Chapter 5.

Language and Culture

The aim in this chapter is to:
• identify the links between language and culture
• introduce Malinowski’s contexts of situation and culture
• discuss the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (strong and weak, lexical and grammati-
cal versions)
• discuss political correctness in terms of language and culture
• develop the idea of categorization
• discuss lexical gaps, borrowing and coining

5.1 Contexts of Situation and Culture

Culture is still hardly a respected area of study for linguists. Fortunately though,
anthropologists respected the study of language. In 1911, Franz Boas (1986:7), a
German and one of the fathers of modern anthropology, discussed the links be-
tween language, thought and (primitive) culture. Boas felt that language was not in
itself a barrier to thought but that there was a dynamic relationship between lan-
guage, culture and thought. His key point was succinctly put as follows: “the form
of the language will be moulded by the state of that culture”. Seventy-five years
later, his thoughts are still very relevant, and in fact serve to introduce Valdes’ pub-
lication on culture (1986:1). In her Preface to the book, she stated: “his work inspired
a generation of anthropologists and sociologists before the applied linguists took up
the subject of the effect of culture on language and vice versa”. And it is to him that
we owe the term “cultural relativism”.
Like Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, who was Polish, was also a founding father
of anthropology and an outsider (Eriksen and Nielsen 2001:38). They were also
both interested in language. Malinowski coined the terms ‘context of situation’ and
‘context of culture’, and noted that a language could only be fully understood, i.e.
have meaning, when these two contexts (situation and culture) were implicitly or
explicitly clear to the interlocutors. He actually coined the term ‘context of culture’
in his 1935 work (1935:18), but, as the 1938 republication of his original 1923
paper illustrates, he was already discussing the meaning of language in terms of a
wider context of culture:

[…] language is essentially rooted in the reality of the culture […] it cannot
be explained without constant reference to these broader contexts of verbal
utterance. (Malinowski 1938:305)

He studied the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands and their language

(Kiriwinian), and felt that he would have to make a number of changes in translat-
ing Kiriwinian conversations into English. Most importantly, he realised that he
would need to add a commentary to make explicit what was implicit for the
Trobrianders. Below is his first translation of a native monologue:
100 David Katan

Tsakaulo kaymatana yakida; tawoulo ovanu;

We run front-wood ourselves; we paddle in place;
tasivila tagine soda; isakaulo ka’u’uya
we turn we see companion ours he runs rear-wood
oluvieki similaveta Pilolu
behind their sea-arm Pilolu

He realised that he still needed to explain the immediate situation of the conver-
sation to the English audience. Otherwise, the English reader would not have
understood that the Trobriander was, for example, sitting round with a group of
eager listeners, recounting the day’s fishing trip, and, in this extract, talking about
guiding the boats home. A version for outsiders might have sounded so mething
like this:

In crossing the sea-arm of Pilolu (between the Trobriands and the Ampphletts),
our canoe sailed ahead of the others. When nearing the shore we began to
paddle. We looked back and saw our companions still far behind, still on the
sea-arm of Pilolu.

Thirdly, though, Malinowski realised that not only the immediate environment
needed to be clarified for the English, but also that Trobriand traditions and beliefs
were encoded in the texts, and were not immediately understandable in translation.
These included the fact that the fishing expedition finished in a race, and that the
speaker was evidently boasting. Only when these two factors were taken into ac-
count could the texts be said to have meaning:

Front-wood is a technical term for competitions, as in ‘leading canoe’, and

includes “a specific emotional tinge only comprehensible against a background
of their tribal ceremonial life, commerce and enterprise”.
Paddle signals the fact that the sail is lowered as shallow water is reached
and is used metaphorically to mean that the race is all but over.

