Language, thought, and culture

Culture Bound. Edited by Joyce Merrill Valdes.
Cambridge Language Teaching Library. –
Cambridge University Press, 1998. – pp. 3-6.
In 1911 when Franz Boas published his Handbook of American Indian Languages, he could not possibly have imagined that one day an excerpt from it would serve as an introductory article in a book that might be used in a course on teaching culture in foreign- and second-language classes; in fact, the teaching of foreign languages at that time was far removed from his sphere. Yet his work inspired a generation of anthropologists and sociologists before the applied linguists took up the subject of the effect of culture on languages and vice versa, and shaped it to their own use. The process of learning more about the interrelationship between culture and language within the native environment led the way to consideration of the effect of a second culture on second language learning.
The extent to which language, culture, and thought have influenced one another, and which is the dominant aspect of communication, have been matters of controversy for three quarters of a century; the influence of the work of Boas, Sapir, Whorf, Hoijer, et al. is seen in the amount of both speculation and careful research that has ensued. Stated perhaps simplistically, the current consensus is that the three aspects are three parts of a whole, and cannot operate independently, regardless of which one most influences the other two. To see them as three points in a constantly flowing circular continuum is surely more accurate than, say, to see them as an isosceles triangle, with one dominant over the other two. It is conceivable that the lack of acceptance of artificial languages such as Esperanto may be explained by their isolation of language from culture. Thought, in any real sense, is very difficult to express without an underlying value system understood tacitly by both the sender and the receiver in a communication, whether both, one, or neither speaks the language natively, no matter how scientifically successful the lanmay be. While it is true that an artificial language may be a politically wise choice for intercultural communication because it is offensive to none, on the other hand it is a poor choice for a more basic reason: No one can feel, or therefore think deeply, in an artificial language.
The research that has been produced in this century has evolved the theory that a native culture is as much of an interference for second language learners as is native language. Likewise, just as similarities and contrasts in the native and target languages have been found to be useful tools in language study, so cultural similarities and contrasts, once identified and understood, can be used to advantage. Devotion to a language other than one's own is quite common among those who venture into other languages, most often with the connection in mind between the language and the people who speak it. One says, "I love French – it's so musical and expressive," and produces a mental image of a Frenchman or woman speaking in pleasing notes with sparkling eyes and communicative gestures. Another says, "I love German – it's so precise, regular, and dependable," and the stereotype that peeks out from the mind of the speakers is of a sturdy blond plodding down a straight path, keeping a wary eye out for accusatives and datives. Such reactions to both languages and people are subjective, impressionistic, and, fortunately, variable. Yet it is very natural to associate a people - in appearance, manners, and possibly thought patterns – with the language they speak. The most successful language learners are able to take on the "mindset" of the speakers of the second language, assuming the culture along with the language (though not, of course, without reservations that are consistent with their own mindsets). Yet most people are not aware of themselves as cultural beings, products of their own environments, whether or not they are aware of the cultural base for the behavior of persons from other environments. After the learners are guided to a recognition of the cultural base of their own attitudes and behavior, they are ready to consider others in a more favorable light. Through this process, what has seemed quaint, peculiar, or downright reprehensible becomes more reasonable and acceptable. Once the second lanlearner comes to understand the behavior of the speakers of the target language, regardless of the original motivation for study, the task of adding the language becomes far simpler, both through acceptance of the speakers of the language and through increased knowledge of what the language means, as well as what it says.
The research of Gardner and Lambert (e.g., 1972) and of Acton and Walker de Felix (in this volume) determined that integrative motivation (the intention of becoming a part of the target culture as well as speaking the target language) resulted in more effective language learning than did instrumental motivation (the intention of learning the language to serve a purpose, such as getting a job, with no wish to mix socially with speakers of the language). While subsequent research (e.g., Brown 1980) casts some doubt on this theory, no one has hypothesized that motivation per se is a negative attribute for second language learning. A positive attitude is seen as a boon to any learning situation, and comprehension of a people's behavior patterns and their underlying values clearly gives a more positive attitude to the person who is trying to learn that language, as will be seen in the article by Acton and Walker de Felix. Furthermore, language meaning is obscured without some recognition of cultural values. Even the learner whose motivation is so instrumental as to cover only the intention to read technical texts in English, for example, is likely to fail to grasp the significance of some explanations and directions if unaware of the American/British value regarding time, especially in the technical field: Things must be done in the least possible time, and ways to do them must be set forth in the least possible space, in order to reduce the reading time. Brevity + directness = efficiency. A learner from another culture may be put off by the lack of eloquence and feel that some important information has been omitted.
The most obvious influence of language and culture on thought is that of vocabulary. As Boas points out, words are suited to the environment in which they are used. Linguistics students are always amazed at the often-cited vast number of words for snow in Eskimo languages (see Brown, in this volume), yet they fail to consider all the words used for rain in warmer climates. In a glossary of Old English the number of warlike words is conspicuous, but the tribes of Ancient Britain were a warlike people, a fact that is naturally reflected in their language and, hence, in their literature, which reflects their thought.
