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The Politics of Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5141 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes  Speaks: Spanish* | Message 9 of 27 06 September 2014 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A pet peeve of mine is linguists attempting to impose final, authoritative judgment on issues of cultural significance which lie beyond their ken, like an audio engineer pretending to declare the music of Beethoven and Shakira equal because both can be described as frequencies of sound waves. The most insignificant aspect of language is that which linguists grasp through their methods. Language is first and foremost a device of human culture. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4049 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 27 06 September 2014 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I read through your post a few times and I sincerely do not understand why it is a response to what I said, as nothing I said contradicts your message in any way, shape or form that I can see. How is 'the age of languages' an issue of cultural significance when it is at best a vehicle for pseudoscience and misinformation? All languages are representative of their respective cultures and languages change as cultures do, I think everyone here can fully acknowledge that. As for your second point I don't disagree at all, although I do find it odd that you first said
and then you said this
Not trying to pick on a fight here but what is your reasoning to why linguists can't impose final, authoritative judgments yet you can? I don't disagree with you but why couldn't I come to the same conclusion without it being wrong of me to do so? What is this 'final and authoritative judgment' that I was even imposing? To clarify: the post you are quoting is a comment at linguistical taxonomy. The point being that saying this or that language is older than the other one is a moot point; it boils down to tautology by definition. To take cultures into the analogy it would be to say that this culture is older than that culture, when wherever there are human populations present there is culture, and it would be incredibly unlikely that the continuum of human culture would at any point be broken to be rediscovered again. Of course we can take points of significant change on the continuum of human culture but just because we have given this point the name comb-ceramic and such doesn't mean that it would somehow be older, it is just a type of culture that precedes what came after; hunter-gatherers still exist, so it is just as current of a form of culture as the so called 'western' information technology culture. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5141 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 11 of 27 06 September 2014 at 10:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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What I objected to is some linguists' (not you specifically) reduction of language to a set of matter-of-fact statements and their discarding as irrelevant of precisely that which breathes life into them. You cut off my quote at the decisive point. Linguists can and should inform us about the typological features of Sanskrit or Greek, yet while to them they are indistinguishable from any other number of languages with which they share X or Y grammatical or syntactic features, they are ignorant and so should remain silent on the significance of these languages for the development of the human spirit and our conception of man's place in the universe, or of any language for the people to whom they provide an identity.
Linguists can tell us many useful and important things about a language, yet what a language signifies is so much greater and more encompassing. Of what value is a language like Cantonese to its community of speakers? That is the topic of the thread, and it was in this context that my post was intended. The answer to that question goes beyond any linguistic data that might be furnished about Cantonese. In my view, forcibly replacing a language with another is a form of genocide, which of course is exactly the intent of the Chinese Communist Party in places like Hong Kong or Tibet. To a particular kind of linguist though, this should carry no consequence whatever, since the employment of one set of rules for communication is as good as any other. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4568 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 12 of 27 06 September 2014 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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@Juаn Interesting that you paint linguists as the villains here, because in my (admittedly limited) experience of debates over language displacement and extinction it seems far more common for (Western) professional linguists to be accused of drawing unnecessary attention to "useless" languages and promoting the "waste of resources" on things like documentation, preservation and revitalization programs while supposedly operating under the unquestioned assumption that each and every language is inherently valuable. Besides, pseudo-scientific factoids can and do get employed by both sides. On the one hand you have defenders of Cantonese claiming that Mandarin is a bastardized tongue contaminated by Mongol, Manchu and Turkic influence while Cantonese is a pure and unadulterated descendant of the Chinese of Confucius and Laozi; on the other - Mandarin supporters arguing that all Chinese "dialects" south of the Central Plain are the result of intermixing with the "southern barbarians" of old, not to mention the belief that multilingualism is a threat to the unity of the nation, thus making the idea of Chinese as a family of languages rather than a single language tantamount to separatism and treason. Are you asking linguists to give one side a free pass on its BS because their BS serves the noble cause of defending a less privileged language from a more privileged one?
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| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4049 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 13 of 27 06 September 2014 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
//EDIT: First off, as I posted this I saw the fantastic post above mine by VonPeterhoff. Sums up some of my thoughts perfectly.
