Job Discussion Forums

[johnslat]

Dear nater,

Sing along with me:

"Play It on Your Nose

Well let me tell you 'bout the greatest way to rock and roll
The only way to rock and roll
The greatest way to lay your claim to fame in rock and roll
You've got to play it
You've got to play it on your nose

Lay a finger on the side of your nose and hum
You got to pluck that other nostril with your thumb
Give your beak a tweak
Give your snoot a rockin' toot
The way to overcome your shyness is to sound it through you sinuses
You've got to learn to play it on your nose."

Regards,
John

[Sashadroogie]

Just chasing my tail on this thread now...

[gaijinalways]

sashadroogie posted

[Sashadroogie]

Glad you've been boning up on some scholarly research, but that seems not to have done much good as again you seem to be wilfully missing the point.

How we use concepts and ideas is not the same thing as claiming these are determined by language. This is the sticking point and the subject of this thread. For all I know, the Chinese may not have any meaningful notion at all of punctuality, which is a social construct, but if so, then I am pretty sure that this is not because they lack a word for it - which is where your line of reasoning would have to lead you. It would make as much sense to claim that they lack the word for it because they never had any notion of it.

To further that point, do you not see there is an inherent problem with the claim that language can account for differing concepts if people who broadly share the same language can have remarkably different ideas. If Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong can have very different ideas from Cantonese speakers on the mainland, this should show us that language is not a factor. Do their spoken versions of Cantonese differ radically enough to account for 'very different ideas about certain concepts'? And what of their written language? How to go about providing evidence for such a claim?

Do you have a vested interest in promoting this deterministic viewpoint? Do you run NLP courses? Or some other course based on equally spurious scientific research? It would be consistent with your stance here.

Ah, enough of this flea-biting! I'm off to catch up on my reading of Jacques Derrida.

[gaijinalways]

Bushi, no, nyet, non.

I simply am employing a wider definition in use than you're currently using. Oh, to backtrack to one earlier point you mentioned, the Hopi language example about time was criticized, but partly because Whorf's claims about what it meant seemed to be extravagant. In addition, because his sample was small (one person) who he never personally met, the sample was considered not scientifically relevant.

I think missing the sociocultural elements is a major issue. As I said earlier, people generally don't think in a language in a narrow sense, but language certainly influences how we think and how we perceive things. As to my claims about Chinese language, I would suggest you spend some time in both communities or talk to people from those societies. Especially for many business people whom I spoke with in Hong Kong and China, the two societies are still like night and day when it comes to doing business and the related language they use.

It's not spurious research according to the people who have conducted it. Take a little time to read some of it before you quickly dismiss it, simply because it doesn't support conclusions you think are unmerited. I'm not talking about a deterministic linguistic model, far from it.

[Sashadroogie]

[johnslat]

Dear Sashadroogie,

"There is no word for 'no' in my native language . . . ."

Please answer in your native language: Will you please give me all your money?

Regards,
John

[Sashadroogie]

The printable version would be the equivalent of "I will not".

[johnslat]

Dear Sashadroogiwe,

How strange that your native language, which had no word for "No," contains the word "Not."
You do not have "No", bit you have "Not."

Reminds me of Hemingway: To Have and Have Not (a not-so-good book, but a much better movie.)

Regards,
John

[Sashadroogie]

How strange? Perhaps. But verbs can be negated easily without a single word for no. There is no word for 'yes' either. Shocked? Yet neither of us uses an affirmative affix for our positive sentences - why not?

Turkish has no verb to be, which I found hard to get to grips with at the beginning. Russian only makes half-hearted use of its verb to be. Rather like E-prime, yet both speech communities have no problems being dogmatic when they want.

All of which I take to support the side of the argument that language does not set much, if any, limit on our thought, or on our expression of thought. There is no word for the back of the knee in English, but I can still communicate my thoughts on this part of our anatomy to you with almost as much ease as a speaker whose language contains a dedicated word for it.

Agree? Yes no maybe, as the Rooskies are wont to say?

[gaijinalways]

Sasha, I would suggest you read up on the theory that I have proposed as being closest to what I am stating. A modified Whorf theory, or linguistic relativity theory, drops the stronger determinist ideas that you are trying to associate with it.

As to my previous claims, you have to remember these are tendencies　I'm talking about; free will, family background, individual personality, etc, will all contribute to what people are likely or unlikely to do.

To give you another example from Japanese culture/language, the collective idea is very firmly entrenched here, to the point that is sometimes seems surprising when something really novel comes out of Japan (and not a modification of an idea or improvement of something already invented elsewhere).

A frustrating example from the classroom appeared recently, where I asked students to email topics for essays. Number one, they mucked that up, as mentioned before. But then to make matters worse, when prompted in class, not only did many of them 'forget' what they had mailed in some cases, each student copied the first student on the list, who was doing a famous person (the topic was open, but I would like more diversity in the essay topics) and quite a few of them from sports.

I really doubt if I had a group of Russian students or American for that matter, that they would propose topics in the same vein as the other students (if it was an open topic, only restricted to something that needs to be researched..i.e. no best friends or uni life stories).

Best,

GA

[gaijinalways]

I guess the guys 'with tails' haven't finished reading the theory yet. I could post links, but sometimes it helps to do your own research. But if asked I will provide a helping hand, though I don't claim to have built the Internet (just one of the many riding on the highway).

[Sashadroogie]

Ha ha ha! That was funny, Gaijin, in a typically condescending way. But no, I have not been reading up on your pet theory (that's your department). Not interested at all in baseless ideas which state that our words shape our thoughts - which is what your side still claims, no matter how it retreats from the embarrassing excesses of its past.

Come on - hit me with the perception of colours argument. I've heard it all before and I'm still bored of it, but I'll indulge you further...

[spiral78]

I'm still bored of it


Wait....am I confused? Where am I?





No, this belongs on the PEEVE thread, Sashadroogie!!

[Sashadroogie]

Sigh! Yes, my peevement knows no bounds and scarcely knows on which thread to display itself.