Many influences of the structure of language have been noted (see Henle 1958, ch. 1). Translations, particularly of literary works, point up the differences. Literal translations are seen to be true to the form of the original, while free translations depart from the text to find expression that fits the tone and meaning in essence but not exactly in language. A truly literal translation is virtually impossible from any one language to any other, primarily because of vocabulary and structures. For example, the degree of formality in which a work is written can be translated into another language, but the cultural and linguistic influence that resulted in that formality in the original work is lost in the translation. The degree of formality of a language surely affects thought, just as surely as it is affected by culture, and just as surely as it affects culture.
The influence of language on thought and behavior can perhaps best be seen in the world of advertising. The culture - beliefs, attitudes, overt and covert aspirations, pragmatic designs and fantasies, actions and reactions - is studied by advertisers around the world to find the basis for the concepts and language that will inspire the people of any given locale to buy a product of one manufacturer rather than that of another. What sells in Chicago may also sell in Kyoto, but not through the same advertising. The influences of the language of advertising are revealed in Nilsen and Nilsen, Language Play (1978), in Bolinger, Language -The Loaded Weapon (1980), in Brown (this volume), and in many articles in the popular press. Again, however, the influences are reciprocal. Although the linguistic influence of advertising on the people is undeniable, the culture and thought of the people influence advertising. Whether one begins or ends with language, thought, or culture, the other two are woven in; the circular pattern holds, with each influencing and being influenced by each of the others. They are not all the same thing, but none can survive without the others. Second language learners must not only be aware of this interdependence but must be taught its nature, in order to convince them of the essentiality of including culture in the study of a language which is not their own. The articles offered in Part I provide the theory that underlies the practice, each in its own way. Boas looks to primitive cultures to illustrate his views on the mutual influences of language, thought, and culture, Kaplan traces the history and development of writing and indicates the cultural aspect of this component of language, Acton and Walker de Felix consider acculturation from the point of view of various researchers, and Brown gives an overview of the topic and clarifies its significance.
Language and thought
Franz Boas
Culture Bound. Edited by Joyce Merrill Valdes.
Cambridge Language Teaching Library. –
Cambridge University Press, 1998. – pp. 7-9.
First of all, it may be well to discuss the relation between language and thought. It has been claimed that the conciseness and clearness of thought of a people depend to a great extent upon their language. The ease with which in our modern European languages we express wide abstract ideas by a single term, and the facility with which wide generalizations are cast into the frame of a simple sentence, have been claimed to be one of the fundamental conditions of the clearness of our concepts, the logical force of our thought, and the precision with which we eliminate in our thoughts irrelevant details. Apparently this view has much in its favor. When we compare modern English with some of those Indian languages which are most concrete in their formative expression, the contrast is striking. When we say The eye is the organ of sight, the Indian may not be able to form the expression the eye, but may have to define that the eye of a person or of an animal is meant. Neither may the Indian be able to generalize readily the abstract idea of an eye as the representative of the whole class of objects, but may have to specialize by an expression like this eye here. Neither may he be able to express by a single term the idea of organ, but may have to specify it by an expression like instrument of seeing, so that the whole sentence might assume a form like An indefinite person's eye is his means of seeing. Still, it will be recognized that in this more specific form the general idea may be well expressed. It seems very questionable in how far the restriction of the use of certain grammatical forms can really be conceived as a hindrance in the formulation of generalized ideas. It seems much more likely that the lack of these forms is due to the lack of their need. Primitive man, when conversing with his fellowman, is not in the habit of discussing abstract ideas. His interests center around the occupations of his daily life; and where philosophic problems are touched upon, they appear either in relation to definite individuals or in the more or less anthropomorphic forms of religious beliefs. Discourses on qualities without connection with the objects to which the qualities belong, or of activities or states disconnected from the idea of the actor or the subject being in a certain state, will hardly occur in primitive speech. Thus the Indian will not speak of goodness as such, although he may very well speak of the goodness of a person. He will not speak of a state of bliss apart from the person who is in such a state. He will not refer to the power of seeing without designating an individual who has such power. Thus it happens that in languages in which the idea of possession is expressed by elements subordinated to nouns, all abstract terms appear always with possessive elements. It is, however, perfectly conceivable that an Indian trained in philosophic thought would proceed to free the underlying nominal forms from the possessive elements, and thus reach abstract forms strictly corresponding to the abstract forms of our modern languages. I have made this experiment, for instance, with the Kwakiutl language of Vancouver Island, in which no abstract term ever occurs without its possessive elements. After some discussion, I found it perfectly easy to develop the idea of the abstract term in the mind of the Indian, who will state that the word without a possessive pronoun gives a sense, although it is not used idiomatically. I succeeded, for instance, in this manner, in isolating the terms for love and pity, which ordinarily occur only in possessive forms, like his love for him or my pity for you. That this view is correct may also be observed in languages in which possessive elements appear as independent forms, as, for instance, in the Siouan languages. In these, pure abstract terms are quite common.