Though Malinowski was primarily an anthropologist, he was much more inter-

ested in the role of language in producing meaning than his fellow linguists writes
Lyons (1981:16, emphasis in original): “There have been times in the recent past,
notably i n America in the period between 1930 and the end of the 1950s, whe n
linguistic semantics, – the study of meaning in language – was very largely neglected”.
The reasons were due to the linguists’ focus on the technical level of language : the
word and in how words combined (syntax). Meaning, of course, is highly subjec-
tive, changeable and indeed vague, hardly a subject for technicians. The word ‘meaning’
itself is open to a number of different definitions (ibid.:30-31). Semantic meaning
may be part of formal culture, but ‘the meaning’ in the sense of what the interlocutor
understands is part of the informal culture – and therefore was not regarded a s
Language and Culture 101

worthy of study. Translation, too, suffered in the same way. It was largely taught,
not in terms of meaning, but as a behaviourist grammar-translation activity.
‘Context’ began to receive more attention in 1933 when the American linguist
Leonard Bloomfield (1984:139) published Language. He drew on behavioural psy-
chology for his understanding of meaning, which he illustrated with Jack and Jill.
The example, summarized here, is as follows. Jill spies an apple tree. She makes a
noise with her larynx, tongue and lips, and the obedient Jack vaults the fence, climbs
the tree, takes the apple, brings it to her and places it in her hand. So, according to
Bloomfield, meaning depends on “the situation in which the speaker utters it and
the response which it calls forth in the hearer”. The definition of meaning in NLP
(O’Connor and Seymour 1993:18) is very similar: “The meaning of the communi-
cation is the response that you get”. The social background is important for
Bloomfield (1984:23), though he does not actually mention culture and its ef fect
on the act of speech: “The occurrence of speech ... and the wording of it ... and the
whole course of practical events before and after [the act of speech], depend upon
the entire life-history of the speaker and of the hearer”.
Sapir, on the other hand, an anthropologist like Malinowski, and also a student
under Boas, was convinced not only of the importance of the social background but
that future language studies would turn to a ‘concept of culture’. He introduced his
essay on ‘Language Race and Culture’ (1949:207) with these words: “Language
has a setting ... language does not exist apart from culture”. In Britain, the linguist J.
R. Firth developed a number of Malinowski’s ideas, but focused principally on the
concept of a context of situation.
According to Halliday (Halliday and Hasan 1989:9) the importance of a cultural
framework in linguistics was not extensively studied until thirty years later with
Hymes’ work and his definition of the ethnography of communication in 1962. This
led to a renewal of interest in the different ways in which language is used in differ-
ent cultures. Hymes (1974:4) dedicated one of his books in memory of Edward
Sapir and pointed to the importance of examining cultural values and beliefs for
their bearing on communicative events. More recently, NLP has also taken the view
that meaning in communication is culture-bound (O’Connor and Seymour 1993:
23, 89). Independently, one of the axioms of semiotics is that the meaning of a sign
is arbitrarily assigned according to context.
Halliday (Halliday and Hasan 1989:47), a former pupil of Firth, takes up
Malinowski’s notions of context of situation and control of culture. However, it is
context of situation that is explained in detail, not context of culture. He explains
why below:

We have not offered, here, a separate linguistic model of the context of cul-
ture; no such thing yet exists ... But in describing the context of situation, it is
helpful to build in some indication of the cultural background and the as-
sumptions that have to be made if the text is to be interpreted – or produced –
in the way ... the system intends.

The Logical Levels Model discussed earlier should go some way towards clarifying
the factors (linguistic and non-linguistic) involved in the cultural background.
102 David Katan

Two of the most vigorous exponents of the role of culture in language were, of
course, Sapir and his pupil Benjamin Lee Whorf. It is a testimony to their
groundbreaking and controversial ideas that they are still discussed today. The Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis has an obligatory place in all contemporary text books that touch
upon the subject, even though the hypothesis was first published before the Second
World War. Indeed, as Eriksen and Nielsen (2001:66) put it, even when the theory
wasn’t being discussed in the fierce anthropological debates in the 1990s, this “can
only be understood as a serious case of collective memory loss”.
The next sections look at the theories of Sapir and Whorf and how they can help
contribute to the discussion on the context of culture.

