Culture and Power Relationships

Several articles recently have dealt with associations between language and power, often in association with culture. Philologist Juan Luis "Conde looks into this kind of relationship between employers and employees, doctors and patients, and sellers and buyers in a paper on 'Power and Power Relations.'" He says that in any relationship, language causes one party to dominate over the other, whether the subordinate party is aware of this or not. Also, in some cases, such as those where companies do not bother to translate their slogans into foreign languages, "it is not only the product that is being advertised, but also the very language used to advertise. The English language adds prestige to the product endorsed and its endorsement in English adds to the value of the English language."

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald considers the languages which children make up and speak to each other. This includes widely spoken "languages" such as Pig Latin and Double Dutch, but also includes languages which only a few children together have made up to communicate with each other in secret. The author of the article suggests that children create their own languages to gain some control over the world. "Perhaps when you are 10 or 11 the world of language seems like a meticulously built maze - it's been constructed by adults, well before your arrival on the scene, and your only role is to learn how to navigate your way through." Rather than simply following the rules constructed by adults, some children use language as a way of gaining some power of their own over the world.

Yet another article considers the effects of language in interpreting and listening to music sung in a foreign language. The author concludes that "we retreat, without really meaning to, into a type of appreciation that's probably less earthy and more superficially aesthetic than that of the musicians. They sing about their daily hopes and fears, and we listen to their nimble guitar work and exotic tunes." Being unable to understand the lyrics sets the listeners on a power level both above and below the musicians. The listeners are subordinate because they are unable to understand the full significance of the tunes; the musicians subordinate because they are unable to convey their tunes' full meanings.

ASL

A recent article in the Virginia Gazette tells how American Sign Language (ASL) is gradually gaining acceptance as a real language. Although some people toke it in high school as an "easy" alternative to a spoken language, "(1) ASL is an autonomous, natural language, with its own morph­ological structure and syntax, comparable in complexity and expressiveness to other foreign languages; (2) ASL is associated with a distinctive culture of deaf Americans; (3) the study of ASL provides opportunities for exploration and research comparable to those offered by spoken languages and is consistent with the goals of the foreign language requirement at UVA." The University of Virginia, among others, has recently begun to accept ASL to fulfill language requirements.

Looking further into the background of sign language, I found that there are a considerable number of grammar books detailing its phonolgy, morpholgy, syntax, and semantics. Clearly the language is fully evolved. The only question remaining is whether it can be considered a language if it is not spoken.

Students of any standard spoken language learn four aspects of that language: reading, writing, speech, and oral understanding. Perhaps the reason that some people do not consider sign language to be a language is that it uses only two of these aspects: speech and understanding. Yet, despite this, Latin is widely considered a language and is accepted to fulfill college language requirements, even though students of Latin also only learn two aspects: reading and writing. If Latin is accepted as a language, so too should sign language be. Indeed, sign language is, if anything, more of a language than Latin, because is has a modern culture associated with it. While no native speakers of Latin are alive today, a considerable number of people speak sign language as their native language: "According to 2005 Virginia education statistics, 1,538 students aged 2-22 received special education services in Virginia with a primary disabil­ity of hearing impairment/deafness."

Because I posted about body language last week, the article on sign language got me thinking about a combination of the two languages. Is there body language in sign language? How do deaf people express emotion through language? Can a deaf person gesture more forcefully to show anger, or does making certain gestures more forceful (wider or faster) change their meanings?

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Another, wholly unrelated article in the Seattle Times considers the difficulties faced by Spanish-English bilinguals when trying to decide which language to use. "For example, switching to Spanish might seem rude if it suggests the other speaker is inept in English. Yet, among Hispanics proud of their ethnic heritage, avoiding Spanish can come across as standoffish." I thought that this was an interesting observation because I never know which language to use when trying to speak to native Spanish speakers who only know a little English. The interesting thing about such a subject is that it cannot possibly be researched: the associations each person has with any given language vary widely from one individual to the next.

Body Language

A few of the recent News Alerts have dealt with body language. One talked about the body language of prominent public figures, trying to determine how sincere they are, while another talked about dance as a form of expression. The first one mentioned that each person will look in a certain direction when trying to remember something. It is possible to discover what this direction is for any given person through a process called norming--asking that person a few questions that require him or her to remember something and watching which way he or she looks. Beyond this description of eye movement, neither article had much scientific merit, but the articles did get me thinking about body language.

Looking into the subject further, I found that there's quite a lot of information on the web about body language. Any given body part, such as the eyes, has a tremendous amount of body language associated with it. Direct eye contact suggests sincerity in our culture, while in some other cultures it can suggest disrespect. A rapid blinking of the eyes can show confusion or insecurity, can reveal that someone just came out of a dark room or just woke up, or can be used as a flirtatious gesture. Rapid redirecting of the eyes can show that someone is nervous or alert. I once heard that in addition to looking in a certain direction when trying to remember something, as the one News Alert already mentioned, each individual looks in a certain direction when trying to visualize something.

