Sociological Linguistics

petegray petegray at btinternet.com
Tue Jun 1 18:14:14 UTC 1999


I (peter) said:

> At the danger of being politically incorrect, I find different languages
> differently "expressive"...

Nicholas replied:

> The languages do? Some prominent users do; and you get cultural traditions...
> ... I don't think the _linguistic_ constraints had much of a part ...

An interesting question, Nicholas.   To what extent is the way a language
actually works a function of the language, and to what extent is it a
function of culture?

It would be bizarre to pretend that nothing is lost in translation -
traduttore traditore.   It would be equally bizarre to pretend that all
languages actually do express all ideas equally.   The interesting bit is
whether this difference is linguistic, or cultural.

Latin which is recognisably Latin must express certain factors such as
number and tense.  I would say this is linguistic rather than cultural.
German and French speakers are faced with the awful choice of socially
marked second person pronouns;  whatever the cultural origin of this, it
remains a linguistic fact, albeit with entertaining and embarrassing social
consequences.

Of course there are also some factors in the actual use of language which
are purely cultural, but to deny any linguistic factors at all seems rather
to be overstating your case!

Peter



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