I speak many cultures

For someone, who speaks five languages, this week’s readings were extremely interesting. I discovered how speaking many languages can activate different belief systems and moral codes. Furthermore, using foreign language to express emotionally intense experiences is common for me – there is more detachment and dissociation from experience when I talk about it in English. I was surprized to learn that there is scientific research which focused on this phenomenon.

At the same time, being exposed to many languages can be problematic. Someone with exposure to so many languages can internalize different cultures, and corresponding norms, which might lead to identity crisis. One might wonder which ones are his real beliefs and values. There is a risk that person will not be able to fully relate to any in-group. But at the same time, these people with multiple cultural identities might form their own in-group, their own culture.

Another interesting point was how speech has an adaptive function, because it allows to communicate through the distance, in the dark, and while doing some mechanical activity. From this point of view, it seems obvious that language should be in tune with cultural beliefs and should transform depending on how people collectively decide to label events. Language’s main function is to enforce clear communication among people, and if does so without the consideration of context, then there wouldn’t be a meaning to it.

Another aspect which I would like to discuss is how grammatical rules can correlate with one’s cognition and perceptual abilities. Pronouns being necessary or unnecessary parts of sentence can be correlated with person’s salience in the situation, and existence of false belief structures can influence how quick people are in comprehending false-belief states. It made me think how in Turkic cultures there is only one pronoun for women, men, things and animals.Some theories claim that it is because historically in Turkic herder tribes there wasn’t clear distinction of responsibilities among men and women, and everyone was supposed to contribute to household in the same way. While other theories claim that it wasn’t necessary to use specific pronoun – gender could be identified based on contextual information. In Chinese, pronouns for different genders sound just the same. The reason might be that they rely more on context. This converges with what we have known about collectivist cultures and their holistic perception.