There is also evidence that other specializing elements, which are so characteristic of many Indian languages, may be dispensed with when, for one reason or another, it seems desirable to generalize a term. To use the example of the Kwakiutl language, the idea of to be seated is almost always expressed with an inseparable suffix expressing the place in which a person is seated, as seated on the floor of the house, on the ground, on the beach, on a pile of things, or on a round thing, etc. When, however, for some reason, the idea of the state of sitting is to be emphasized, a form may be used which expresses simply being in a sitting posture. In this case, also, the device for generalized expression is present, but the opportunity for its application arises seldom, or perhaps never. I think what is true in these cases is true of the structure of every single language. The fact that generalized forms of expression are not used does not prove inability to form them, but it merely proves that the mode of life of the people is such that they are not required; that they would, however, develop just as soon as needed …
If we want to form a correct judgment of the influence that language exerts over thought, we ought to bear in mind that our European languages as found at the present time have been moulded to a great extent by the abstract thought of philosophers. Terms like essence and existence, many of which are now commonly used, are by origin artificial devices for expressing the results of abstract thought. In this they would resemble the artificial, unidiomatic abstract terms that may be formed in primitive languages.
Thus it would seem that the obstacles to generalized thought inherent in the form of a language are of minor importance only, and that pre-sumably the language alone would not prevent a people from advancing to more generalized forms of thinking if the general state of their culture should require expression of such thought; that under these conditions the language would be moulded rather by the cultural state. It does not seem likely, therefore, that there is any direct relation between the culture of a tribe and the language they speak, except in so far as the form of the language will be moulded by the state of the culture, but not in so far as a certain state of culture is conditioned by morphological traits of the language.
The relationship of language and culture
Kramsch C. Language and Culture. –
Oxford University Press, 1998. – pp. 3-14.
Language is the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives. When it is used in contexts of communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways.
To begin with, the words people utter refer to common experience. They express facts, ideas or events that are communicable because they refer to a stock of knowledge about the world that other people share. Words also reflect their authors' attitudes and beliefs, their point of view, that are also those of others. In both cases, language expresses cultural reality.
But members of a community or social group do not only express experience; they also create experience through language. They give meaning to it through the medium they choose to communicate with one another, for example, speaking on the telephone or face-to-face, writing a letter or sending an e-mail message, reading the newspaper or interpreting a graph or a chart. The way in which people use the spoken, written, or visual medium itself creates meanings that are understandable to the group they belong to, for example, through a speaker's tone of voice, accent, conversational style, gestures and facial expressions. Through all its verbal and non-verbal aspects, language embodies cultural reality.
Finally, language is a system of signs that is seen as having itself a cultural value. Speakers identify themselves and others through their use of language; they view their language as a symbol of their social identity. The prohibition of its use is often perceived by its speakers as a rejection of their social group and their culture. Thus we can say that language symbolizes cultural reality.
We shall be dealing with these three aspects of language and culture throughout this book. But first we need to clarify what we mean by culture. We might do this by considering the following poem by Emily Dickinson.
Essential Oils - are wrung –
The Attar from the Rose
Be not expressed by Suns - alone –
It is the gift of Screws –
The General Rose - decay –
But this - in Lady's Drawer
Make Summer - When the Lady lie
In Ceaseless Rosemary –
Nature, culture, language
One way of thinking about culture is to contrast it with nature. Nature refers to what is born and grows organically (from the Latin nascere: to be born); culture refers to what has been grown and groomed (from the Latin colere: to cultivate). The word culture evokes the traditional nature/nurture debate: Are human beings mainly what nature determines them to be from birth or what culture enables them to become through socialization and schooling?
Emily Dickinson's poem expresses well, albeit in a stylized way, the relationship of nature, culture, and language. A rose in a flower bed, says the poem, a generic rose (The General Rose'), is a phenomenon of nature. Beautiful, yes, but faceless and nameless among others of the same species. Perishable. Forgettable. Nature alone cannot reveal nor preserve the particular beauty of a particular rose at a chosen moment in time. Powerless to prevent the biological 'decay' and the ultimate death of roses and of ladies, nature can only make summer when the season is right. Culture, by contrast, is not bound by biological time. Like nature, it is a 'gift', but of a different kind. Through a sophisticated technological procedure, developed especially to extract the essence of roses, culture forces nature to reveal its 'essential' potentialities. The word 'Screws' suggests that this process is not without labor. By crushing the petals, a great deal of the rose must be lost in order to get at its essence. The technology of the screws constrains the exuberance of nature, in the same manner as the technology of the word, or printed syntax and vocabulary, selects among the many potential meanings that a rose might have, only those that best express its innermost truth—and leaves all others unsaid. Culture makes the rose petals into a rare perfume, purchased at high cost, for the particular, personal use of a particular lady. The lady may die, but the fragrance of the rose's essence (the Attar) can make her immortal, in the same manner as the language of the poem immortalizes both the rose and the lady, and brings both back to life in the imagination of its readers. Indeed, 'this' very poem, left for future readers in the poet's drawer, can 'Make Summer' for readers even after the poet's death. The word and the technology of the word have immortalized nature.