I even found an article at http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/155816/body_language_and_eye_contact_what.html claiming that "there is research to show a change occurs in the eyes, in the glow and "light", [sic] when mood changes. In other words, for individuals who are happy and content, there is a certain glow in their eyes that can not be ignored. Conversely, for those who are depressed and saddened, the glow or "light" of the eyes tends to be faded from sight." I'm rather sceptical about the validity of this statement, and I couldn't find any sign of the actual research supporting it. It seems likely to me that people's eyes appear slightly brighter when they are happy because they are more attentive and thus their eyes are slightly wider open and will thus reflect more light. I don't see any scientific reason why eyes would actually glow.

Of course, a great deal of body language deals with parts of the body other than the eyes. Often one emotion will manifest itself in symptoms all over the body. Unfocused eyes, extended and crossed legs, tapping fingers, fidgeting, and yawning are all signs of boredom. I wonder how much of this body language is instinctual and how much of it is learned.

I've heard that the specific words we use only account for about twenty percent of what we communicate. Of course, intonation of words probably accounts for a large portion of the rest, but body language probably also plays a significant role as well. I've also heard that facial expressions express the same emotions across nearly all cultures. A smile is a universal language of welcome.

An article in the Finanical Times considers the spread of English becoming a global language. The total number of English speakers worldwide is greater than one billion and is expected to peak between 1.5 and two billion sometime in the next ten to fifteen years. Mandarin, Spanish, and Hindi-Urdu still have more native speakers than English does, but English has become a prominent second language and the language most commonly used in international schools. Nonnative English speakers outnumber natives three to one.

Such a ratio raises several questions. Is there a proper English? Should nonnative speakers be forced to comply with all English grammar or are they free to develop a dialect of their own with slight differences in rules of grammar and usage? Will English eventually develop into several distinct languages? Is English such a predominant language because of psychological factors (i.e. its simple grammar) or because of socioeconomic factors?

If English is not regulated enough, it could shatter into several dialects, and would thus not remain the lingua franca of international relations; yet, at the same time is must be fluid enough that native speakers are willing to adapt to international means of speaking. Already, native English speakers encounter a linguistic barrier communicating with nonnative speakers in business conferences although no such similar barrier exists between nonnative speakers communicating with each other in English. "Native speakers are often poor at ensuring that they are understood in international discussions. They tend to think they need to avoid longer words, when comprehension problems are more often caused by their use of colloquial and metaphorical English."

In many places, individual people speak different dialects of English depending on whom they are communicating with. A businessman often speaks one, relatively formal, dialect to communicate with other international businessmen, but also uses a colloquial dialect to communicate with friends and family. A book called World Englishes talks about the various branches of Englsih, such as a dialect used by Indian teenagers or Nigerian pidgin English. As long as the speakers of these dialects also learn the internationally accpeted form of English, they ought to have no difficulty communicating in the modern world.

Perhaps the increase in communications provided by technology will prevent excessive subdividing in modern English and ensure that all speakers of English at international conferences speak more or less the same dialog. Because people from all over the world will continue to communicate using a branch of English different from their native dialect, one could claim that a new branch of English, an international English, is evolving, distinct from the dialogs of any other regions.

Looking further into the spread of English as a global language, I found that many academics do not think that English will spread to encompass the entire globe. In an MSNBC repport, language researcher David Graddol points out that the number of native English speakers worldwide is falling and tells how he thinks that English will remain a powerful international language, but will never become the sole world language. Instead, he believes that it will remain a popular secondary language through which people of varying backgrounds can communicate.

Perhaps sometime in the future English will exist solely as an international dialect spoken by nearly everyone in the world, but spoken by no one as his or her primary language.

Translation

A literary review recently published in The Hindu raises some interesting questions of translation in considering a collection of short stories translated into English. It questions whether the fury of the characters in some of the tales is effectively communicated or whether the emotion is somehow distorted by the process of translating.

The review also asks whether people have developed an ability to read translations in a different mindset from original works: "Can we conclude that down the years an outlook on translations has developed among us, which leaves us unaffected by the incomplete harnessing of English to native thought? Have we, in other words, evolved a technique of reading translations?" The reviewer seems to think that although the general mood of the stories remains intact, English is incapable of recapturing the tone of the original vernacular, but he still ponders whether readers can infer much of the original tone from their own preconceptions of society.

This article made me think of a passage I once read in a book about writing. The passage said that when language is translated it loses its poetry. While two words or phrases may have the same denotations in two different languages, their connotations are invariably different. Because of this, a translation can never fully represent the thoughts and emotions of the original text.

I Googled "difficulties in translation" to try to get a general idea of what the most common difficulties are. In general, the Google hits reflected the ideas expressed in the literary review. "Translation is never an easy task, but it becomes particularly difficult when there are very strong human emotions and traditions involved." (http://lobeckta.tripod.com/carnavaldebinche/id7.html) Someone reading a work outside of that work's original cultural context cannot possibly understand the full extent of the emotions in that work. Yet, I, like the writer of the review, wonder whether--if the reader understands the original cultural context--that reader can still infer the original emotion, even from a translation.

