Die Europäizität der Slawia oder die Slawizität Europas · Christian Voß / Alicja Nagórko...

Die Europäizität der Slawia oder die Slawizität Europas

Ein Beitrag der kultur- und sprachrelativistischen Linguistik

Christian Voß, Alicja Nagórko (Hrsg.)

SLCCEE

STUDIES ON LANGUAGE AND CULTURE I N C E N T R A L A N D E A S T E R N E U R O P E

Verla

g O

tto S

agne

r

��

��

��

� ��

��

��

��

��

�� !��

��

�� "��#��$��%��

��

&''(

�� )��)�� *��+�� )��$�� ,��-�� ,��., �/�� /�.�� 011�2��2��,��2

3�&''(��4� �5��6 ��./ ��7/��8(19:)�;'<(;��=7��/�>?

@��, �A9(�='?;(�B9�&:;�:'C@��,�6�A9(�='?;(�B9�&:;�&&C��D�� 2��

E!�� "�� F��./ ��4� �5��6 ��./ ��7/�

"��,��0

+� ,2�)�2�� / ��G��H��*��.��,��I��) � ��CB:'::<��

@��, ��A9(�='?8'�&'(8�B:;B��2� ��D��,,2��2��

G/��0�� @�� J��)��0�)�, �)��J��/��+��7��/�>

"��K��

.��$�:;C;�&(8C

.��$�:'0�8�;CC;;�'CB�'

.��$�:80�(<;�8�;CC;;�'CB�;

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Christian Voß / Alicja Nagórko Vorwort 7

1. Kognitive Weltbilder

Tanja Petrovi�In the Search for Subtle Ties: Approaches to Research at the Intersection of Language, Culture and Cognition 11

Katarina G. Rasuli�Conceptualization of Development, Society, Power and Control by Means of Verticality Terms in Serbian and in English 49

Angel G. Angelov Ethnosemantics: Folk Etymological Myths and the Spread of Meaning 75

2. Hybrider Kontaktraum Europa

David Frick Turris Babel Vilnensis: Speaking, Writing, Ethnolinguistic Stereotyping 91

Jouko Lindstedt Esperanto – an East European Contact Language? 125

Maxim I. Stamenov The Nature and Place of Ottoman Turkish Pejorative Loan-words in the Bulgarian Language and Culture 135

Roland Marti Von Marginalisierten und Minderheiten: Slaven in Europa, Sorben in Deutschland, „Wenden“ und „Sorben“ 151

3. Ethnolinguistik

Mirosław Ba�ko Should the computer mouse click differently in Polish? 177

Marek Łazi�ski Murzyn, negr und �ernoch – Wie weiße Slawen ihre schwarzen Nachbarn nennen 187

Alicja Nagórko Über ‘Tassen’ und ‘Gläser’ – Probleme kultureller Isoglossen 203

4. Interlinguale Dimensionen

Hanna Burkhardt Xenismen in der Übersetzung. Kulturelle Fremdheit vs. Vertrautheit (IKEA-Katalog 2007) 215

Danuta Rytel-Schwarz Ist das Tschechische dem Deutschen näher als das Polnische? Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel von Internationalismen 225

Autorenverzeichnis 235

Vorwort

Christian Voß / Alicja Nagórko

Der vorliegende Band fasst die Ergebnisse der Tagung „Die Europäizität der Slawia oder die Slawizität Europas? Ein Beitrag der kultur- und sprachrelativis-tischen Linguistik“ zusammen, die vom 31.5. bis 2.6.2007 an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin stattgefunden hat.

Der öffentliche Europadiskurs der letzten Jahre zieht sich angesichts der dynamischen Ost- und Südosterweiterung der Europäischen Union immer stärker auf kulturelle Definitionen zurück. Diese angeblichen Gewissheiten bauen auf eine Hierarchisierung des europäischen Ostens, die vor allem ein europakompatibles und zum 1.5.2004 der EU beigetretenes Ostmitteleuropa und einen rückständigen Balkan voneinander trennt. Augenscheinlichstes Merkmal scheint die Verbreitung der lateinischen Schrift zu sein, die heute weitestgehend deckungsgleich mit der EU-Ostgrenze verläuft.

Da der europäische Integrationsprozess vor allem slawische Nationen erfasst, sollte das Fach Slawistik stärker in den öffentlichen Diskurs eingreifen, was das Fach Osteuropäische Geschichte schon seit geraumer Zeit tut. Die Zwangseinbindung aller Slawen in das sowjetische Gesellschaftsmodell nach 1945 ist lange als „naturgemäße“ Entwicklung verstanden worden. Erst heute fragt der „spatial turn“ nach verschütteten kulturellen Zusammenhängen und rekonstruiert alte europäische Kulturräume.

Der politische Limes quer durch Europa war jedoch keine Kontingenz-erscheinung, sondern letztlich Ergebnis britischer und sowjetischer „geistiger Landkarten“ (mental maps), die sich in der Aufteilung Europas durch Churchill und Stalin 1944 niedergeschlagen haben. Insofern steht die westliche Perzep-tion der slawischen Völker während des Kalten Kriegs in einer langen diskurs-iven Kette, deren Anfänge vom Dekonstruktivismus beschrieben worden sind.

Wer definiert Europa?