5.2 The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• the strong/weak versions

• the lexical/grammatical versions
• examples of the hypothesis:
– categorization
– political correctness

That the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of that
language ( the language I understand) mean the limits of my world.
(Wittgenstein)

In this section we will discuss the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in terms of its relevance
today. The quote above is from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus, originally written in 1921 and now included in The Wittgenstein
Reader (1994:25, emphasis in the original). His words have been used by many,
both in linguistics (e.g. Hasan 1984:133) and in translation (e.g. Ulrych 1992: pref-
ace). They also serve as a backdrop to this and the following chapters.
Sapir (1929:214), as mentioned earlier, like Malinowski, was convinced that
language could only be interpreted within a culture. However, he went further, sug-
gesting “no two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as
representing the same reality. The worlds in which different societies live are dis-
tinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels”. This well-known
extract forms part of what is loosely known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, of which
there have traditionally been two versions: the strong and the weak. In the strong
view, language actually determines the way the language user thinks, which would
suggest, for example, that bilinguals would automatically change their view of the
world as they change language. This view has few supporters today. Steven Pinker
(1995:57) in The Language Instinct is adamantly critical of the theory: “The idea
that thought is the same thing as language is an example of a conventional absurd-
ity: a statement that goes against all common sense”.
Hatim and Mason (1990:29), among many others, have come to the same con-
clusion. They say that if the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis were
Language and Culture 103

accepted, this would mean that people, hence translators and interpreters too, would
be ‘prisoners’ of their native language and would be “incapable of conceptualizing
in categories other than those of our native tongue. It is now widely recognized that
such a view is untenable”.
Many others also believe that acceptance of this version of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis means that we can only ever think what our language allows. Halliday
(1992:65) would also not call himself a supporter of this strong version of the hy-
pothesis, though he does state that “grammar creates the potential within which we
act and enact our cultural being. This potential is at once both enabling and con-
straining: that is, grammar makes meaning possible and also sets limits on what can
be meant”. This is an example of the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf theory, which
suggests that language influences thought. This version of the theory has many more
supporters in anthropology, linguistics and translation. For example, R. J. Reddick
(1992:214), in an essay in honour of the linguist Robert E. Longacre, states: “We
cannot foreground reality in discourse unless we have unmediated access to it, and
we never do. Our perceptions are always mediated by our assumptions, our beliefs,
and, in fact, by the language we speak”.
Supporters of the weak version suggest that language is one of the factors influ-
encing our understanding of reality, but it is not the determining factor. Hatim and
Mason (1990:105), in fact, accept the weak version: “languages differ in the way
they perceive and partition reality”. Importantly they also add “This situation cre-
ates serious problems for the translator”. According to the Logical Levels Model,
the determining factors are, as Reddick suggests, beliefs and values.
We will now focus on how language does influence our perception and look in a
little more depth at what Sapir and Whorf actually had to say. Apart from there
being a strong and a weak version of their theory, they had a different approach.
The two approaches are now known as the lexical and the grammatical versions of
the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

5.3 Lexis

• lexical labels
• an example: political correctness
• categorization
• lexical and conceptual gaps

Sapir and Whorf had a different understanding of the term ‘language’. For Sapir, at
least in his early years, the key to cultural reality was in the lexicon. As far as he
was concerned language was a case of labelling lexis, and behind that label was a
different reality rather than simply a different label.
How far this is true has been a subject of discussion for three-quarters of a cen-
tury. One recent in-depth study on lexical labels was carried out by Rogelio
Diaz-Guerrero and Lorand Szalay (1991:24-25). They interviewed 100 Mexican
and 100 North American college students and asked them to make a list of words
104 David Katan

they associated with a headword, or what they called ‘stimulus themes’, such as
‘equality’ and ‘the United States’. The “rather lengthy response lists are particu-
larly informative in revealing what a particular group feels is important, what they
pay attention to, what they feel sensitive about, and what they are collectively pre-
disposed to overlook and ignore”. Below is a ‘semantograph’ of Mexican and
American responses to the labels ‘United States’ and ‘Estados Unidos’.
The results show that the ‘psycho-cultural distance’ between the labels ‘United
States’ and ‘Estados Unidos’ represents different realities. For the North Ameri-
cans, ‘United States’ has a fairly technical meaning in terms of ‘states’ and ‘America’;
there is also a strong feeling of love and patriotism. For the Mexicans, ‘United
States’ is anything but technical. The lexical item cues historic frames of exploita-
tion and war, as well as comparative frames with their perception of their present
context of culture. ‘United States’ represents what Mexico does not have: money,
wealth, power and development. Maps of the world, for the lexicon at least, are
culture specific. These differences in meaning, as we discussed in ‘Beliefs’ (Chap-
ter 4.5), make life very difficult for a cultural mediator:

