Language and Culture

1. Lecture 8 16 Nov., 2005 Language and Culture Helena Gao

2. Required readings: • Wang, W. S-Y. (1989). Language Prefabs and Habitual Thought. Forum Lectures, TESOL Summer Institute, San Francisco State University. • Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding cultures through their key words. Oxford University Press. Introduction. pp. 1-17. Recommended readings: • D'Andrade, R. (1985). Character terms and cultural models. In Janet W. D Dougherty (ed.), Directions in cognitive anthropology, pp. 321-343. University of Illinois Press. • Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Vol. 2. Chapter 7: The Cognitive Culture System. pp. 373-415

3. The Relations between Language and Culture Behavior • The language Parallax (Paul Friedrich, 1986) • It refers to an APPARENT change in the position of an object, or its direction of movement, that is due to a change in the position of the observer. (Wang, 1989: 398)

4. Edward Sapir: “To pass from one language to another is psychologically parallel to passing from one geometric system of reference to another. The environing world which is referred to is the same for either language; the world of points is the same in either frame of reference. But the formal method of approach to the expressed item of experience, as to the given point in space, is so different that the resulting feeling of orientation can be the same neither in the two languages nor in the two frames of reference. Entirely distinct or at least measurably distinct, formal adjustments have to be made and these differences have their psychological correlate.” (1949: 153) Selected writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, Personality (1949). Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. University of California Press.

5. Parallactic Effect that language has (Wang, 1989) • In inter-personal relations e.g. • While speaking Chinese, asymmetric terms of address in Chinese create one type of mutual perception • “Prof. Wang” vs. “Zhang Xiao Dong” • While speaking English, we call each other by first names. • The inter-personal relation has apparently changed with the change in language. • The relation has to match the language.

6. A continuum along which utterances may be ranked (Wang, 1989) • At the propositional end • largely novel combination of words and phrases • with relatively little predictability among the parts • At the opposite end • Utterances which are highly automatic • e.g., songs, nursery rimes, lines from jokes, plays and poems • In between along this continuum • A wide heterogeneity of prefabs, swirling in our mental filing cabinet, read to be “reached for” • E.g., “how are you doing?”, “what can I say?” Oh my God!” etc. • Also a whole range of expressions that we call clichés, hedges, proverbs, idioms, metaphors, similes, allusions, curses and swearings, maxims and epigrams, mottos, slogans, aphorisms, quotations from well-known sources, etc.

7. Neurolinguistic findings (Van Lanker, 1975) • The propositional utterances appear to lateralize more to the left hemisphere • Automatic speech shows more lateralization to the right hemisphere • Finding consistent with the belief that • the left hemisphere is especially involved in making sequential decisions • propositional utterances are made up of longer sequences of decision units than automatic utterances.

8. Neurolinguistic findings (Hughlings Jackson, 1932) • Jackson made the distinction between automatic and propositional speech • He noted that automatic speech is in general better preserved in patients with left hemisphere damage. • Observations: • An aphasic may not be able to produce spontaneous speech, but has no difficulty in using common greetings or exclamations. • Patients who suffer involuntary repetition of words or phrases, a symptom called palilalia, some parts of the automatic speech may be exempted.

9. Neurolinguistic findings (Gilles de la Tourette, 1885) • Automatic speech • The disease discovered by Gilles de la Tourette in 1885 and named after him. • These patients preserve their language ability but many of them suffer a syndrome called coprolalia, i.e. compulsive and involuntary swearing.

10. Prefabs - a powerful influence on our habitual thought(Wang, 1989) • These prefabs exert a powerful influence on our habitual thought and what we say. • These prefabs are processed differently. • One may reach for them more in the right hemisphere than in the left.

11. Inventory of prefabs - considerable variation from language to language(Wang, 1989) • Chinese colorful curses to release emotions of aggression and hostility linguistically • Ranging from private parts of the anatomy to the sins of ancestors going many generations back. • Japanese language offers very little in the way of swearing or curses. • About the worst thing one can find in the vocabulary is to call someone a fool

12. Prefabs has different degrees of universality – a fertile area for crosslinguistic research • Japanese: • KOKETSU NI IRAZUMBA KOJI EZU “without entering the tiger’s den, you cannot capture the tiger’s pup” • Chinese • 不入虎穴，焉得虎子。 • English: • Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

13. 孔子: • 已所不欲勿施于人... • Aristotle: • “we should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave to us.” • New Testament: • “therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”

14. 苏轼《念奴娇·赤壁怀古》： • “人生如梦,一尊还酹江月” “I offer this wine to the river moon” • “Das Leben” by Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) • Ein traum, ein Traum ist unser Leben Auf Erden “A dream, a dream is our life here on earth” • Wie Schatten auf den Wogen schweben Und schwinden wir. “Like shadows on the billows we float and vanish”

15. William Blake’s (1757-1827) “Auguries of Innocence” To see the world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower; Hold the infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. • 宋曾道灿的重阳诗句： “天地一东篱， 万古一重九。”

16. Chinese 歇后语 “two-part expression” • Offers a channel of communication that is remarkably effective in being humorous, colorful, spontaneous and vivid in ways that more studies language cannot achieve. • 老太婆的裹脚布，又臭又长。 歇

17. The pivot words worked by simple semantic extension: 老太婆的裹脚布，又臭又长。 • The general structure of these two- part expressions First Part – Pause – Second Part (Surface Message) | Derivation on pivot word | Second Part (True Message)

18. The pivot word switches grammatical category: 纸糊的老虎，吓死人。 纸糊的老虎– Pause – 吓死人( dead people) | grammatical change | (scare to dead) people

19. The English writer, Aldous Huxley (1940) • Words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those who use them. “A mere matter of words,” we say contemptuously, forgetting that words have power to mould men’s thinking, to canalize their feeling, to direct their willing and acting. Conduct and character are largely determined by the nature of the words we currently use to discuss ourselves and the world around us.” (quoted by Wang 1989: 404)

20. The English writer, Aldous Huxley (1954) • Every individual is at once the beneficiary and victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born – the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people’s experience, the victim in so far as to confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.” (quoted by Wang 1989: 404)

21. Whorf (1941) • The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face. On the contrary the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which have to be organized in our minds. This means, largely, by the linguistic system in our mind.” (quoted by Wang 1989: 405)