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Impact of language studies on worldview? | ||
Tags: Language Politics | Cultural Identity | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5901 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes  | Message 10 of 30 03 May 2009 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
So what you are looking for is propaganda... What this man defends is the deliberate destruction of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Among decent and informed people, the reaction he'd prompt would be that of a Nazi preaching among the Jews. But of course you'll reply, one man's Holocaust is another man's cleansing. Again, if you ignore the context and background of this story you'll come away from reports like terribly misinformed. And years of this will sadly produce positions such as the one just expressed by you. Too bad the Colombian newspaper which I mentioned apparently does not save readers' comments from previous editions, otherwise I'd show you how indefensible El País' reportage is. Edited by JuanM on 03 May 2009 at 7:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5901 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 11 of 30 03 May 2009 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
No wonder you people are so eager to grant sanctuary to characters such as this. You're clueless. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6777 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 30 03 May 2009 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't want to hijack this thread with politics. Like I said, I looked up some information on the guy and I haven't found anything objectionable about him. Besides, his opinions are irrelevant. Apparently he is a journalist/writer, not a politician or an official or someone who could be considered a threat to the security of the US. Apparently he was extremely critical of Colombian leadership and the U.S.-fed drug war in Latin America; and is now in the process of writing a book about the CIA. So CIA apparently decided to get back at him by blacklisting him. Anyways, I don't really care about his opinions. His plane wasn't even supposed to land in the US, it was supposed to just pass through the US airspace. US prides itself on being a country that stands for the freedom of speech, but I doubt he would even do any speaking on a plane while he'd be in the US airspace; so basically the plane was diverted because a guy was going to hold certain - apparently inappropriate- opinions in the US airspace. I don't know how they feel about thought police in Colombia, but it is an objectionable thing in my book. I felt El País was right to report on this the way they did. Edited by Russianbear on 03 May 2009 at 8:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 13 of 30 03 May 2009 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
The only way that my language studies have made a lasting influence on my world-view is how languages can express phenomena in different ways and how humans can find ways to express the same phenomenon from different reference points or different structures. For example, I initially found it rather fascinating that Hungarian can express possession even though it lacks a verb meaning "to have", or how Slavonic languages use verbal aspect. If I had stayed within the familiar cocoon of Romance or Germanic languages, I would have considered it to be unfathomable that a language could do without "to have" or lack tenses such as pluperfect or future perfect. I admit that when I first began my Hungarian studies, I also dug up a lot of stuff on Hungarian history and what not. For some time my world-view became blatantly pro-Hungarian as a lot of the stuff that I came across was only accessible in Hungarian and with the slant bordering on the chauvinistic. Thankfully (in my experience) I got over that diversion into extreme Hungarophilia and realized that biased stuff exists in all languages and by that point the language is secondary to the message of the author. A biased presentation of an event or policy expressed in the target language can be as flawed as a biased presentation of that event or policy expressed in something other than the target language. Nowadays if I am after op-ed pieces, alternative views and just biased tracts, it's not always necessary to study a foreign language to get a glimpse of what else is out there. In the case of Russia for example, I can find stuff in English that either sticks up for or denigrates Russian policy. If we turn the tables a bit Cordelia0507, a knowledge of Russian can also give you access to dissidents' anti-Putin criticisms in the original alongside the mainstream stuff from the local press which presents Putin and Russia in general in a more favourable light. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6823 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 14 of 30 04 May 2009 at 12:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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The process itself has not, I think, changed my worldview, but knowing several languages (and growing up as part of a sometimes unwelcome minority) definitely has.
And it definitely is interesting to see how bad Turkish journalism is, but that German journalism is on the same level (or even worse, since Turkish journalims usually lacks the extreme arrogance and feeling of superiority that prevails in certain Western/German media). Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5926 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 15 of 30 04 May 2009 at 2:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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What happened for me was actually the reverse of what cordelia0507 wrote. About three years ago, I first took an interest in the history of South Africa and the Netherlands and that made me become very curious about Afrikaans/Dutch. As I've learned more Afrikaans (and a little Standaard Nederlands for good measure), I've stopped trying to learn about the history or current political events as I find the languages themselves far more intriguing. My worldview broadened first, then I decided to get serious about learning languages. EDIT: I fixed a typographical error. Edited by mick33 on 04 May 2009 at 7:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maya_star17 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5917 days ago 269 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 16 of 30 04 May 2009 at 3:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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Learning French has definitely affected me. I've got to be one of the VERY few people in my city who isn't against Quebec seperation.
EDIT: Oh, and obviously learning Japanese has impacted me as well. I don't read newspapers in Japanese (yet), but learning about the culture and talking to natives has made me question many of the things I've grown up taking for granted. Edited by maya_star17 on 04 May 2009 at 3:18am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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