Earl Mardle (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} rlmrdl) wrote,@ 2003-05-05 11:58:00 |
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Korean and How Language Conditions What We CAN Think
This is a fascinating subject, made even more so by the explosion of personal publication of language and the attempts to control what is acceptable public speech through the news media.
Stavrosthewonderchicken has the original post here
Joho responds here
What interests me most about this is whether, in a language as highly structured for social relations as Korean and in one where those structures are much less evident such as English, the ability of a society to adapt to changing circumstances is enhanced or retarded.
I'm not proselytising one way or the other but it seems that a structured social language like Korean might actually offer a much stronger foundation for accepting and absorbing change than English where each relation has to be negotiated individually.
There would naturally be differences again depending on whether the change was generated from within or without, but in a time of ever more radical change, those societies and languages that can evaluate and adapt fastest with the least energy consumption, will almost certainly be the survivors.
Incidentally, what do you think the effect on this process in English has been with the introduction of the honorific Ms?
On a related point, there is now some discussion on various Blogs, (too lazy to find the references right now) about the all-or-nothing status of a hyperlink on the web. Some are wanting to be able to say "I think this is important to the discussion but I strongly disagree" for example, and encode that into the hyperlink so that Google will account for the opinion of the linker as well as the density of the links. Maybe we should ask the Koreans to come up with the taxonomy for us.
This is a fascinating subject, made even more so by the explosion of personal publication of language and the attempts to control what is acceptable public speech through the news media.
Stavrosthewonderchicken has the original post here
Joho responds here
What interests me most about this is whether, in a language as highly structured for social relations as Korean and in one where those structures are much less evident such as English, the ability of a society to adapt to changing circumstances is enhanced or retarded.
I'm not proselytising one way or the other but it seems that a structured social language like Korean might actually offer a much stronger foundation for accepting and absorbing change than English where each relation has to be negotiated individually.
There would naturally be differences again depending on whether the change was generated from within or without, but in a time of ever more radical change, those societies and languages that can evaluate and adapt fastest with the least energy consumption, will almost certainly be the survivors.
Incidentally, what do you think the effect on this process in English has been with the introduction of the honorific Ms?
On a related point, there is now some discussion on various Blogs, (too lazy to find the references right now) about the all-or-nothing status of a hyperlink on the web. Some are wanting to be able to say "I think this is important to the discussion but I strongly disagree" for example, and encode that into the hyperlink so that Google will account for the opinion of the linker as well as the density of the links. Maybe we should ask the Koreans to come up with the taxonomy for us.