Writing Language

An article in the Houston Chronicle tells about an exhibition of historic calligraphy. In Islamic culture, calligraphy is much more than simply a way of writing words--it is an art form. Master caligrapher Zakariya explains, "The writing has to have an easy look that moves like a great piece of music. It should be very natural, not artificial." He has practiced writing calligraphy for years, much as any other artist or musician would practice to perfect his art.

By traditional Islamic belief, the creation of pictorial images is considered sacrilege. Instead, artistically-minded people resorted to calligraphy to express themselves. Zakariya gives his interpretation of this: "I think the people in those earlier times and later didn't think pictorial art said anything to them. They were people in love with language, in love with words. That's what pulled them, and that's what caught their spirit."

Further considering writing as an art form, I decided to look into the history of pictographic languages. At http://www.logoi.com/notes/pictograph.html, I found that "Today's major pictographic systems are the Chinese characters used in China, Japan, Korea, while all other writings are phonetic, including the mono-syllabic systems of Katakana and Hiragana in Japan, the Devanagari in South-East Asia etc, and the different alphabetic scripts all over the world." In other words, few pictographic systems remain. However, in considering dead writing systems, such as those once used in Mesoamerica and the Indus Valley, I find that many more cultures once used pictographs. Perhaps, pictographs were an essential step to developing written language. The very first pictographs (cave art) were drawn 30,000 years ago. I wonder if all written characters were in some manner originally pictographic. Perhaps the letters I'm typing right now were once pictorial representations of something. Pictoral representations change greatly over the years. To demonstrate this, I've included the following diagram of the development of some common Chinese characters:

(http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/chinese/handout_files/image009.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/chinese/handout.html&h=740&w=520&sz=14&hl=en&start=1&sig2=6Z8pr583yButTFxx7xX6uQ&um=1&tbnid=XCTct1e_aaS_iM:&tbnh=141&tbnw=99&ei=T8cwR5CeIaGEggPvluyJAQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Devolution%2Bof%2Bchinese%2Bcharacters%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN)


Although the possible history of our own alphabet is intriguing, more intriguing yet are the possible psycholinguistic effects of using a modern pictographic language--does using a pictographic language have any impact on the way a person thinks about the words in that language. Do Chinese people think of horses as being more motherly because the characters for these words (horse and mom) share the same radical? And if so, do they think this because of the similarity in characters or the similarity in punctuation of these two words?

Washoe, a female chimpanzee who learned 250 words of ASL recently died of natural causes. She is widely considered the first non-human to gain human language, although some psycholinguists, including Steven Pinker, contest this theory as being without scientific backing. It seems to me , though, that there is plenty of backing for the idea that Washoe acquired at least a little human language. Her progress was carefully monitored and "for her to be considered 'reliable' on a sign, it had to be seen by three different observers in three separate instances. Then it had to be seen 15 days in a row to be added to her sign list." Also, she taught ASL to three other chimps. Such repetition of signs suggests scientific evidence rather than random chance.

Looking further into the significance of human-chimp communication, I found that some scientists consider the connection an important vista into the origins of language. Because chimpanzees are so genetically similar to humans, some scientists believe that in considering chimps we gain insight into the primitive levels of our own psychology. Considerable evidence exists to suggest that chimps actually have a relatively firm grasp of human language. Accourding to http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/language/chimpanzee.html:

Many linguists still believe that apes have no real grasp of human language, but are merely imitating their human companions. They insist that while apes may understand individual symbols or words, they do not understand the concepts of syntax, or how words are put together to form a complete idea. However, evidence is continually proving that the nonhuman primate mind is capable of advanced thought (Rayl 89).

Chimpanzees have shown the ability to communicate using ASL to human observers and other chimpanzees about the normal course of surrounding events. They use signs to create natural language categories; for example, they will sign "dog" when shown many different species of dogs and "shoe" whether it be a slipper or a cowboy boot. They can invent new signs and combine signs to metaphorically express something different, for example: calling a radish "cry hurt food" or referring to a watermelon as a "drink fruit" (Fouts). They can comprehend and produce novel prepositional phrases, understand vocal English, translate words into ASL and even transmit their signing skills to the next generation without human intervention.

Even if chimps lack the grammar and syntax to organize complex ideas, their ability to categorize objects such as dogs and shoes and their ability to communicate metaphorically suggests some higher level of thought.

Another of the Google News Alert links led to an article on bat language, which seems to be even more primitive than chimp language, but is apparently far more advanced than humans had previously thought. Apparently, a bat pup's isolation calls can communicate its identity, its location and its wish to nurse.

This use of so-called "language" by other species leads to many questions. What exactly is language? What do humans do that makes us different from other species? Are humans the only species to truly use language or are some other species' methods of communication advanced enough to also be called "language." How does our mastery of a language superior to that of the chimps affect the ways we think and live our lives?

It seems to me that because we are capable of more complex and abstract thoughts than chimps, we are also capable of forming more complex institutions. Our highly bureaucratic societies are able to run because of the structural support provided by our language. Without such support, we would remain like the chimps, loosely organized into wild bands, but incapable of establish a large, coherent society.