The Power and Influence Language has over Culture and Society Arabella Ingham

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The Power and Influence Language Has over Culture and Society

ARABELLA INGHAM 2019

Academics and thinkers have claimed that our perception of any topic is influenced by the words and connotations inherent in language. In the article The Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis and Probability: Evidence from the Domain of Color, (2016) the authors put forward the theory that “our thoughts are shaped by our native language and that speakers of different languages therefore think differently” (Cibelli et al 2016). If the language we use influences the way we think, how then do we understand a concept we have no words for? Do we think with words, and if not, how do we think without them? More often than we are aware, there are unconscious biases in the vocabulary that we use, these shape our thoughts and our understanding of the world. In a multicultural and multilingual society such as South Africa, reaching a mutual understanding through communication can be transformative, making language a powerful tool for cooperation and the formation of a community that is inclusive.

In South Africa most Anglophones make no effort to learn another language. This is usually not the fault of the speaker, but rather a result of a strong societal expectation that everyone must speak some English. Almost all South Africans are bilingual or even trilingual, an able to speak an African language or Afrikaans fluently, and English. This one-sided approach where most non-English speakers compromise, while all Englishspeaking people do not, creates many barriers within communication (Alexander, N, 2000). According to a study on multilingualism in KwaZulu Natal (Broeder et al 2010), although English is the official language, only 40 percent of people who use English speak it as their first language. If language is shaping our ability to think, then to be fluent in only one would be to limit our understanding of the world. For Charlemagne, the first Emperor of Rome, “to have a second language is to have a second soul.” Language expands our horizons and our understanding of different cultures.

The power of language comes from the culture it develops from. If a plant were to evolve in a luscious, tropical biome, it would develop in ways that respond to the environment: shallow roots to compensate from the humid air, and a leafy body to maximise photosynthesis. Similarly, language develops depending on its environment. In SouthEast Asian countries, a common greeting is “have you eaten yet?” This originates from the Chinese Moa Zedong chairmanship wherein food was a scarcity – asking if someone had eaten was really asking if

they were in good health and thriving (Wang, 2016). This greeting cannot be carried into English speaking countries because in a different context the meaning changes.

A keen observer of the cultural positioning language can make is the author Chimamanda Adichie (2009) who describes growing up in Nigeria, and her first language which was Igbo. All the novels she read as a child were in English: her understanding of Christmas was linked with snow. This led her to believe that she had not properly experienced Christmas as she had never experienced it in a way that matched its literary description. Few stories about Nigeria were available, Adichie formed ideas about events based on the culture of the language in which it they had originated. As a child, ‘Christmas’ did not mean a religious celebration, but instead it meant snow, ginger beer, and a world of things she could not experience. Thus the cultural positioning of the language can form one’s understanding of standards, culture and values.

In politics, also dominated by English, political jargon is used that originated in countries with vastly different political systems. This means that the conversations about how society should be organised are restricted by the vocabulary used to discuss it. In an African country with vastly different cultural values, the language used to articulate conceptions of society carries different values and beliefs; when political jargon in English is imposed, it represents a different way of understanding. This is not to impose a valuejudgement on the words themselves, but to recognise that they were not developed by societies with the same principles. In isiZulu, the word for democracy is ‘inkululeko’, however the meaning of this word is actually closer to ‘freedom’. ‘Democracy’ and ‘freedom’ often come hand in hand, but they are not the same. ‘Democracy’ describes a society in which all individuals may have an opinion on affairs in the public sector, while ‘freedom’ usually describes having ‘choice’; political freedom implies being about to vote and criticise the government without fear of consequences. The word autocratic in Xhosa is ‘ngokuzimela’, however this word more closely resembles ‘independent’ in meaning These English words do not have a direct translation.

Language is not the same as culture, however they often run along parallel lines. Structures of language can influence how speakers conceptualise the world, the term ‘linguistic relativity’ was coined by Benjamin Lee Whorf (Black 1959), who studied Hopi, a

Native American language. Whord claimed that Hopi and English speakers value certain concepts differently as a result of linguistic differences. English has twelve tenses, and anything said is always in relation to when it happened. Hopi, only has the present tense and thus time must be specified. Where the English would say “he walked to the top of the hill”, the Hopi would say “he walks to the top of the hill”, irrespective of when it had occurred. This led Whorf to the conclusion that an English cultural focus on history and event in time, was a consequence of the grammar in that language. Similarly, an Aboriginal language called Guugu Yimithirr has a completely different set of prepositions to those found in English. In this culture, concerns of the sun and the cosmos are at the forefront of thinking, with the way they had orientated everything being based on the cardinal directions. In English speaking cultures, spaces and buildings would be described as being next to or across from one other, whereas in Guugu Yimithirr they would be described as ‘westwards’, or ‘South’, of another object. The knowledge of ‘North’ is a constant factor in their awareness, which changes their experience of space. These differences also manifest in the technological advancements made in each culture; Western culture developed mechanical readings for navigation as orientation is not inherent to their linguistic structure, whereas the Guugu Yimithirr people would use the sun and the stars.