UNITE D STATES

AMERICA . STATE S EXPLOITATION . WAR

LOVE . PATRIOTIS M MONET . HEALT H

GOVERNMENT . POLITIC S POWER . BI G

FREEDOM . J U S T I C E . UNIO N
PEOPLE . GRINGO S P R O G R E S S. DEVELOPMEN T

COUNTKT . CULTUR E

PERCEPTIO
SNA ND E V A L U A T I OSN

by A m e r i c a n s by M e x i c a n s

Figure 17. Perceptions and Evaluations of “United States”

• Political Correctness
However, we do not have to travel to two different languages to see how the lexicon
channels thought. In the eighteenth century, an English editor, a certain Thomas
Bowdler, published an expurgated edition of the works of Shakespeare. He felt that
Shakespeare’s use of language was at times offensive to the reader. Since then, the
term ‘to bowdlerize’ has denoted the attempt to remove or substitute languagedeemed
to be indecent, i.e. language that might offend. Those who believe in the effective-
Language and Culture 105

ness of this approach believe that by using a euphe mism, or leaving implicit an
explicit word, the reader will be directed to think in a different way.
More recently there has been a great deal of bowdlerizing both in Britain and in
America under the guise of bias-free language, or politically correct (PC) language,
and this necessarily affects the acceptability of a translation. The target is not so
much ‘decency’ as ‘sensitivity’ in general. The aim of the PC movement is, accord-
ing to Bryson (1994:425), “to make language less wounding or demeaning to those
whose sex, race, physical condition or circumstances leave them vulnerable to the
raw power of words”. The PC view is that if an evaluative or offensive word is
substituted by a standard or technical term, then the evaluation or the offence is also
removed.
As we have seen, the American based localization industry has been particularly
sensitive to the translation of potentially politically incorrect terms. An early
Microsoft thesaurus, for example, contained both ‘savage’ and ‘man-eater’ as syno-
nyms for ‘Indian’. Spanish-American users complained and the words were erased.
Some examples of the types of changes being sought are outlined in the style guide
for academic writing produced by The Open University (1993) in England. We
have already mentioned its own style, which includes a series of behavioural “do’s
and don’ts”, in Chapter 4.2. The guide dedicates two pages to language style and a
further seventeen pages to writing which

aims to create the conditions whereby people are treated solely on the basis
of their merits, abilities and potential, regardless of gender, colour, ethnic or
national origin, age, socio-economic background, disability, religious or po-
litical beliefs, family circumstance, sexual orientation, or other irrelevant
distinction.

The Open University, according to its official publication, is convinced that “lan-
guage reflects and enshrines the values and prejudices of the society in which it has
evolved, and is a powerful means of perpetuating them”. The areas specifically cov-
ered with regard to political correctness are:

• age “Language is a powerful method of structuring attitudes about old age”

Words to avoid
mutton dressed as lamb
dirty old man
old fogey, old codger, old dear, old folk
the elderly

• cultural diversity
Words to avoid Words to use
Blacks, non-white, words denoting ethnic origin; e.g. Afro-American,
coloured Black American, etc.
Red Indian Native American
Eskimo Inuit
106 David Katan

• disability
Words to avoid Words to use
X is a polio victim X has polio
the disabled disabled people
mental handicap people with learning difficulties
‘blind spot’/‘deaf to entreaties’ isn’t attentive/doesn’t listen

• gender
Words to avoid Words to use
unspecified he/she s/he, he or she, they
modifiers: e.g. woman doctor doctor
generic ‘man’ people/humanity