The poem itself bears testimony that nature and culture both need each other. The poem wouldn't have been written if there were no natural roses; but it would not be understood if it didn't share with its readers some common assumptions and expectations about rose gardens, technological achievements, historic associations regarding ladies, roses, and perfumes, common memories of summers past, a shared longing for immortality, a similar familiarity with the printed word, and with the vernacular and poetic uses of the English language. Like the screws of the rose press, these common collective expectations can be liberating, as they endow a universal rose with a particular meaning by imposing a structure, so to speak, on nature. But they can also be constraining. Particular meanings are adopted by the speech community and imposed in turn on its members, who find it then difficult, if not impossible, to say or feel anything original about roses. For example, once a bouquet of roses has become codified as a society's way of expressing love, it becomes controversial, if not risky, for lovers to express their own particular love without resorting to the symbols that their society imposes upon them, and to offer each other as a sign of love, say, chrysanthemums instead—which in Germany, for example, are reserved for the dead! Both oral cultures and literate cultures have their own ways of emancipating and constraining their members. We shall return to the differences between oral and literate cultures in subsequent chapters.
The screws that language and culture impose on nature correspond to various forms of socialization or acculturation. Etiquette, expressions of politeness, social dos and don'ts shape people's behavior through child rearing, behavioral upbringing, schooling, professional training. The use of written language is also shaped and socialized through culture. Not only what it is proper to write to whom in what circumstances, but also which text genres are appropriate (the application form, the business letter, the political pamphlet), because they are sanctioned by cultural conventions. These ways with language, or norms of interaction and interpretation, form part of the invisible ritual imposed by culture on language users. This is culture's way of bringing order and predictability into people's use of language.
Communities of language users
Social conventions, norms of social appropriateness, are the product of communities of language users. As in the Dickinson poem, poets and readers, florists and lovers, horticulturists, rose press manufacturers, perfume makers and users, create meanings through their words and actions. Culture both liberates people from oblivion, anonymity, and the randomness of nature, and constrains them by imposing on them a structure and principles of selection. This double effect of culture on the individual—both liberating and constraining—plays itself out on the social, the historical and the metaphorical planes. Let us examine each of these planes in turn.
People who identify themselves as members of a social group (family, neighborhood, professional or ethnic affiliation, nation) acquire common ways of viewing the world through their interactions with other members of the same group. These views are reinforced through institutions like the family, the school, the workplace, the church, the government, and other sites of socialization throughout their lives. Common attitudes, beliefs, and values are reflected in the way members of the group use language—for example, what they choose to say or not to say and how they say it. Thus, in addition to the notion of speech community composed of people who use the same linguistic code, we can speak of discourse communities to refer to the common ways in which members of a social group use language to meet their social needs. Not only the grammatical, lexical, and phonological features of their language (for example, teenage talk, professional jargon, political rhetoric) differentiate them from others, but also the topics they choose to talk about, the way they present information, the style with which they interact, in other words, their discourse accent. For instance, Americans have been socialized into responding 'Thank you' to any compliment, as if they were acknowledging a friendly gift: 'I like your sweater!'—'Oh, thank you!' The French, who tend to perceive such a compliment as an intrusion into their privacy, would rather downplay the compliment and minimize its value: 'Oh really? It's already quite old!' The reactions of both groups are based on the differing values given to compliments in both cultures, and on the differing degrees of embarrassment caused by personal comments. This is a view of culture that focuses on the ways of thinking, behaving, and valuing currently shared by members of the same discourse community.
But there is another way of viewing culture—one which takes a more historical perspective. For the cultural ways which can be identified at any one time have evolved and become solidified over time, which is why they are so often taken for natural behavior. They have sedimented in the memories of group members who have experienced them firsthand or merely heard about them, and who have passed them on in speech and writing from one generation to the next. For example, Emily Dickinson's allusion to life after death is grounded in the hope that future generations of readers will be able to understand and appreciate the social value of rose perfume and the funeral custom of surrounding the dead with fragrant rosemary. The culture of everyday practices draws on the culture of shared history and traditions. People identify themselves as members of a society to the extent that they can have a place in that society's history and that they can identify with the way it remembers its past, turns its attention to the present, and anticipates its future. Culture consists of precisely that historical dimension in a group's identity. This diachronic view of culture focuses on the way in which a social group represents itself and others through its material productions over time—its technological achievements, its monuments, its works of art, its popular culture.
Language and cultural identity
Kramsch C. Language and Culture. –
Oxford University Press, 1998. – pp. 65-77.