Language can affect society through the emphasis it puts on certain things. Certain languages focus on temporality, while others tend to be more descriptive of place. Some language structures greatly change the way different societies describe events. For example, in an Englishspeaking country if someone broke a glass by mistake, an onlooker might recount that someone “had broken the glass.” In Spanish, however, if this were unintentional, it would be considered impolite to name the person who did it, so one would say “the glass broke itself” (Fausey and Boroditsky 2011). Similarly, if one were to say, “I broke a tooth,” in Spain it would be understood that you intentionally broke your own tooth and not that this had been accidentally done. Language is something that can expand and reduce, it can open the mind and yet it can also limit thinking. The greater one’s vocabulary the more freely one is able to express one’s thoughts, however the exact meaning of words might still restrict one. Birner (2019) describes this using an analogy

Figure 4: Language In a multicultural and multilingual society such as South Africa, reaching a mutual understanding through ” communication can be transformative.

of changing paint colours, where if you add blue to red it gradually transforms the shade through varieties of differing purple hues along a spectrum. However, language, brings division into the description of colour, breaking it into categories of ‘red’ and ‘purple’ that cannot capture the full process of transformation of the colours. In New Guinea, there are two separate words for light blue, ‘goluboy’ and dark blue, ‘siniy’. In English, ‘pink’ and ‘red’ are two different colours but if pink were named ‘light red’, they might be thought of as shades of the same colour. Two words that have vastly different meanings and are often confused, are the words ‘astronomy’ and ‘astrology.’ This misunderstanding comes from the words sounding so similar, and each practice

can often be impacted by the bias of the other. If the name of each study were changed, this problem might not occur – ‘astronomy’ and ‘horoscoprosy’, for example. And yet Shakespeare (1998) wrote the following lines for Juliet: “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” This suggests that the words we use do not have to define our attitudes if we are able to think beyond the associations we make with them. Words are more than just a tool for us to express ourselves. Modernity has increased cross-cultural interaction and online translators are being used increasingly to navigate the globalising world. But as much as these translators are available to us, they cannot provide the kind of insight into meaning that immersion in a culture and its language can bring.

The nature of all languages is that they change continuously. While society is open to technological, medical, and educational development, it is not as open to language developing in the same way. So often the ‘self-proclaimed protectors’ of language see borrowed words from other languages as improper usage. However language has always been hybrid and dynamic, borrowing from other sources as they develop: English has its roots in Latin and French; the word for television has its roots in Greek, with the word tele, meaning far off or far away; and the Latin word for sight is visio, which is the root of the word vision. This process is an evolution of language, which keeps it alive in the present rather than existing as a pure and historical form which is beyond influence. The fact that the Oxford Dictionary, along with many others, publishes new editions with dozens of new entries is evidence that languages are still being created through their common usage.

Language purists view borrowed Afrikaans, Xhosa, or other words in English, as slang. But the borrowing of words can also be seen as a healthy way to bridge meaning and form understanding between languages. Every word has an inherent bias and this bias changes depending on the user and the listener. The understanding of a word can be determined by the user’s prior moral conditioning, religious beliefs, culture and upbringing. It is almost impossible to control what predisposition someone may have, but we can control the words we use. An overuse of generic, unspecific words plagues contemporary communication and can lead to ambiguity. The meaning of a word in English may have a direct translation in Sesotho, but their connotations might easily vary. This slight

variation is often subtle but can culminate in an overall difference in understanding. Having knowledge of other languages gives one an insight into other cultures, creating a more sympathetic understanding of different peoples’ backgrounds. In South Africa, if English were to better accommodate and mix with other languages, a strong communicative society could form within this nation.

References:

Adichie, C., 2009. The Danger of a Single Story [Video file] Avalable online at: http://www.ted.com/ talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_ have_too_few_women_leaders. html [Accessed 26 September 2019]

Alexander, N., 2000. English unassailable but unattainable. The Dilemma of Language Policy in South African Education. PRAESA Occasional Papers, (3). Available online at: https://marxists.catbull. com/archive/alexander/1999english-unassailable.pdf [Accessed 26 September 2019]

Birnger, B., n.d. Does the language I speak influence the way I think? Linguistic Society of America. Available online at: https://www.linguisticsociety.org/ content/does-language-i-speakinfluence-way-i-think [Accessed 26 September 2019]

Black, M. (1959). Linguistic Relativity: The Views of Benjamin Lee Whorf. The Philosophical Review, 68(2), 228-238. doi: 10.2307/2182168

Broeder, P., Extra, G. and Maartens, J. (2002), Multilingualism in South Africa with a focus on KwaZulu-Natal and Metropolitan Durban. PRAESA Occasional Papers. (7). Available online at: http://www.praesa.org. za/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ Paper7.pdf [Accessed 26 September 2019]

Charlemagne Quotes, n.d. BrainyQuote.com. Available online at: https://www.brainyquote.com/ quotes/charlemagne_182029 [Accessed 4 October 2019]

Fausey, C. and Boroditsky, L., 2011. Who dunnit? Crosslinguistic differences in eyewitness memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18(1), 150-157. doi:10.3758/s13423-010-0021-5

Fausey, C., Long, B., Inamori, A. and Boroditsky, L., 2010. Constructing agency: the role of language. Frontiers in Psychology, 1(162):162. doi: 10.3389/ fpsyg.2010.00162

Shakespeare, W., and Durband, A., 1985. Romeo and Juliet. Hauppage, NY, Barron’s.

Wang, J., 2016. Why do Chinese people always ask “Have you eaten?” Available online at: http:// blog.tutorming.com/mandarinchinese-learning-tips/why-dochinese-people-ask-have-youeaten [Accessed 4 October 2019]

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