Prejudices and Caricatures

[Charles Barone]

LBernier at tribune.com wrote:
> 
> 
> Granted my grasp of pomo discourse and theory is puny, if not non-existent, but
> Dave, are you saying that language is ACTUALLY synonomous with the expression of
> ideas?  That the idea is language and vice-versa?  And someone who speaks Hopi
> would be trapped in an IDEA set that cannot be escaped from because the words
> exist or do not exist within this language?  I can understand that concepts may
> be expressed with differing degrees of subtlety from one culture to the next -
> for example, there's a japanese word which means (roughly) the disjointed and
> mixed feelings of sadness and fondness and happiness that one feels when
> confronted with a smell or sound or look from one's past.  The fact that there's
> no particular English word for this feeling (it's NOT nostalgia) does not mean
> the feeling does not exist.
> in response to:
> >davemarc writes:
> >>
> >> At 05:14 PM 11/25/96 +0000, Andrew wrote:
> >> >
> >> >[snip] Who says `Pynchon
> >> >*would have* written within the prejudices of his time'? Well if
> >> >anyone or anything says so it can only be argued with reference to
> >> >what was actually written. So where's the evidence?
> >
> >> For starters, P. wrote most of GR using 20th Century English.  That's the
> >> evidence.  Where's the evidence that he somehow managed to liberate his
> >> prose from the prejudices or world view embodied in that language?  It's a
> >> truism that writers write within the prejudices of their times as reflected
> >> by their language.
> >
> >That's the evidence???
> 
> Yup.  Where's your evidence that he liberated his prose from his language
> and its built-in (and I do mean built-in) prejudices?
>  etc., etc.      <deletia>

Anyway, this fascinating discussion on the relationship between language and cultural 
world views has reminded me of a story by J.L. Borges, entitled "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis 
Tertius" (in the volume "Labyrinths").  An excerpt:

"...The nations of this planet [Tlon] are congenitally idealist.  Their language and the 
derivations of their language - religion, letters, metaphysics - all presuppose 
idealism.  The world for them is not a concourse of objects in space; it is a 
hetergeneous series of independent acts.  It is successive and temporal, not spatial.  
There are no nouns... For example, there is no word corresponding to the word moon, but 
there is a verb which in English would be 'to moon' or 'to moonate'...The preceding 
aplies to languages of the Southern hemisphere.  In the northern hemispere...the prime 
unit is not the verb, but the monosyllabic adjective.  The noun is formed by the 
accumulation of adjectives.  They do not say "moon" but rather "round airy-light on 
dark" or "pale-orange-of-the-sky" or any other such combination.  In the example 
selected the mass of adjectives refers to a real object, but this is purely fortuitous. 
The literature in this hemisphere...abounds in ideal objects, which are convoked and 
dissolved in a moment, according to poetic needs".

Arguably, hypothetical to an extreme, but a vivid illustration of the point in either 
case.  I would agree with Jean that feelings might strive to seek expression in contexts 
which inhibited their expression or did not acknowledge their existence in the first 
place, but yes I do think that language (as an expression of the culture of its origin) 
would work in the other direction to shape feelings, or at least one's interpretation of 
them, and ideas.  Some of the points made about the objectification of the universe by 
science, I think, would invoke for most of us concrete examples in our own experience 
(us or those we know) of these processes at work.

	- - - Charlie