At 10:04 AM 1/13/00 -0600, Bob Yates wrote:
>Johanna Rubba's last post reveals a fundamental difference of opinion
>about the relationship of language to thought and culture.
>These comments seem to me to accept the notion that language does
>reflect thought and culture. The implication is clear for the teaching
>of grammar. Students will be unable to think appropriately about their
>content material if they are unable to express those ideas in Standard
>English.
This seems to assume (whether Joanna's beliefs are correct or not) that
there is only one "appropriate" way of thinking about content material.
The idea that someone does not think in the same way does not necessarily
mean that their way of thinking is inappropriate or less useful to
comprehension.
Truth is, students do not necessarily think about things in the ways in
which their teachers expect them to. However, this does not mean they
aren't getting anything useful out of it.
>I unequivocally reject the notion that language reflects thought and
>culture. I have no idea how my thoughts are different in English because
>it is fundamentally a Subject Verb Object language and from the thoughts
>of my wife whose language is German, a Subject Object Verb language.
I seriously doubt that these are the aspects of language that have the
strongest relationship to thinking styles.
There is a strong relationship to vocabulary and to the concepts which one
has at her disposal. A member of a culture that has 80 different words for
the word "snow" is more likely to perceive differences in different types
of snow, is will probably think differently about snow itself.
More than that, though, I suspect that the biggest differences are in
things that are so subtle and so ingrained that we rarely think about them,
and that we take so much for granted that we assume that everyone thinks in
the same way we do. For example, I once heard a Lakota man talking about
language -- he said that the Lakota word for white person actually means
"people who put things into boxes" -- and he explained that visually by
talking about his square desk in a square classroom in a square building in
a town with square blocks, and if you go up into an airplane you could even
see that the land has been cut into square fields. In relationship to
thought, it is best shown by our tendency to organize things into certain
hierarchies -- note our scientific method of classifying things, which we
use for just about everything. He contrasted this with his own culture,
which focuses much more on other types of relationships that things have
with each other -- looking more like a web than a pyramid. It is a
fundamentally different way of looking at the world, and is both reflected
by and shaped by language.
However, I doubt that these kinds of issues are reflected in things such as
subject/verb/object order, or which words use markers, and whether or not
agreement is properly expressed.
>If Johanna is right, then Rei Noguchi and Robert DeBeaugrande are
>wrong. Both Noguchi and DeBeaugrande have argued that students possess
>a lot of the grammatical knowledge to control standard English.
>However, if "language profoundly reflects thought and culture" then it
>follows that anyone who speaks another dialect of English thinks
>differently from someone who speaks standard English.
I'm not sure I agree that these two ideas are as much in opposition as you
argue. First off, a person can have control of more than one language (and
more than one way of thinking about things). There is evidence that
students do possess a lot of the grammatical knowledge needed to control
standard English. There is also evidence that not all students think about
things and learn in the same way. These two ideas are not contradictory.
Second, I doubt that every dialectical difference necessarily reflects
substantial differences in thinking styles.
>Finally, if Johanna is right and we follow her teaching suggestions at
>the lower grades of providing a lot opportunities to read and WRITE the
>standard, we will be engaging in cultural genocide. That seem to follow
>directly from the following claim.
>> As to minority cultures being 'profoundly' different from the dominant
>> culture, I believe that they may well be.
First off, culture is not and never was a static thing. All cultures,
whether dominant or subordinate, change and grow in reaction to exposure to
cultures around them. They always have and they always will. This is not
the same as "killing" them, unless you are forcing on them changes which
they want no part of. It may be that attempting to place them in a museum
where they remain the same and never change, never respond to opportunity
or adapt to changing environments is a more genocidal approach to treatment
of culture.
Second, children and adults are fully capable of moving successfully
between more than one culture. Learning the ins and outs of an extra
culture does not of itself destroy your connection to other cultures of
which you are a part. It simply gives you more options to choose from, and
helps you appreciate all the more the wonderful diversity on our planet.
It is only when specific cultures are treated as less "appropriate" that it
becomes a real problem.
Susan Mari Witt
240 ERML, MC-051
1201 W. Gregory
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: (217) 333-1965
Fax: (217) 333-4777
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