these rules be?  Let’s try to list them:

 

1.  Modifiers that list number should come before those about size, color, or sex.

2.  Size comes after number and before color or sex.

3.  Next comes color.

4.  Sex is after number, size, and color.

 

Let’s add vicious to the list of modifiers.  Where does it go?  After brown, right?  How did you know that?  It seems there’s a whole bunch of rules for ordering modifiers, doesn’t it?  And you know every one of them.  Did you know you knew them?  I’ll bet not.  And I’ll bet no one ever taught you these rules—most likely no one even ever mentioned to you that rules exist.  I’m guessing you didn’t know there were rules.  But you knew the rules.  Just as you knew the rules for word order in a sentence that tell you Goes he to the store is not an OK sentence.

 

Even people who are bad in English know a heck of a lot about it, including a bunch of rules no one’s ever been able to get down in writing before.  Much of what we’re going to do in this lesson depends on your understanding of this sort of rules—the sort everyone knows, but no one knows that they know.  What will it take to figure all of this out as we go along?  It won’t surprise you to hear that most of what you need is to pay attention and to begin noticing things.  I hope you’re up to noticing some more.

 

Style

There is talk in the textbook about style in language usage.  Style is essentially the way an individual uses language; your own idiosyncrasies in word choice and sentence structure.  There are many ways to use English; and one of them is called standard usage.  Standard usage is what your teachers tried to teach you all through school, correct grammar and usage accompanied by a more or less midwestern pronunciation. (You’ll recognize this if you listen to the anchor people on the evening news; all use standard pronunciation.)  Someone who effectively employs standard language is generally labeled as more competent, more credible, more intelligent, and more ambitious than someone using any other style.  These evaluations are not necessarily correct, but they’ll happen nonetheless.  This is because standard language is the language style of the power group in our society; if you want to be perceived as competent, credible, and all the rest, you’ll make every effort to employ standard language style.  It will matter as you move into your professional life.

 

Now that we’ve reviewed the most important points from your textbook reading, you’re ready to move on to the three readings on this web site.  Let us know what you’re thinking as you go along.  Enjoy!