Schauen wir kurz, wie sich die Linguistik bisher in die Europa-Diskussion eingebracht hat. In der Linguistik des 20.-21. Jahrhunderts stehen sich zwei Lager relativ unversöhnlich gegenüber. Das dominante Paradigma seit Noam Chomsky ist systemlinguistisch orientiert und betrachtet Sprache als ein auto-nomes System, das sich auf universale Gesetzmäßigkeiten reduzieren lässt, die sich aus dem gemeinsamen genetischen Erbe der menschlichen Spezies ablei-ten. Demgegenüber sehen die sog. Funktionalisten Sprache als soziales Phäno-

Christian Voß / Alicija Nagórko 8

men: Die strukturelle Diversität von Sprachen sehen sie als Evidenz von nicht-sprachlichen, kulturspezifischen Faktoren. Die kulturrelativistische Sichtweise ist in der 1. Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts in den USA als sog. Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese entwickelt worden – nach einer jahrzehntelangen Pause erlebt sie seit den 1990er Jahren ein ungeahntes Revival. Verkürzt gesagt geht es um die These, dass Sprache in signifikanter Weise die Perzeption und Konzeption der Realität mitgestaltet und somit stark kulturrelativistisch ist.

Eine recht lose Verbindungslinie zu Sapir-Whorf ist das typologisch basierte „Standarddurchschnittseuropäisch“ (Standard Average European): Den Begriff hatte Whorf verwendet, um eine gemeineuropäische Sprach-struktur und Denkweise mit jener der Hopi zu kontrastieren. Die Idee, dass es ein „Standardeuropäisch“ gebe, ist bei Whorf kulturell, nicht linguistisch be-gründet. Die Bezeichnung „europäischer Sprachbund“ hingegen ist unzulässig, weil die zentrale Prämisse – dass die vorgefundenen Gemeinsamkeiten das Ergebnis einer konvergenten Entwicklung seien – nicht belegt ist.

Bezeichnenderweise wird der europäische Sprachbund auch als „Karl-der-Große-Sprachbund“ („Charlemagne-Sprachbund“) geführt, der Deutsch, Fran-zösisch und Niederländisch zum Kern hat und als nächsten äußeren Kreis Italienisch und Polnisch, in einem zweiten auch Englisch, Schwedisch, Dänisch, Norwegisch, Sardisch, Slowenisch und Bulgarisch umfasst. Die Vor-stellung eines „Kerneuropa“ ist hierbei politisch motiviert und zielt mit Frank-reich, Deutschland und den Benelux-Staaten auf die Gründungsstaaten der europäischen Bewegung seit den 1950er Jahren.

Eine weitere Neuerscheinung ist die sog. Eurolinguistik, wie sie von Norbert Reiter und Per Sture Ureland betrieben wird: Auch sie ersetzt die ältere, genealogische Sprachwissenschaft durch eine areale Perspektive, in der horizontaler Sprachkontakt eine große Rolle spielt. Die hiermit angestrebte Überwindung politischer Engstirnigkeit der Nationalphilologien ist sicherlich begrüßenswert, allerdings besteht auch hier die Gefahr, dass die sprachliche Solidarisierung auf Kosten einer nicht gerechtfertigten Abgrenzung nach außen erkauft wird, die den Vorwurf des Eurozentrismus verdient.

Osteuropa als Paradigma des postnationalen Europas

Ernest Gellner als ein Klassiker der neueren Nationalismusforschung hat die Formel geprägt, dass die Heirat zwischen Politik und Kultur in Osteuropa sehr viel später und problematischer eingetreten sei als in Spanien, Frankreich oder England. Da nur die Russen im frühen 19. Jahrhundert Eigenstaatlichkeit besaßen, waren die über die Vielvölkerstaaten Preußen, Habsburg und Osma-

Vorwort 9

�

nenreich verteilten Slawen empfänglich für die Herdersche Gleichung von Sprache und Nation, was im Endergebnis zu einer sehr kleinräumigen Über-dachung der großen slawischen Dialektkontinua geführt hat. Der von den Eliten propagierte Sprachnationalismus, der einen vehement xenophoben Purismus mit sich gebracht hat, ist jedoch nur eine Seite der Medaille, da derartige Elitediskurse aufgrund fehlender Plausibilität nur beschränkt erfolgreich waren bzw. sind.

Die programmatische Kernaussage dieses Bandes lautet – neben der Impulswirkung für eine stärker transregionale slawistische Forschung – daher so: Das Alltagsmilieu Ost- und Südosteuropas bewahrt zum Teil noch heute den Zustand vor dem Eindringen der ethnonationalen Ideologie. Als Folge der hybriden und synkretistischen Überlagerungen und Vermischungen von Kultu-ren leben uns die Osteuropäer die neuen europäischen Ideale von Polykultur-alität und Multioptionalität in einer Selbstverständlichkeit vor, die in Deutsch-land angesichts des Schlagworts „Leitkultur“ in weiter Ferne scheinen. Die kulturellen und sprachlichen Niederschläge des traditionellen osteuropäischen Habitus der Koexistenz, die aufzuspüren sind, können als Leitbild eines – auch intranational – multikulturellen Europa definiert werden.

Zum Inhalt des Bandes

Die bewusst nicht areal angeordneten Beiträge fragen aus linguistischer Sicht nach dem Nexus von Kultur und Sprache. Sie polemisieren nicht mit einer apodiktisch dekonstruktivistischen Position, die jegliche osteuropäische Alterität bestreitet. Stattdessen wollen die Autoren in einer ausgewogenen Argumentation zwischen strukturbezogenen und kulturellen Faktoren zeigen, worin die Differenz Osteuropas besteht und wie sie sprachlich fassbar ist. Die postmoderne Leugnung der osteuropäischen Modernisierungsdefizite wirkt ebenso integrationshemmend wie die monokausale Betonung sozial-kultureller Traditionen, wie sie 1992-1995 häufig als Erklärung für die Jugoslawien-Kriege angeboten worden ist. Der noch heute als starr wahrgenommene, häufig emotionalisierte Gegensatz zwischen West und Ost kann nur versachlicht werden, indem wir die Differenzen anerkennen, zugleich aber die Durchlässig-keit dieser kulturellen Grenzen aufzeigen.