And my fundamental question was why was my post quoted above of all of those things pointed towards something in general and not my post in particular? It sure confused me. I'll go through your post point by point so as to clear the air of any confusion:
In order to be able to analyze things it is often easier to strip the thing that is analyzed to just bare bones; think of it as pathology, where you take a dead specimen of a species and cut it up to see how it works. That doesn't necessarily take into account any sort of thing that might 'breathe life into it' but it doesn't mean it's not worth doing or can't reveal anything about the thing under study. As for the alleged linguists, well I have personally never encountered such a linguist, but you most likely have so I can't really argue with that. You seem to have misattributed that 'inconsideration for cultures'-thing to all linguists, or so it would seem from your previous post.
I beg to differ, as the quote was to showcase your wording, not the point you were making. My apologies nevertheless.
Fair enough.
That is not the lot of linguistics itself at all anymore, that is either straight up anthropology or anthropolinguistics or whatnot.
Naturally, linguistics is the scientific doctrine that studies the mechanics of language, the ways it works. Of course languages are centric to no less than the very essence of being human, very few people would disagree.
The value of Cantonese to its community of speakers is beyond measure, without a doubt.
As with most of your points, I find this incredibly hard to disagree with, of course you are right.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Now this is where you jump to false conclusions. I have never met a linguist in my life who advocated language death and assimilation to bigger languages. I don't doubt such people exist, but I would argue they are but a drop in the sea. Yes, fundamentally all languages are equal as a means of communication, and as good at that. However each language carries the entire set of cultural reference and way of conceptualizing the world, and the loss of any language is a tremendous loss not only to the community but humanity in general. This view is shared by all of the linguists that I've ever encountered, for what that's worth. To sum it up, all languages are fundamentally of the same worth, but their worth to individuals and communities is not. Likewise, when each language is worth so much, we can't afford to lose any without losing something about ourselves. I understand that you are frustrated about this, trust me I am frustrated about that as well. Yet you are taking your frustration at some seemingly imaginary linguists who don't seem to hold views that are mainstream in any discipline that I've encountered. Edited by Henkkles on 06 September 2014 at 10:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4464 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 14 of 27 06 September 2014 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The core of a language is grammar/syntax and not vocabulary,
speakers of Cantonese have practically abandoned the idea of saving their language, when they embraced Mandarin-syntax for written Cantonese. The next step in Hong Kong will be diglossia (Cantonese for spoken, informal use, Mandarin for everything else) similar to that in all coastal regions of China. It is very unlikely the government in Beijing will embrace Cantonese as a 2nd standard of Chinese, like it happened with New Norwegian in Norway. China is not Norway Edited by Medulin on 07 September 2014 at 12:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5141 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 15 of 27 07 September 2014 at 1:41am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I don't wish to carry this discussion in a far off direction, so I'll just clarify the following. The objection I was making was of an epistemological kind; questions of value cannot be reduced to factual propositions. Linguistic arguments should not be brought to bear against a people's desire to having their own voice.
The linguist I have in mind is someone like Noam Chomsky, who hopes to uncover an universal grammar underlying all languages, yet can't be bothered to learn a single one of them in addition to his own. It makes sense for him though, since according to this view, they are all interchangeable and are defined exclusively in terms of fulfilling a practical need for communication, which they all achieve with equal suitability. A corollary of this would be of course that perfect translations of literary works should not only be possible, but be produced regularly as a matter of course, a more ridiculous proposition in all measures than that any given language should have been handed down by God as a sign of distinction to a privileged race. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7019 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 16 of 27 07 September 2014 at 2:25am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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In response to Juan and others who are blaming the situation in Hong Kong on the government in Beijing, I feel it necessary to point out the fact that education in Hong Kong has absolutely nothing to do with the Communist Party of China; the trend towards making Mandarin the language of classrooms is the result of decisions made locally at the level of individual schools. While some people feel strongly about the need to preserve Cantonese, more people are concerned primarily about making sure their children have as many options available to them in the future as possible, and that means making sure they speak Mandarin. This isn't something being pushed on the citizens by Hong Kong by bureaucrats in Beijing, but a natural result of the intimate bonds tying Hong Kong to the PRC for good and ill.
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