In 1915, Edmond Laforest, a prominent Haitian writer, stood upon a bridge, tied a French Larousse dictionary around his neck, and leapt to his death. This symbolic, if fatal, grand gesture dramatizes the relation of language and cultural identity. Henry Louis Gates, who recounts this story, adds 'While other black writers, before and after Laforest, have been drowned artistically by the weight of various modern languages, Laforest chose to make his death an emblem of this relation of overwhelming indenture.' ('Race`, Writing, and Difference. University of Chicago Press 1985, page 13). This event will help us bring together several notions that have emerged in the previous chapters; the motivated, non-arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign, the link between a language and its legitimate discourse community, the symbolic capital associated with the use of a particular language or of a literate form of that language, in short the association of language with a person's sense of self. We explore in this chapter the complex relationship between language and what is currently called 'cultural identity'.
Cultural identity
It is widely believed that there is a natural connection between the language spoken by members of a social group and that group's identity. By their accent, their vocabulary, their discourse patterns, speakers identify themselves and are identified as members of this or that speech and discourse community. From this membership, they draw personal strength and pride, as well as a
sense of social importance and historical continuity from using the same language as the group they belong to. But how to define which group one belongs to? In isolated, homogeneous communities like the Trobrianders studied by Malinowski, one may still define group membership according to common cultural practices and daily face-to-face interactions, but in modern, historically complex, open societies it is much more difficult to define the boundaries of any particular social group and the linguistic and cultural identities of its members.
Take ethnicity for example. In their 1981 survey conducted among the highly mixed population of Belize (formerly British Honduras), Le Page and Tabouret-Keller found out that different people ascribed themselves to different ethnicities as either 'Spanish', 'Creole', 'Maya' or 'Belizcan', according to which ethnic criterion they focused on – physical features (hair and skin), general appearance, genetic descent, provenance, or nationality. Rarely was language used as an ethnically defining criterion. Interestingly, it was only under the threat of a Guatemalan takeover as soon as British rule would cease, that the sense of a Belizean national identity slowly started emerging from among the multiple ethnic ascriptions that people still give themselves to this day.
Group identity based on race would seem easier to define, and yet there are almost as many genetic differences, say, between members of the same White, or Black race as there are between the classically described human races, not to speak of the difficulty in some cases of ascertaining with 100 per cent exactitude a person's racial lineage. For example, in 1983 the South African Government changed the racial classification of 690 people: two-thirds of these, who had been Coloreds, became Whites, 71 who had been Blacks became Coloreds, and 11 Whites were redistributed among other racial groups! And, of course, there is no necessary correlation between a given racial characteristic and the use of a given language or variety of language.
Regional identity is equally contestable. As reported in the London Times of February 1984, when a Soviet book, Populations of the World, claimed that the population of France consisted of 'French, Alsatians, Flemings, Bretons, Basques, Catalans, Corsicans, Jews, Armenians, Gypsies and "others'", Georges Marchais, the French Communist leader, violently disagreed: 'For us', he said, 'every man and woman of French nationality is French. France is not a multinational state: it is one nation, the product of a long history ....'
One would think that national identity is a clear-cut either/or affair (either you are or you are not a citizen), but it is one thing, for example, to have a Turkish passport, another thing to ascribe to yourself a Turkish national identity if you were born, raised and educated, say, in Germany, are a native speaker of German, and happen to have Turkish parents.
Despite the entrenched belief in the one language = one culture equation, individuals assume several collective identities that are likely not only to change over time in dialogue with others, but are liable to be in conflict with one another. For example, an immigrant's sense of self, that was linked in his country of origin perhaps to his social class, his political views, or his economic status, becomes, in the new country, overwhelmingly linked to his national citizenship or his religion, for this is the identity that is imposed on him by others, who see in him now, for example, only a Turk or a Muslim. His own sense of self, or cultural identity, changes accordingly. Out of nostalgia for the 'old country', he may tend to become more Turkish than the Turks and entertain what Benedict Anderson has called 'long distance nationalism'. The Turkish he speaks may become with the passing of years somewhat different from the Turkish spoken today in the streets of Ankara; the community he used to belong to is now more an 'imagined community' than the actual present-day Turkey.
Cultural stereotypes
The problem lies in equating the racial, ethnic, national identity imposed on an individual by the state's bureaucratic system, and that individual's self-ascription. Group identity is not a natural fact, but a cultural perception, to use the metaphor with which we started this book. Our perception of someone's social identity is very much culturally determined. What we perceive about a person's culture and language is what we have been conditioned by our own culture to see, and the stereotypical models already built around our own. Group identity is a question of focusing and diffusion of ethnic, racial, national concepts or stereotypes. Let us take an example. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller recount the case of a man in Singapore who claimed that he would never have any difficulty in telling the difference between an Indian and a Chinese.
But how would he instantly know that the dark-skinned non-Malay person he saw en the street was an Indian (and not, say, a Pakistani), and that the light-skinned non-European was a Chinese (and not, say, a Korean), unless he differentiated the two according to the official Singaporean 'ethnic' categories: Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others? In another context with different racial classifications he might have interpreted differently the visual clues presented to him by people on the street. His impression was focused by the classificatory concepts prevalent in his society, a behavior that Benjamin Whorf would have predicted. In turn this focus may prompt him, by a phenomenon of diffusion, to identify all other 'Chinese' along the same ethnic categories, according to the stereotype 'All Chinese look alike to me'.
