[Lexicog] accusatory observation?

[Mike Sangrey]

I only know English; however, it seems to me there is some subtle
assumptions going on with your question and the original observation.

Might I suggest (politely...<chuckle>) that there is more than one
dimension; one could probably even argue there is a network of nodes to
consider.

Other languages, obviously, can be just as accusatory; however, the
difference between them and English is in how obvious it is to the
hearer.  Other languages make it obvious. For an English culture, there
must be more cognitive processing in order to determine the level of
accusation.  So we not only have to consider the actual words, but we
also have to consider the cognitive effort.

What I think this ends up meaning is that English and German cultures
are not inherently more accusatory.  However, that is not to say we
don't learn something about the cultures.  It appears that the people of
English and German cultures require more cognitive effort to distinguish
when something is accusatory and when it isn't.  That's an interesting
cognitive linguistic observation.

A related question to your own is to ask other cultures what proportion
of their emails are responses quelling the reaction to an assumed
accusatory email.  That might take some work, but it's measurable.
Trust me on this <forced laugh>, speaking as a co-moderator of an email
list primarily using the English language, we face the misunderstandings
ALL THE TIME.  Well, not ALL the time; but...well, you get the picture.

On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 08:45 -0600, Mike_Cahill at sil.org wrote:
> Hi all,
> This is only marginally related to lexicography, but then we've had some
> marginal discussions before...
>
> Someone wrote to me:
>
>    He (the teacher had one activity for us (the class) in which he dropped
>    a pen, and then he
>    asked us what we would say to him.  ("You dropped your pen")  Then he
>    asked
>    anyone who spoke another language how they would say it in another
>    language,
>    and what the direct translation was.  (Usually "the pen dropped").  He
>    said
>    that only in English and in German you would say "You dropped the pen",
>    and
>    that ALL OTHER LANGUAGES would say "the pen dropped".  He then went on
>    to
>    say that we can learn things about the culture from the way we say
>    things,
>    and had us come up with words to describe the two types of cultures
>    represented by these two phrases.  The majority of responses had English
>
>    speakers being accusatory, or some other unsavory adjective, and the
>    other
>    speakers being much more polite and sensitive.
>
> Anytime someone claims a universal, my tendency is to say "Oh I bet I can
> find a counterexample." So my question to those of you who are native
> speakers of something other than English or German, what is the most
> NATURAL way to make an observation of someone dropping something, to call
> that person's attention to it? Not what is possible, but the most common
> way of saying it. Facts first, then interpretation...
>
> Mike Cahill
>
>
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>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
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--
Mike Sangrey
msangrey AT BlueFeltHat.org
Landisburg, Pa.
                        "The first one last wins."
            "A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."



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