Im ersten Panel „Kognitive Weltbilder“ gibt Tanja Petrovi� zunächst einen Forschungsüberblick zur kulturrelativistischen Linguistik, die kulturelle An-dersheit als semantisch in die jeweilige Sprache enkodiert betrachtet und cultural scripts und semantic primitives als kultursensitive semantische Ein-heiten deriviert. Katarina G. Rasuli� überprüft dies anhand von OBEN-

Christian Voß / Alicija Nagórko 10

UNTEN-Metaphern als vertikale Konzeptualisierung von gesellschaftlicher Vorrangstellung im Serbischen und Englischen, während Angel G. Angelov Volksetymologien bzw. Paretymologien und ihre Auswirkung auf das mentale Lexikon der Slawen untersucht.

Das zweite Panel „Hybrider Kontaktraum Europa“ thematisiert in vier Beiträgen die historische Mehrsprachigkeit des europäischen Ostens und Süd-ostens: David Frick rekonstruiert den multilingualen Alltag der Stadtbevölk-erung von Wilno im 17. Jahrhundert anhand von historischen Quellen. Jouko Lindstedt führt die Kunstsprache Esperanto als natürliche Kontaktsprache vor und lokalisiert sie an ihrem „Geburtsort“, dem jüdischen Milieu im vielsprach-igen Białystok im 19. Jahrhundert. Maxim I. Stamenov unternimmt dann den Versuch, die Turzismen im Bulgarischen unter die Kategorie der Pejorativa zu subsumieren. Roland Marti beschreibt Mechanismen der sorbisch-deutschen Zweisprachigkeit und fokussiert die DDR-Zeit, als das Niedersorbische einer zweifachen Marginalisierung (durch das Deutsche und das Obersorbische) aus-gesetzt war.

Die Panel „Ethnolinguistik“ und „Interlinguale Dimensionen“ fragen nach der Kultur- und Sprachgebundenheit von Konzepten und somit nach ihrer Transferierbarkeit: Mirosław Ba�ko und Marek Łazi�ski analysieren unter-schiedliche Bezeichnungen für die Klickgeräusche der Computermaus bzw. für Menschen mit dunkler Hautfarbe im Polnischen. Alicja Nagórko schließt sich mit einem Beitrag zur polnischen Kulturspezifik der Konzepte „Tasse“ und „Glas“ an. Hanna Burkhardt identifiziert Xenismen im polnischen IKEA-Katalog als inszenierte Fremdheit und bezieht Fragen zu Geschlechterstereo-typen ein, während Danuta Rytel-Schwarz anhand von Internationalismen her-ausarbeitet, wie sehr diese im Tschechischen formal und semantisch durch die deutsche Vermittlung dimensioniert sind.

Wir bedanken uns bei der Humboldt-Universität für die großzügige Finanzier-ung der Konferenz sowie bei den studentischen Hilfskräften Simone Rajili�, Ines Steger und Sebastian Kiraga für die gründliche Redaktion dieses Bandes.

Die Herausgeber Berlin, im Januar 2009

In the Search for Subtle Ties: Approaches to Research at the Intersection of Language, Culture and Cognition

Tanja Petrovi�

Introduction

In the last decades, the question of how language, culture and thought are inter-related (and whether they are interrelated at all) has attracted a lot of attention in the linguistic, anthropological, and psychological literature. Works by Boas, Sapir and Whorf still echo in the linguistic and anthropological debates, and new tools for detecting links between language, culture and thought are pro-vided with the vigorous development of cognitive linguistics. To a certain degree, the increased interest towards anthropology-oriented study of language was a counter-reaction to the “generative turn” in linguistics, which revitalized the Saussurean langue – parole dichotomy in the form of ‘competence’ and ‘performance’, and insisted on the autonomy of syntax.1

“As a consequence, a sizeable number of linguists struck out on their own [...] and devoted themselves to building alternative conceptions of language in which its social function was regarded as a paramount” (Lavandera 1988, 1; cf. Alford 1982, Duranti 2003, 326).2

Such devotion resulted in a large production in various domains of linguistic study and numerous attempts to reconsider and redefine the main assumptions, and to apply new concepts, methodological tools and theoretical frames. A great deal of the research in this field results from a dialogue between linguists, who consider thought to be inevitably influenced by culture and language, and those, who dismiss such views. The latter state that if there are any achieve-

1 Along with “Chomskian emphasis on universals of grammar, coupled with the view that

language is a separate system from general cognition and with de-emphasis of the seman-tic arena”, Piagetian influence within cognitive psychology also “discouraged any search for relation between language and cognition” (Gentner and Goldin-Meadow 2003, 5).

2 Gentner and Goldin-Meadow (2003, 6-7) detect at least three themes that significantly contributed to revitalization of interest for the language-and-cognition question after decades of its neglect: the first is the work of Talmy, Langacker, Bowerman and others who demonstrated that there are important differences in the way languages shape the world (cf. Choi and Bowerman 1991, Talmy 2000a, 2000b, Bennardo 2002); the second is a revival of Vigotsky’s views about importance of language in cognitive development (cf. Hunt and Agnoli 1991, Miller and Stigler 1987, Lucy 1994); the third is a shift from research of colors to study of domains such as space, which provides much richer possi-bilities for cognitive effects (for references, see section 1.2).