It has to be noted that societies impose racial and ethnic categories only on certain groups: Whites do not generally identify themselves by the color of their skin, but by their provenance or nationality. They would find it ludicrous to draw their sense of cultural identity from their membership in the White race. Hence the rather startled reaction of two Danish women in the United States to a young African-American boy, who, overhearing their conversation in Danish, asked them 'What's your culture?'. Seeing how perplexed they were, he explained with a smile 'See, I'm Black. That's my culture. What's yours?'. Laughingly they answered that they spoke Danish and came from Denmark. Interestingly, the boy did not use language as a criterion of group identity, but the Danes did.
European identities have traditionally been built much more around language and national citizenship, and around folk models of 'one nation = one language', than around ethnicity or race. But even in Europe the matter is not so simple. For example, Alsatians who speak German, French and Germanic Platt may alternatively consider themselves as primarily Alsatians, or French, or German, depending on how they position themselves vis-а-vis the history of their region and their family biography. A youngster born and raised in France of Algerian parents may, even though he speaks only French, call himself Algerian in France, but when abroad he might prefer to be seen as French, depending on which group he wishes to be identified with at the time.
Examples from other parts of the world show how complex the language-cultural identity relationship really is. The Chinese, for example, identify themselves ethnically as Chinese even though they speak languages or dialects which are mutually unintelligible. Despite the fact that a large number of Chinese don't know how to read and write, it is the Chinese character-writing system and the art of calligraphy that are the major factors of an overall Chinese group identity.
A further example of the difficulty of equating one language with one ethnic group is given by the case of the Sikhs in Britain. Threatened to lose public recognition of their cultural and religious distinctiveness, for example, the wearing of the Sikh turban in schools, Sikh religious leaders have tried to bolster the group's identity by promoting the teaching of Punjabi, endogamy, and patterns of behavior felt to be central to Sikhism, including hair styles and the wearing of turbans. However, seen objectively, neither the Punjabi language nor the wearing of turbans is peculiar to Sikhism either in India or Pakistan or Britain.
Many cultures have survived even though their language has virtually disappeared (for instance the Yiddish of Jewish culture, the Gullah of American Black culture, the Indian languages of East Indian culture in the Caribbean); others have survived because they were part of an oral tradition kept up within an isolated community (for example, Acadian French in Louisiana), or because their members learned the dominant language, a fact that ironically enabled them to keep their own. Thus in New Mexico, a certain Padre Martinez of Taos led the cultural resistance of Mexican Spanish speakers against the American occupation by encouraging them to learn English as a survival tool so that they could keep their Hispanic culture and the Spanish language alive.
Language crossing as act of identity
One way of surviving culturally in immigration settings is to exploit, rather than stifle, the endless variety of meanings afforded by participation in several discourse communities at once. More and more people are living, speaking and interacting in in-between spaces, across multiple languages or varieties of the same language: Latinos in Los Angeles, Pakistanis in London, Arabs in Paris, but also Black Americans in New York or Atlanta, choose one way of talking over, another depending on the topic, the interlocutor and the situational context. Such language crossings, frequent in inter-ethnic communication, include the switching of codes, i.e. the insertion of elements from one language into another, be they isolated words, whole sentences, or prosodic features of speech. Language crossing enables speakers to change footing within the same conversation, but also to show solidarity or distance towards the discourse communities whose languages they are using, and whom they perceive their interlocutor as belonging. By crossing languages, speakers perform cultural acts of identity. Thus, for example, two bilingual 12-year olds from Mexico in a US American school. M is telling F what she does when she comes back from school. M and F usually speak their common language, Spanish.
M: Mira, me pongo a hacer tarea, despues me pongo leer un libro, despues me pongo a hacer matematica, despues de hacer matematica me pongo a practicar en el piano, despues de terminarse en el piano=
F: =you got a piano?
M: I have a piano in my house, don't you guys know it?... No me digas que no sabia ... yo lo dije a Gabriel y a Fernando ... todo el mundo.
| M: Look, I do homework, then I read a book, then I do science, I do math, after doing math I practice the piano, after I finished with the piano =
F: = you got a piano?
M: I have a piano in my house, don't you guys know it? ... Don't tell me that you didn't know ... I told Gabriel and Fernando ... everybody]
(Unpublished data from Claire Kramsch)
The fact of owning a piano marks M as belonging to a different social culture than F who shows his surprise—and his distance—by using the dominant Anglo-American language. M acknowledges her membership in that culture by responding in English, but immediately switches back to Spanish to show her solidarity with her Latino peers in the classroom, who come from more modest backgrounds.
Refusing to adopt the same language when you are seen as belonging to the same culture can be perceived as an affront that requires some face work repair, as in the following radio interview between two Black American disk jockeys (DJ1, DJ2) and a Black American singer (SG):
DJ1: So whatz up wit da album shottie?
SG: What's up with the album shottie
DJ2: Oh, excu:::se me. How are things progressing with yourupcoming album?
