On the contextual nature of language
The thesis that I'd like to advance in this post is that language is not a magical ability that one can pull out of a hat whenever requested to do so, but rather that it is a contextually driven mean of communication. That is, one can be very skillful in using a language in certain familiar situations and pretty lame in other.
I will also argue how barriers between languages are raised, and how this impacts our ability to communicate certain ideas using a particular language. These barriers however, are not solid, and therefore one language can invade on another.
The idea is very intuitive. When you have acquired a certain degree of proficiency in a language other than your mother tongue, let us assume that English is this second language, the ways in which you can use that to communicate is tied to situations in which you have previously learned how used it. That's basically it. Not quite considering the case closed, I will elaborate on this a little further, using an example.
If you only are exposed to a language in a certain context, let's take an academic environment. With effort you relatively quickly learn how to communicate and get your ideas across using the nomenclature that is expected of you in that situation.
We extend this example a bit and assume that you use another language in a broader social context, like for example at home or with your friends. It's not too unreasonable to think that your level of expression skill will differ, depending on the environment in which you are communicating.
Idiomatic expressions (and plain old words alike) carry a semantic content which we understand in some way without having to relate to a certain language. The very nature of these expression make them not always easily translatable, thus often effectively locking the thoughts that they convey into that certain mode of communication. This becomes painfully clear when one tries to carry over ideas that can be formulated in one domain to another domain where one lacks the proper corresponding expressions to make that idea available.
That is, our mental dictionaries do not always have one-to-one relations. This can perhaps be viewed as me reiterating a slight modification of an idea that I've expressed in one of my earliest posts, though I now in hindsight try to assure myself that the original idea didn't come off as too nihilistic.
In our global society, there are so many views and enterprises that one is never exposed to other than by means of the English language. In a way, English is the universally recognised second language, the one to which one primarily resorts when trying to communicate with a member of a language culture to which one does not belong.
I use English as an example because it's so clear that its style and idiosyncrasies have invaded other languages. This can easily be seen in Europe, with for example the unorthodox usage of apostrophes and the splitting of words that for historical (and semantic) reasons are to be kept merged.
Just a thought.
I will also argue how barriers between languages are raised, and how this impacts our ability to communicate certain ideas using a particular language. These barriers however, are not solid, and therefore one language can invade on another.
The idea is very intuitive. When you have acquired a certain degree of proficiency in a language other than your mother tongue, let us assume that English is this second language, the ways in which you can use that to communicate is tied to situations in which you have previously learned how used it. That's basically it. Not quite considering the case closed, I will elaborate on this a little further, using an example.
If you only are exposed to a language in a certain context, let's take an academic environment. With effort you relatively quickly learn how to communicate and get your ideas across using the nomenclature that is expected of you in that situation.
We extend this example a bit and assume that you use another language in a broader social context, like for example at home or with your friends. It's not too unreasonable to think that your level of expression skill will differ, depending on the environment in which you are communicating.
Idiomatic expressions (and plain old words alike) carry a semantic content which we understand in some way without having to relate to a certain language. The very nature of these expression make them not always easily translatable, thus often effectively locking the thoughts that they convey into that certain mode of communication. This becomes painfully clear when one tries to carry over ideas that can be formulated in one domain to another domain where one lacks the proper corresponding expressions to make that idea available.
That is, our mental dictionaries do not always have one-to-one relations. This can perhaps be viewed as me reiterating a slight modification of an idea that I've expressed in one of my earliest posts, though I now in hindsight try to assure myself that the original idea didn't come off as too nihilistic.
In our global society, there are so many views and enterprises that one is never exposed to other than by means of the English language. In a way, English is the universally recognised second language, the one to which one primarily resorts when trying to communicate with a member of a language culture to which one does not belong.
I use English as an example because it's so clear that its style and idiosyncrasies have invaded other languages. This can easily be seen in Europe, with for example the unorthodox usage of apostrophes and the splitting of words that for historical (and semantic) reasons are to be kept merged.
Just a thought.
posted by J.R. Libel at 23:13
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home