Tanja Petrovi�12

ments in proving that the language we speak influences the way we think, they are rather trivial and non-surprising (Pinker 1994, 65, Devitt and Sterelny 1987, 178; for counter-arguments, cf. Levinson 2000, 2003a, 42-44, Sampson 2005). Levinson (2003a, 26) defines views of the latter group of scholars as “Simple Nativism”, whose central property is “the claim that all the major properties of language, the object of study, are dictated by inbuilt mental apparatus”, while “the observable variation is simply ‘noise’, and nothing much can be learned from it”. This doctrine is based on Chomskian views of syntax as fundamen-tally universal and innate, and Fodor’s approach to semantics as given by an innate ‘language of thought’. Levinson (op. cit.) further stresses that

“protagonists of this view can be found across the cognitive sciences, including linguists like Jackendoff (see Landlau and Jackendoff 1993), cognitive psychologists like Pinker (1994) or Gleitman (see, e.g., Li and Gleitman 2002) and the so-called evolutionary psychologists like Tooby and Cosmides (1992).”

Large production within the research field of the language-culture-thought in-terface in the last few decades is situated in linguistic fields differently defined in various scholarly traditions. In the United States and the scholarship in-fluenced by main linguistic ideas developed there, it is labeled linguistic an-thropology, anthropological linguistics, ethnolinguistics, sociolinguistics(Duranti 2003, 323), cultural linguistics (Palmer 1999). On the other hand, the tradition developed in the Slavic speaking countries, uses the term ethnolin-guistics to designate

“a complex discipline covering the whole content of culture, folk psychology and mythology, regardless of the forms of their manifestation; for this disci-pline, language is not the only object of research, but in its broader sense it in-cludes all forms which express collective consciousness, folk mentality and image of the world.”

In a more narrow sense, “ethnolinguistics explores the relations between lan-guage on one hand, and spiritual culture and folk mentality on the other, as well as their interdependence” (Tolstaja 2002). Unlike Slavic ethnolinguistics, in the Western tradition ethnolinguistics is mainly concerned with description and research of indigenous languages. This research tradition originates in what was by Fishman (1982) labeled “Whorfianism of the third kind” – insistence on the values of ‘little languages’, like Hopi, as precious contributions to the totality of human understanding (cf. Hill 1988, 15).

The field of research concerned with the interrelations between language, culture and cognition became an exciting playground where so much is going on in different parts of the world and among scholars of various scientific back-

The Intersection of Language, Culture and Cognition 13

�

grounds. For many involved in this enterprise, “an encounter with language and culture is one of the most challenging, interesting, and enriching experiences available” (Agar 1994, 8-9). This enterprise also includes efforts to discuss and elaborate discipline’s metalanguage and contributions which in form of review try to define main theoretical and methodological blocks formed by empirical studies discussing the language-culture relationship and to determine main di-rections in which this discussion will develop (cf., among others, Lucy 1997, Duranti 2003, Hill and Manheim 1992 for broader reviews and Casson 1983, Schieffelin and Ochs 1986, Woolard and Schieffelin 1994, Woolard 1998 for reviews of more specific domains of study).

The present review is an outcome of a two-year project “Shared Mental Re-presentations and Language Patterns: Research Strategies and Empirical Studies” led by Olga M. Mladenova (University of Calgary) and supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Council of Canada. The review is based on bibliography composed of articles and books dealing with any aspect of the relationship between language, culture and cognition published in the period between 1985 and 2004. The bibliography contains 216 references, which should not be seen as a sum total of the most important and relevant pub-lications dealing with the language-culture-thought relationship either theoreti-cally or empirically. Rather, its aim is to provide an idea of the main clusters around which scholarly discourse about this relationship is construed, showing the diversity of topics, possible approaches towards recurring issues, the dy-namics with which research paradigms are established and challenged, as well as the ways in which these paradigms are interconnected.3 It may be considered as a research synthesis, defined by Norris and Ortega (2006) as “systematic re-view of accumulated research studies” that has the following primary goals: to help making sense of research, to enable the research community to compare and combine findings across individual studies and identify gaps in research methodologies, and to show that a synthetic research ethic should be adopted as a guide for all empirical work in a research field.

Regardless of numerous articles that review the work in this field, there are at least three reasons that justify the need for yet another one. First, the present review aims to cover a very vast area in terms of problems researched and methods used. And more importantly, in terms of geographical coverage: it considers publications both from North America and Europe (including publi-cations in Slavic languages), and tries to determine the relation between the

3 The present review does not present all 216 references. Yet, it is not limited only to books

and articles that were included into the bibliography but also covers publications dealing with the language-culture-thought relationship from the end of the project (2004) to date.

Tanja Petrovi�14

main concerns and methods used within these, at the first sight, very different traditions. Most reviews written so far focus only on a particular, geograph-ically limited research tradition. For instance Duranti 2003 reviews linguistic anthropology in the USA, and Siemie�ski 1991 stresses differences between European and American linguistics; Kabakova 1993 reviews works in the area of anthropological linguistics developed in France, Karstedt 2002 in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Judin 1999, 2002 and Tolstaja 2002 deal with works published in Slavic languages that are concentrated on Slavic material, while some of the reviewers limit themselves to works published in particular Slavic languages (Tolstaja 1993 in Polish, Ili� 2002 in Serbian, etc.).4

Second, the time gap between this review and the most extensive ones written before justifies it as appropriate and necessary: in one of the most important texts of this kind, Hill and Mannheim (1992) stress that

“no doubt we write this review prematurely. In the next few years new empirical work, framed within the new synthesis of the diverse strands of neo-relativist thought, will help us understand how language shapes, and is shaped by, the nature of our knowledge.”

