Cultural influence (was: Sociological...)

[Nicholas Widdows]

Peter goes:

>>> I find different languages differently "expressive"

So I go:

>>> I don't think the _linguistic_ constraints had much of a part

So he goes:

> 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!

So I go:

How curious that you read that so. I must admit that I did pause over the
phrasing there, but let my second or third attempt through as reasonably
unambiguous. I simply meant "I don't think they had _much_ of a part", and
didn't want it to be read litotically as "I think they _didn't_ have any
part". But litotes seems to be so ingrained in English that it's hard to
avoid the imputation. (I'm reminded of the strange fact that in English "I
don't like" means "I dislike", and that you have to labour and squirm to
convey the simple meaning "it's not the case that I _like_".) Is there a bit
of national character involved in this reading? Did American readers read it
as litotes?

So no denial intended, and no overstating.

Peter quoque dicere:

> 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

It's rather like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: pretty and appealing like a
soap bubble when you first read about it, and collapses if you touch it.
What I would say is that _normally_ the specific linguistic features don't
have a big influence on thought, though you can make them more important if
you're shaping a cultural artefact. In English I feel myself thinking in
terms of you:sg, you:du, you:pl, and T/V, and will commonly say "you two",
"any of you"; I also have an almost grammatical difference between "this
lady/gentleman here" (in earshot) and "that woman/man over there" that
reminds me of Japanese. But I never feel the need to think of we:incl and
we:excl. That is, my thought ranges over divisions that my language doesn't.
If I was Indonesian I'd have <kami> and <kita> but no "we", and I'd have no
grammatical tense or number; but I think I'd think about people and time and
quantity much the same way I do now.

Of course I'm not saying it's entirely invisible. The use of plural "you" as
singular all over Europe, and even more so the proliferation of forms like
<domneavoastra> and <o senhor>, must have been conscious on some people's
part.

Nicholas