Mühlhäusler and Harré (1990:235-38) devote an entire publication to the use of

pronouns, and they cite research that establishes that (the English) language is bi-
ased against women. The examples they give concern gender indeterminate nouns
and pronouns (‘man’ as in ‘mankind’; ‘doctor’; the generic ‘he’, etc.). Though these
are generic words, they generally give rise to thoughts of men rather than women.
This, the authors state, gives rise to what they term ‘indexical offence’.
Whether or not we have indexical offence, the use of language does affect thought.
The first response is determined by the language. One only needs to look at a list
such as the one supplied below by Bryson (1994:25-26), borrowed from Martin
Montgomery (1986:178), to see how language takes on meaning within a culture
and tends to condition our thoughts. In each paired opposite, there is a difference in
connotation:

master mistress
bachelor spinster
governor governess
courtier courtesan

In all cases, these paired sets of words do not simply denote gender differences
but power (on the left), and submissiveness and inconsequence (on the right). As
Montgomery (ibid.:178) says, reflecting on the same gender pairing, “It is striking
… that words associated with women should be consistently downgraded in this
way. Such a tendency lends support to the claim that English, at least, is systemati-
cally skewed to represent women as the ‘second sex’”.
However, there are many, especially the more conservative, who believe that
changing the form will not change the offence. They believe that ‘a shop assistant’
is still (just) ‘a shop girl’, ‘an office manager’ is a glorified ‘secretary’, and ‘be-
tween jobs’ is, in fact, ‘unemployed’. Many publications are now very careful to be
technically politically correct. However, (unconscious?) slip-ups occur, belying the
fact that adhering to correct in-house style has little to do with a writer’s actual
mental model of the world. This example (emphasis added) is taken from a 1997
Financial Times publication:
Language and Culture 107

Contrary to popular belief, the tax man does not always want to bleed you
dry of your pound of flesh. Peel awayhis (or her) mask, and underneath you
may be surprised to find a fairly decent, understanding sort of chap.
(The International, July 1997:31)

For many, particularly right-wing thinkers, PC is seen as limiting intellectual

and artistic freedom. Jane Gordon (English) describes with dismay in the conserva-
tive Daily Telegraph (03/03/95) how her (American) book editor tried to change a
number of words in her first book. The reason given by the editor was that the
words were not politically correct and might upset or offend. She also cites other
changes ‘demanded’ from other first-book novelists:

Original Copy editor remark

The only other woman I had
seen walk like that was a lesbian delete line
Irish drunk omit nationality
‘You old scrubber’ change to “You ex-cleaning
woman you”
(for an adult) girl/lady change to “woman”

Established novelists have also been hit. Enid Blyton’s children’s Noddy books,
written in 1949 (and immensely popular in Britain) had to go through a number of
rewrites after the end of the 1980s. To counter criticisms of sexism in their ani-
mated series, the BBC introduced a character called Dinah Doll to Toy Town. She
was “a black, assertive, ethnic minority female”. The character “Big Ears” became
“White Beard”, and “Mr. Plod the policeman” became “officer Plod” (for the Ameri-
can market). The most important rewrite, though, involved the deletion of one of
the principal characters, a loveable soft black-faced doll, named “Gollywog”. He
had to go, because part of his name, ‘wog’, connotes “a black or dark-skinned per-
son or an immigrant who does not speak English”. However, “Pleasing every
sensitivity is often difficult. When the Golliwogs became goblins in 1989, protests
were received from Scandinavian countries who believed their trolls were being
insulted”.1
Gordon continues with another writer’s thoughts on the matter:

Eradicating certain words from fiction does not mean that the feelings they
reflect in the real world cease to exist. Children nowadays are described as
having learning difficulties and what has happened? Other children have
started to refer to them as ‘LDs’, which is no different from calling them
‘morons or ‘spastics’ is it?

Mühlhäusler and Harré (1990:247) would certainly agree that neutral words take
on their own connotations. They describe the attempt to find a PC equivalent of

1
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/531557.stm
108 David Katan

‘Mr’ for women. The problem that needed solving was that there is a sexual conno-
tation (or meta-message) of ‘unavailable’ with ‘Mrs’ and ‘available’ with ‘Miss’.
The solution was the technical ‘Ms’. However, like all technical words used infor-
mally, there is a meta-message. ‘Ms’ “has now come to mean in many instances not
married or unmarried woman, but unmarried feminist person”.
In the Anglo-Saxon countries in particular, the idea that language should not
offend or demean (particularly with regard to gender, race, appearance or behav-
iour) is basically accepted, even if the conservative press complains about the extreme
applications. Halliday (1992:72, emphasis in original) notes that:

We [in Australia] have a Scientific commission on Language and Sex to deal

with the situation (and note in this connection that it isassumed that by work-
ing with language you can change social reality, which makes sense only if
you accept that reality is construed in language).