After the publication of their review fourteen years ago, a great number of studies in this field appeared. In this respect, the present review can be consid-ered as a sequel to Hill and Mannheim (1992).

Third, this review is based on numerous articles and books, abstract of which are documented and presented in the bibliography published on the University of Calgary Web page.5 Such extensively inductive approach is com-patible with most existing reviews, which usually take into account only a “small number of writers and trends” (Duranti 2003, 324) exemplary for the tendencies described. The review, however, is limited to works concerned with the language-culture-thought interface within anthropological linguistics and related disciplines, although “a through review would require attention at least to the literatures of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and the literary theory of translation” (Hill 1988, 14).

Although broad theoretical, methodological, areal, and temporal scope makes difficult any attempt at generalization in the domain of the language-

4 Irvine (1985) is one of the rare exceptions in this regard: reviewing literature on the

linguistic expression of social status, particularly studies relating forms of language use to forms of social stratification, she is principally concerned with the following question: To what extent findings of sociolinguistic research on this topic in North America (first of all those coming from urban dialectology) resemble or contrast with results for the rest of the world, especially the non-Western world (India and other non-Western areas)?

5 https://dspace.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/44633


�

culture-cognition interface research, it may be generally said that the greatest part of this research is placed in one of the two dominant domains: a) research of relations between language and cognition, and b) research of relations between language and culture,6 as illustrated on Figure 1.

LANGUAGE

language-cognition interface

language-culture interface

COGNITION

language between cognition and culture: universal vs.

culture-specific

CULTURE

Figure 1: The language-culture interface research field

The research conducted along the axes of either language-culture or language-cognition7 should by no means be seen as completely separate from one another – a large portion of that work fluctuates between these two strands, trying to prove that cognition is very important for understanding language as a cultural phenomenon,8 and that there is an essential link between culture and cognition.

6 Language, culture, and thought (cognition) are detected as central points in this research

field also by Gumperz and Levinson (1996a, 2): “There are three terms in the relation: language, thought and culture. Each of these are global cover terms, not notions of any precision. When one tries to make anything definite out of the idea of linguistic relativity, one inevitably has to focus on particular aspects on each of these terms in the relation”. Levinson (1996b) sees cognition as “the intermediate variable between language and culture.”

7 Of course, we consider here only the part of cognitive linguistics, i.e. the discipline dealing with the relation between language and cognition, which also takes into account cultural aspects of human language, and not the (much larger) part of it, which operates with linguistic facts as isolated from any cultural influence.

8 As stressed by Van Dijk (2003, 340), “a study of language and discourse without an explicit cognitive basis is empirically and theoretically reductionist and hence inadequate (…) [s]ocial situations, interactions, or context as such cannot possibly influence discourse (and vice versa) without a sociocognitive interface. And, as is obvious in the relevance of the study of knowledge, attitudes, social representations, and ideologies, cognitions may be as social as they are mental.” Similar viewpoint is expressed by the editors of Language, Culture and Mind: “Language is embedded in the social and cultural reality of language users, and […] such social and cultural knowledge is necessarily

Tanja Petrovi�16

Nevertheless, we still opt for the proposed model because we believe that it may be of great help in observing the scholarly discourse formed at the language-culture interface in its totality, and in trying to identify most im-portant theoretical and methodological issues around which that discourse is formed. Such a perspective allows us to make the following generalizations: Research done on the language-cognition axis is based on the assumption that particular language we speak leaves its traces on the way we think about the world. Since “it is culture [...] that provides the bulk of conceptual packages that are coded in any particular language” (Levinson 2003a, 26-27), this strand necessarily takes culture into account. The language-culture interface research starts from the following premises: a) language is important source of infor-mation about our social and cultural patterns and values, and b) particular cul-tures provide us with important information that helps understanding nature and functioning of linguistic phenomena. As illustrated in footnote 8, this strand of research sometimes tries to link language, culture, and cognition, but is typically concerned with discovering ways in which the language we speak reflects the culture to which we belong. On the other hand, it aims to discover how that culture is reflected in the language we speak, and how the linguistic and cultural patterns may shape one another, leaving cognitive processes out of focus. These generalizations, again, do not imply that there is no overlapping between the outlined categories. On the contrary: A great deal of research that is situated in between the two global orientations is precisely what makes this research field a continuously developing and dynamic scholarly arena.

The present review is divided into three parts. In the first part, the research dealing with cognitive processes and their (in)dependence on particular lan-guage and particular culture will be presented. Most of this research is related, explicitly or implicitly, to the Language relativity hypothesis, a claim that lan-guage can influence thought. Most authors in this field deal with linguistic ex-pressions of universally perceptible concepts and phenomena such as space, time, colors, emotions, etc., trying to prove that the varying ways in which they are shaped in particular languages leave traces in the ways speakers of these languages cognitively perceive the mentioned concepts. The second section brings a review of works, which deal with the language-culture relationship. This strand of research primarily focuses on ideas and views that are shared by the members of a linguistic community, and formed and strengthened through language use; it looks for what language can tell us about the people who speak it. The third, concluding part of the review provides an attempt to observe the

entwined with the cognitive structures that form the matrix for linguistic knowledge” (Kemmer and Achard 2004, xvii).