(laughter)
Come on, girl! you know what I'm sayin'. You KNOW you know da terminology! Don't front!
DJ1: Yeah, an' if ya don't know, now ya know
(laughter)
DJ1: Or at leas ack like ya know!
SG: I know, I know, I'm jus' messin' wit y'all.
(Unpublished data from Claire Kramsch)
Language crossing can be used also for more complex stances by speakers who wish to display multiple cultural memberships and play off one against the other. Not infrequently speakers who belong to several cultures insert the intonation of one language into the prosody of another, or use phrases from one language as citational inserts into the other to distance themselves from alternative identities or to mock several cultural identities by stylizing, parodying, or stereotyping them all if it suits their social purposes of the moment. Thus, for example, the following stylization of Asian English or Creole English by Pakistani youngsters, native speakers of English, as a strategy to resist the authority of their Anglo teacher (BR) in a British school.
When speaking of cultural identity, then, we have to distinguish between the limited range of categories used by societies to classify their populations, and the identities that individuals ascribe to themselves under various circumstances and in the presence of various interlocutors. While the former are based on simplified and often quite stereotypical representations, the latter may vary with the social context. The ascription of cultural identity is particularly sensitive to the perception and acceptance of an individual by others, but also to the perception that others have of themselves, and to the distribution of legitimate roles and rights that both parties hold within the discourse community. Cultural identity, as the example of Edmond Laforest shows, is a question of both indenture to a language spoken or imposed by others, and personal, emotional investment in that language through the apprenticeship that went into acquiring it. The dialectic of the individual and the group can acquire dramatic proportions when nationalistic language policies come into play.
Linguistic nationism
The association of one language variety with the membership in one national community has been referred to as linguistic nationism. For example, during the French Revolution, the concept of a national language linked to a national culture was intended to systematically replace the variety of regional dialects and local practices. Between 1790 and 1792. a questionnaire was sent by 1'Abbe Gregoire to lawyers, clergymen, and politicians in the French provinces under the pretext of documenting and cataloguing the linguistic and ethnographic uses of the thirty local 'patois' spoken in France at the time. In fact, through this survey, the Jacobins established a blueprint for the subsequent systematic eradication of these patois. Historians have debated whether the conscious governmental policy of annihilation of local dialects in France at the time was done for the sake of national or ideological unity, or in order to establish the dominance of bourgeois Parisian culture over the uncouth peasant culture, or in order to break the strong cultural monopoly of the Catholic Church who catechized its faithful in the local vernaculars. Linguistic wars are always also political and cultural wars. Efforts by present-day France to cultivate a network of French speakers around the world, and link it to a francophone identity, or francophonie, must be seen as a way of countering the overwhelming spread of English by offering speakers a supranational cultural identity that is exclusively linguistic. French as an international language remains monitored by the Academic Francaise, a French national institution that is seen as the guarantor of cultural purity—in the same manner as English as an international language is monitored in scientific circles by Anglo-American journals who serve as the gate-keepers of a certain intellectual style of scientific research.
As we saw in Chapter 1, it has been argued that the modern nation is an imagined community that originated in eighteenth century bourgeois imagination, and has relied heavily on print capitalism for its expression and dissemination. The modern nation is imagined as limited by finite, if elastic boundaries; it is imagined as a sovereign state, but also as a fraternal community of comrades, ready to take arms to defend their territorial integrity or their economic interests. This prototype of the modern nation as a cultural entity is, of course, a Utopia. It has been mirrored by a similar view of language as shared patrimony, a self-contained, autonomous, and homogeneous linguistic system based on a homogeneous social world—in other words, a linguistic Utopia. Such imaginings are tenacious and contribute to what we call an individual's national 'identity'.
When new nation-states emerge, such as more recently Belize, the mere category of national identity may, as a side effect, put a stress on other categories such as Spanishness or Mayaness, that in turn may acquire renewed importance, since the Spanish population and the Maya population do not coincide with the borders of Belize, but go beyond them to form new supranational alliances. This is what has happened in Europe with the Basque and Catalan identities that cross, linguistically and culturally, the national borders of France and Spain, and thus replace the nation by the region, and the national language by the regional language as units of cultural identification.
Nation-states respond to such separatist tendencies by refocusing national identity either around a national language or around the concept of multiculturalism. Current efforts by the US English Movement in the United States to amend the Constitution by declaring English the official national language have to be seen as the attempt to ensure not only mutual linguistic intelligibility, but cultural homogeneity as well. In periods of social fragmentation and multiple identities, each clamoring to be recognized, language takes on not only an indexical, but a symbolic value, according to the motto 'Let me hear you speak and I will tell you who you are loyal to`. The link between the US English legislation and anti-immigration legislation has been frequently pointed out by critics.
Besides being used as a means of excluding outsiders, the use of one, and only one, language is often perceived as a sign of political allegiance. The remark 'I had ten years of French and I still can't ...' may be the expression not so much of bilingual failure as of monolingual pride. People who, by choice or by necessity, have traditionally been bi- or multilingual, like migrants and cosmopolitans, have often been held in suspicion by those who ascribe to themselves a monovocal, stable, national identity.
