[Lingtyp] Two terminological quandaries for the price of one: 'traditional' and 'non-Western' cultures

Fri May 30 16:54:34 UTC 2025

I have encountered a similar problem, when trying to talk about 
"non-LOL" (or "non-WISPy") languages, where I have sometimes used the 
label "small languages".

This does not sound very good, but "minor(ity) languages" is much worse, 
I think, because many minority languages are not small at all (e.g. 
Catalan in Spain, or Tatar in Russia, or Spanish in the US). Moreover, 
there seems to have been a general shift to "minoritized languages", 
which has additional overtones.

For languages, "traditional" does not work at all, because all languages 
have a tradition. For societies, it may work, but it has an association 
with "non-industrialized", "marginalized" and "poor".

However, I really didn't understand what Juegen was getting at – because 
in Asia and Africa, there are big industrialized societies which are not 
of European descent.

But if we are looking for a term for "small-scale [indigenous] 
communities practicing predominantly non-industrial (or pre-industrial) 
modes of production in non-urban settings", why not simply say 
"small-scale societies"? It seems that industrialized and urban 
societies would never be considered small-scale, and Western countries 
hardly include such societies, so maybe we can simply talk about 
"small-scale societies"? (Most of these speak "small languages", but 
there are some "small languages" spoken in urban/industrial settings.)

Best,

Martin

On 30.05.25 03:40, Juergen Bohnemeyer via Lingtyp wrote:
>
> Dear all – I really need your help with this! I’ve been struggling for 
> quite some time now with the terms ‘traditional culture/society’ and 
> ‘(non-)Western culture/society’. Both concepts play significant roles 
> in my work, but both labels seem problematic. I’m looking for better 
> alternatives. (If you want to call this query an exercise in political 
> correctness, I would plead guilty to the charge. I do try to avoid 
> offending people unintentionally.)
>
> Let me briefly try to explicate the concepts that I have been using 
> these labels for:
>
> ‘Traditional cultures/societies’: Small-scale indigenous communities 
> practicing predominantly non-industrial (or pre-industrial) modes of 
> production in non-urban settings. By ‘small-scale’, I mean that 
> stratification is predominantly in terms of age and gender, division 
> of labor is low, and offices of power are largely non-hereditary. By 
> ‘indigenous’, I mean pragmatically that the presence of the community 
> in the area they inhabit is not an immediate result of European 
> colonization. And the concept needs to be flexible enough to allow for 
> the fact that the overwhelming majority of such communities are part 
> of larger majority societies, are in more or less intensive contact 
> with them, are under pressure by them, etc.
>
> I suspect that objections to the label ‘traditional’ may be the result 
> of associating that label with Social Darwinism. At the same time, I 
> find the label acceptable to the extent that one accepts that modes of 
> production, while not following a strict developmental sequence, are 
> not distributed randomly throughout human history either, particularly 
> in the sense that industrialization did not take place prior to the 
> Industrial Revolution. So what I’m looking for is a label that 
> occupies the sweet spot between Social Darwinism and completely 
> ahistoric and non-evolutionary perspectives of social organization.
>
> The sexiest currently available alternative to ‘traditional’ is 
> ‘non-WEIRD’, in the Heinrich-et-al.-(2010) sense of ‘WEIRD’ (Western 
> educated industrialized rich democratic). I don’t personally mind 
> using that term, but it is awfully vague. There are many developing 
> nations that I would not consider WEIRD (they may check neither of the 
> five definitional properties), but that do not globally fit the 
> ‘traditional’ concept either.
>
> ‘(Non-)Western cultures/societies’: By this I mean any 
> cultures/societies of (non-)European origin/descent. The problem with 
> the label ‘Western’ is the very misleading geographic association with 
> the Western hemisphere: the vast majority of Europe isn’t even part of 
> the Western hemisphere, and there are ‘Western’ societies (societies 
> of European descent) outside Europe **and** outside the Western 
> hemisphere, **and** of course there are many ‘non-Western’ cultures in 
> the Western hemisphere. I’m well aware that the etymology of this use 
> of ‘Western’ has little to do with the model of the geographic 
> hemispheres, but my sense is that people make the association whether 
> it belongs there or not – I know I do.
>
> I suspect the best solution to the second problem is to just talk 
> about ‘cultures/societies of (non-)European origin/descent’. That’s a 
> mouthful, but sooner or later somebody will coin a handy acronym. But 
> I wanted to make sure I’m not missing anything.
>
> Anyway, many thanks in advance for your help! – Juergen
>
> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
> Professor, Department of Linguistics
> University at Buffalo
>
> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
> Phone: (716) 645 0127
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> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ 
> <http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/>
>
> Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 
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>
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-- 
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
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