�

broad and heterogeneous field of language-culture-thought interface research as a totality. It aims to situate this research field both vertically (diachronically, showing its development) and horizontally (synchronically, showing how it is connected to other discourses within linguistics and to discourses of other social sciences such as history, cultural studies, etc.).

1. Language and Cognition

Within this field of research scholars aim to show that connections between cognitive processes and human language are far from banal or non-existing. As stressed by Pederson and Nuyts (1997, 4-5), views on the question of how language relates to thought range from the extreme position that language is the tool of thought to the other extreme position that language and thought are completely separate systems, linked only by arbitrary mapping. Between these extremes, there are various positions, which can roughly be divided into two groups – those viewing conceptualization as derivative from language and/or heavily influenced by it, and those viewing conceptualization as primary and language as derivative from it.

1.1. The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis Reconsidered

A great deal of publications within this research area is implicitly or explicitly related to the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis, the claim that culture, through language, and especially through the grammar of a particular language, affects the way we think. The hypothesis is principally associated with Franz Boas, Eduard Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf (cf. Whorf 1956). In the last two decades, there has been notable revival of the interest for this hypothesis and its authors. Many attempts to reconsider its basic postulates, define new methodo-logical tools and interpretational frameworks in which the ideas of Sapir and Whorf are tested (cf. Gumperz and Levinson (eds.) 1996, Niemeier and Dirven (eds.) 2000). Additionally, significant efforts were made to rehabilitate the works of these American anthropologists and their scientific legacy. Hill and Mannheim (1992, 386-387) thus insist that

“the linguistic relativity hypothesis as proposed by Boas, Sapir and Whorf, is not a hypothesis in the traditional sense, but an axiom, which can only be judged on the basis of the extent to which it leads to productive questions about talk and social action, and not by canons of falsifiability”,

while “the modern debate over linguistic relativity has consistently confused assumptions with research findings, axiom with hypothesis”. Lee (1996) sug-

Tanja Petrovi�18

gests that the works by B. Lee Whorf should be seen as a theory complex; she tries to lessen the damage done by over-simplifications of Whorf’s theory in the past, and points out that Whorf’s notions of patternment and entrenchment have their reflexes in the more recent scholarly thinking.

Works by Sapir and Whorf still motivate scholars to challenge and test their findings and theoretical presumptions, and a great deal of scholarly work on ex-ploring links among language, culture, and thought in the last two decades can be seen as a continuous dialogue with the founders of the linguistic relativity hypothesis in which their methodological tools and objects of research are reexamined. Many authors try to approach objects of research from new and different methodological perspectives, which is usually rewarded with new findings and deepening of theoretical complexity of the concept (cf. Lucy 1996). A number of review articles also report reemergence of interest for the Linguistic relativity hypothesis in various academic settings (Koerner 1999, Kabakova 1993, Ili� 2002, Tolstoj 1992).

1.2. Conceptualization: Universal or Language-/Culture-Specific?

Concepts such as space and time, semantic categories such as colors, emotions, as well as various kinds of taxonomies are often stressed to be universal by those who argue for independence of cognition from particular languages (cf. Gell 1992, 118-131 for the overview of the works of authors arguing against temporal cultural relativism; Berlin and Kay 1969, Heider 1972, Kay and Maffi 1999 for universality of color concepts; Landau and Jackendoff 1993, Li and Gleitman 2002 for universality of spatial relations). By those who argue that “speaking specific languages does indeed have cognitive consequences for the speakers of those languages” (Levinson 2003a, 34), it is however stressed that except the “celebrated achievements” in the field of lexical universals such as color terminology, kinship, and ethnobiology, we actually possess no knowledge of universals in lexical semantics (Levinson 1996, 136). Even for these semantic domains, which are traditionally believed to feature universal conceptual properties, there is increasing evidence that their universality is not undisputable. A number of scholars mobilized themselves in order to show that also color terminology, kinship and spatial relations highly vary across languages, if observed from more sophisticated perspective (cf. Bennardo (ed.) 2002, Bowerman 1980, 1989, 1996, Bickel 1997, 2000, 2001, Brown 1994, Casad and Langacker 1985, Hanks 1990, Levinson 1996, 1997, Levinson and Brown 1994, MacLaury 1995, Miller 2001, Vendina 1999 for spatial concepts, Aoshuan 1997, Arutjunova 1997, 1997a, Rakhlina 1997, Rjabceva 1997 for


�

temporal concepts, Lucy 1981, Davidoff, Davis and Roberson 1999, Levinson 2000, MacLaury 1991, 1995, Verspoor 1998 for color terms, Hill and Hill 1997, Danziger 2001 for kinship terminology, Geeraerts and Grondelaers 1995, Kövecses 1995, Matsuki 1995, Maynard 2002, Moore, Romney, Hsia, and Rusch 1999 for conceptualization of emotions, Talmy 2000a, b, Wierzbicka 1992 for ethnobiological taxonomies). These differences in conceptualization are socio-culturally grounded, forming worldviews, understood as the funda-mental cognitive orientation of a society, a subgroup, or even an individual and may be seen as culturally defined imagery (Palmer 1999).