Standard language, cultural totem
The way this national identity is expressed is through an artificially created standard language, fashioned from a multiplicity of dialects. When one variety of a language is selected as an indicator of difference between insiders and outsiders, it can be shielded from variations through official grammars and dictionaries and can be taught through the national educational system. For example, in the times of the Ancient Greeks, any person whose language was not Greek was called a 'barbarian', i.e. an alien from an inferior culture. Hence the term barbarism to denote any use of language that offends contemporary standards of correctness or purity. In some countries that have a National Academy for the preservation of the national linguistic treasure against external imports and internal degradation, misuses of the standard language by its speakers are perceived not only as linguistic mishaps, but as aesthetic and moral offences as well (hence derogatory verbs like 'butchering' or 'slaughtering' a language).
Note that standard language is always a written form of the language, preserved, as we saw in the last chapter, through a distinct print culture serving a variety of political, economic, and ideological interests. But it is well known that even though educated people will display strong views about what 'good' language use is supposed to be like, when they speak they often themselves commit precisely those barbarisms they so strongly condemn. The desire to halt the march of time and keep language pure of any cultural contamination is constantly thwarted by the co-construction of culture in every dialogic encounter.
Language acquires a symbolic value beyond its pragmatic use and becomes a totem of a cultural group, whenever one dialect variety is imposed on others in the exercise of national or colonial power (France), or when one language is imposed over others through the deliberate, centralized pressure of a melting pot ideology (English over French in Louisiana, English over Spanish in New Mexico), or when one language supplants others through centralized deliberate planning or diffuse societal forces (the spread of English as an international language). The totemization of the dominant language leads to the stigmatization of the dominated languages.
Members of a group who feel that their cultural and political identity is threatened are likely to attach particular importance to the maintenance or resurrection of 'their language' (for example, Quebec, Belgium, Wales among many others). The particularly poignant death of Edmond Laforest is a reminder of the deeply personal association of language with one's self-ascribed cultural identity, especially when the recognition of that linguistic identity is denied. Laforest's despair was compounded by the intrans-igently literate view that the majority of educated French (or those who want to be seen as educated) hold toward their national language. By having learned and adopted the literate idiom of the colonial occupant, the Haitian poet may have felt he had betrayed not only his Haitian Creole identity, but also the rich oral tradition of his ancestors.
Linguistic and cultural imperialism
Laforest's death in 1915 acquired a new meaning when recounted in 1985, at a time when linguistic rights were starting to be viewed as basic human rights. The case for linguistic rights has been made particularly strongly with regard to the hegemonic spread of English around the world. Beyond the symbolic link frequently established between language and territorial or cultural identity, there is also another link that has more to do with the promulga-tion of global ideologies through the worldwide expansion of one language, also called linguicism. Linguicism has been defined as 'ideologies, structures, and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate, and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (both material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language', as Phillipson says in his book Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford University Press 1991, page 47), in which English linguistic imperialism is seen as a type of linguicism.
From our discussion so far, one can see where the self-ascription to a given group on the basis of language might be the response to rather than the cause of the lack of material and spiritual power. It is when people feel economically and ideologically disempowered that language may become an issue and a major symbol of cultural integrity. However, in a world of signs where every meaning can proliferate ad infinitum, it becomes very difficult to distinguish what is the effect and what is the cause of linguistic imperialism. The spread of English is undeniable, and it is viewed by those who suffer from it as a totem for a certain Anglo-American 'culture' or way of life, but it is not clear whether the appropriate response in the long run is to make English and other languages into cultural icons, or to rely on the remarkable ability that speakers have to create multiple cultural realities in any language.
This is not to say that linguistic pluralism is not a desirable good in itself. The Babel threat is not the splintering off in mutually unintelligible languages, but the monopoly of one language over others. As in Babel's days, the complacent belief that people are working for a common cause just because they speak a common language is a dangerous illusion. Being human means working through the shoals of mutual misunderstandings across incommensurable languages. That is why linguistic rights, like anti-trust laws, have to be upheld, not because of the one-to-one relationship between culture and language, but because each language provides a uniquely communal, and uniquely individual, means by which human beings apprehend the world and one another.
Summary
Although there is no one-to-one relationship between anyone's language and his or her cultural identity, language is the most sensitive indicator of the relationship between an individual and a given social group. Any harmony or disharmony between the two is registered on this most sensitive of the Richter scales. Language is an integral part of ourselves—it permeates our very thinking and way of viewing the world. It is also the arena where political and cultural allegiances and loyalties are fought out. However, if language indexes our relation to the world, it is not itself this relation.
Because of the inevitable and necessary indeterminacy of signs, the same use of a given language can index both indenture and investment, both servitude and emancipation, both powerlessness and empowerment. Paradoxically, the only way to preserve the room for maneuver vital to any human communication is not by making sure that everyone speaks the same language, but by making sure that the linguistic semiotic capital of humankind remains as rich and as diversified as possible.

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