As Levinson (2003, 30) stresses, spatial domain is at the first sight “a con-ceptual domain where we would least expect major semantic variation.” A number of authors, however, have shown that despite the universality of spatial concept, there is tremendous variation in ways how this concept is coded in various domains of research such as deixis (Hanks 1990, 1996), motion verbs (Wilkins and Hill 1995, Slobin 2003), grammaticalization of spatial relations (Brown 1994), and coordinate systems various languages use to describe locations of objects (Levinson 1996b, 1997, Bickel 2000, Pederson et al. 1998, Majid et al. 2004).

From the methodological viewpoint, many authors consider essentially im-portant to interrelate linguistic conceptualization of space and other, nonlin-guistic models of conceptualization and mental operations, aiming to prove that “subjects follow the coding pattern in their language when performing entirely nonlinguistic tasks” (Levinson 2003a, 40; cf. also Levinson 1996, 1997, 2003, Levinson et al. 2002).

In his review of the study of language and space interrelation, Levinson (1996b) stresses the fact that a lot has been written about collective representa-tions and symbolic use of space, but very little about the notions being used in solving everyday spatial problems. He explains this fact by ethnocentrism, the assumption in Western thinking that notions of space are universal. However, a series of “neo-Whorfian” findings that appeared recently show that “specializa-tions in spatial language correlate with non-linguistic coding strategies or cognitive styles” (Levinson 1996b); consequently, it seems that language plays a crucial role in creating cognitive patterns within a speech community (cf. Bickel 1997, 2000).

Emotion terms and metaphors constitute another arena of the universal vs. language-/culture-specific argument. The cross-linguistic perspective reveals sociocultural factors underlying the expressions of emotions in particular lan-guages, while the consideration of social and cultural contexts contributes to the understanding of the cognitive model of emotions (Matsuki 1995). Scholars

Tanja Petrovi�20

introduce methods, which enable objective analysis of empirical findings regar-ding the extent to which the semantic structure of emotion terms is shared among different languages. Additionally, quantitative methods are introduced, which provide tools for measuring variability both within a culture and between various cultures (Moore et al. 1999).

Along with terms for spatial relations, color terms are another classical domain for the study of linguistic relativity by juxtaposing their relative fea-tures to the universal ones. The theory of basic color terms, established by Ber-lin and Kay (1969), was a crucial factor in the demise of the theory of linguistic relativity. Recent studies of color terms, however, significantly contributed to the revitalization of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis, proving that there are not many reasons to believe in universality of lexical coding of colors (cf. Da-vidoff, Davies and Roberson 1999, Levinson 2000, Vasilevi� 1988). MacLaury (1991) argues for an intermediate position: on the basis of two case studies of color categorization in non-Western languages, he shows that the regularities of color-category evolution are not fiction that should be disregarded, but rather constants against which cultural diversity can be appraised. Although the un-usual color categories in non-Western languages support the doctrine of lin-guistic relativity, the universalist hypothesis of color-category evolution can specify the degree to which an unexpected system converges from constraints defined by visual neurology. The data provided by both universalists and rela-tivists provide an overview of the relation between perception and language.

Within the area of research concerned with the ways in which the language we speak influences the ways we think, there are different views on language as opposed to cognition and culture. Bickel’s work, for instance, offers a view in which language is a means of conceptualization, so that we can speak of “the linguistic category of environmental space conceptualization in Belhare.” For others, language and conceptualization are not so closely interconnected. Keller and Keller (1996) consider conceptualization as a mental operation that works in many “modules”, each of which may function independently in some con-texts, and all of which may function interactively to a certain degree. In such a view, the thesis of linguistic determinism could be at most a thesis about the re-lation of language to just that part of the cognitive system specialized for pro-positional representations. Bowerman (1996) differentiates between linguistic and non-linguistic spatial conceptualization, and argues against the general opinion that non-linguistic spatial development is much more important than experience with language in the process in which children acquire locative pre-positions. Starting with the assumption that languages differ widely in their or-ganization of spatial meanings, she presents evidence that children’s semantic


�

categories for spatial terms may already be profoundly language-specific by the age of two. Slobin (1987, 1996, 2003) argues for an approach in which atten-tion is paid to “the cognitive processes that are brought to bear, online, in the course of using language” (Slobin 2003, 158, emphasis in the original). He stresses that

“the voluminous literature on linguistic relativity has concerned itself primarily with the search for influences of particular languages on non-linguistic cogni-tion in situations in which language is not being used, overtly or covertly” (p. 157, emphasis in the original).

The different picture is obtained, however, in the process of “thinking for speaking”, since “we encounter the contents of the mind in a special way when they are being accessed for use” (Slobin 1987; cf. also Clark 2003). Slobin’s work is part of the increasing efforts to approach cognition from the perspective of language use (cf. Gumperz and Levinson 1996b, Danziger 1996).

Some authors discuss cognitive concepts and their relation to language and culture within a framework of already established theories in the cognitive science, such as Place of negotiation theory (Matsuki 1995) or Vantage theory (MacLaury 1995, Hill and MacLaury 1995).

In Slavic linguistics, scholars dealing with Logical analysis of language are concerned with detection and explanation of logical models and processes that underlie linguistic conceptualization of reality. Concepts such as space and time have privileged position also in this research domain (cf. Arutjunova 1997, Aoshuan 1997).

Research of metaphor as a means of conceptualization of reality has an im-portant place in studies trying to answer the question whether language influen-ces our cognition; concepts of space, time, and emotions are frequently ex-amined through the analysis of metaphors (cf. Arutjunova 1997, Geeraerts and Grondelaers 1995, Kövecses 1995, Matsuki 1995, Stefanowitsch 2004). Central concerns in this domain are whether metaphor is a universal or a culture-specific phenomenon, and what is the role of metaphor in linguistic and non-linguistic conceptualization. Similar to the domains of color terms and polit-eness, there is an influential theory arguing against relativity and culturally-de-termined nature of metaphors in language: Lakoff and Johnson (1980) stress that metaphors are not only a matter of language, but that the human thought processes are also largely metaphorical, meaning that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. In their opinion, the very exis-tence of metaphoric linguistic expression is made possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person’s conceptual system. In opposition to such view, Quinn (1991) argues for culturally based nature of metaphors. Relying on

Tanja Petrovi�22

the results of her own research, she emphasizes that metaphors do not constitute our understanding, but are ordinarily selected to fit a preexisting and culturally shared model. Metaphors do not typically give rise to new, pre-viously unrecognized entailments, but they help us to follow the entailments of the preexisting cultural model. The failure of Lakoff and Johnson to grant culture its own place in the linguistic analysis of metaphor is attributed to the methodology they use, which relies on idealized cases disconnected from the context of actual use in natural discourse. Similarly, Zinken (2003) stresses that in the cognitive theory of metaphor subject’s cultural situatedness is rarely taken into account, despite the fact that cognitive linguists claim that within this theory, metaphor should not be understood as an individual body experience alone, but also as a sociocultural experience.

1.3. Cultural Dimensions of Grammar

As argued by Whorf (1956), a grammatical system used unconsciously by a speaker is the primary domain in which linguistic relativity is expressed: “grammatical meaning is system-bound, deeply variable, and encapsulates a coherent world-view” (Levinson 1996, 137). The research starting from the assumption that “the grammatical structure of a language shapes its’ speakers perception of the world” is therefore the closest to the classical “Whorfian hypothesis” (Gentner and Goldin-Meadow 2003, 9). The role of grammatical resources of particular languages in conceptualization is, for instance, discussed by Casad (1995), Lucy (1992), Newman (2002, 2002a), Enfeld (2002), Wierz-bicka (2002), Chafe (2002), Boroditsky, Schmidt, and Philips (2003).

As some of the above mentioned authors stress in their works, recently developed approaches to both classical fields of exploring linguistic relativity – the ways in which universal concepts are shaped by particular languages and grammars, and the ways in which grammatical structure of particular languages shapes our perception of the world – insist on the necessity to take into account language use and a broader framework of communication as a cultural practice. Thus Hopper (1998) proposes that a more discursive view on language be adopted in examining linguistic relativity, and applies such a methodological approach to the analysis of English verbs. In the same vein, the editors of Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (Gumperz and Levinson 1996a) state that its

“readers will find the original idea of linguistic relativity still live, but functioning in a way that differs from how it was originally conceived: […] from an ‘inner circle’ of links between grammar, categories, and culture as in-ternalized by the individual, the focus shifts to include an ‘outer circle’ of com-


�

munication and its relation, on the one hand to interaction in social settings and on the other hand to individual patterns of cognition which are partly context-ually attuned, and even perhaps acquired primarily through patterns of commu-nication, in turn enabling it” (pp. 9-10).

Language use has a crucial importance for shaping culturally specific features of language. As stressed by Gumperz and Levinson (1996b, 227), “most ana-lysts presume a strong universal basis for principles of language use, but with significant variation in situational application” (for such presumptions in the research of linguistic politeness, cf. Brown and Levinson 1987, Leech 1983; for other linguistic domains, cf. Ochs 1996, Levinson 1996a, Haviland 1996, Clark 1996, Hanks 1996, and Gumperz 1996). Many aspects of linguistic meaning depend on the use; moreover, rules of use leave traces on the language structure through the process of grammaticalization. This is particularly obvious in the case of deixis or indexicality (cf. Hanks 1990, 1996). Many other authors ex-plain certain features of structure of a language as grammaticalizations of usage patterns, among them Bickel (2001), Burridge (2002), Enfield (2002), Heine (1995), Simpson (2002).

2. Language and Culture

The strand of research focused on the right side of Figure 1 usually leaves the fundamental question of the Linguistic relativity hypothesis – whether particu-lar language influences cognition – out of focus. Nevertheless, it implicitly or explicitly relies on this hypothesis’ basic postulates. Central for this approach are notions such as worldview, folk model, (linguistic) model of the world, lin-guistic image of the world. These notions are essential for the research tradition that views language as an expression of a group (national, class, religious, gender, etc.) identity. Within the Slavic ethnolinguistic tradition, linguistic model of the world is defined as an interpretation of the world, which is fixed through language (Bartmi�ski 1999; cf. also Civ’jan 1990, 5). This interpreta-tion is conducted through processes such as segmentation, description, classi-fication and evaluation by various kinds of linguistic means (Ma�kiewicz 1999). World model is a set of ideas about the world that can be observed in language, its grammatical forms, lexicon, folklore texts, or can be indirectly reconstructed with help of language forms as texts (Bartmi�ski 1999; cf. Grzegorczykowa 1999). In this kind of research, the model of the world is frequently nationally or territorially determined; hence some scholars talk about Polish, Russian, or Balkan models of the world (cf. Pol. polski, rosyjskij�zykowy obraz �wiata, Bartmi�ski, Sandomirskaja, and Telija 1999, Russ.

Die Europäizität der Slawia oder die Slawizität Europas · Christian Voß / Alicja Nagórko...

Documents

Transcript of Die Europäizität der Slawia oder die Slawizität Europas · Christian Voß / Alicja Nagórko...