There are three important points to be made here with regard to crosscultural
communication. First, surface lexical choice clearly does influence thought. Sec-
ond, surface structure does not necessarily mirror underlying thought. Thirdly, what
is most interesting about the PC phenomenon is not the debate itself but the fact that
it is treated in different ways in different cultures.
In Italy, for example, the PC movement is almost non-existent. As Tobias Jones
(2003:118) explains to his British readers: “It quickly becomes clear that Italy is the
land that feminism forgot”. The leader of one of Italy’s most important political
parties uses language that no politician or influential party leader could ever use in
America or Britain:

Umberto Bossi of the Northern league ... is a growling, blustering, regional

populist just like Ian Paisley. But he is crude to a degree that would horrify
the Ulster cleric: “the Northern League,” he is fond of saying, “has got a
hard on”.
The Guardian Weekend (3/12/94)

The Italian news-magazine Panorama (24/03/95) published a cover story on the

PC phenomenon, which helps to illustrate the frame within which the PC philoso-
phy is interpreted. The cover of the magazine has a photograph of a number of
unclothed top models. The article notes that all the major Italian news magazines
will continue to use the same strategy to increase sales – and that this is not in line
with PC thinking. The inside story describes (and treats) PC as a fashion rather than
a serious problem: la più radicale e discussa moda culturale americana/the most
radical and talked about culture-fashion yet from the States.
What the British conservatives feel about PC is what mainstream Italy feels. To
use Kluckhohn’s terms, the variant British orientation is the dominant Italian. So,
different cultures respond to the politically correct movement in different ways;
only some cultures believing that the use of language has a significant direct bear-
Language and Culture 109

ing on thought. Séguinot (1995:61, 68) makes the same point and, citing Boddewyn,
notes that only the following countries had legislation on sexism in advertising:
Canada, the Netherlands, India, Scandinavia, the UK and the US. No other country
deemed it necessary to intervene on behalf of politically correct language. The PC
phenomenon is felt most in the United States, and in fact most of the complaints
raised by copy editors and publishers in the Gordon article were American – and
most of the complaining writers were British. More than anything else, this demon-
strates Sapir’s main point that there are different realities behind different languages.
As mentioned earlier, these must be mediated if translators are not to offend (or
bemuse) their readers or editors. 2

• Categorization
One fundamental aspect of Sapir’s theory is that of categorization. Though not all
writers agree with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it is generally accepted that we do
organize our perception so that we put what we see into a predefined category. For
example, when looking at something for the first time in a shop window we are able
to say “Look at that chair. Isn’t it unusual?” Thus, it is possible to talk about the
unusuality of something never seen before. This leads us to the importance of ex-
pectations, which have already been discussed in Chapter 3 in terms of frames and
prototypes.
Sherlock Holmes was a master in categorization. Without this skill he would
have lost most of his clients. He followed Abelson and Black (1986:1) who state:

A fundamental supposition throughout our work is that knowledge is

schematised, that is, organised in chunks or packages so that, given a little bit
of situational context, the individual has available many likely inferences on
what might happen next in a given situation.

On watching a woman hesitating outside his front door from his upstairs win-
dow, Holmes casually mentions to Watson:

I have seen those symptoms before. Oscillation upon the pavement always
means an affaire de coeur.

According to psychology professor Edward Smith (1990:33-34), categorization

is paramount: “We are forever carving nature at its joints, dividing it into categories
so that we can make sense of the world ... Coding by category is fundamental to
human life because it greatly reduces the demands of perceptual processes”. George
Lakoff (1987:5) devotes his book, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Cat-
egories Reveal about the Mind, to the subject: “Categorisation is not to be taken
lightly; there is nothing more basic than categorisation to our thought, perception,
action, and speech”.

2
See also Taylor’s advice regarding PC and Italian/English translation (1998: 86-8).
110 David Katan

But there is a fundamental distinction to be made between categorization or la-

belling referential meanings and labelling where culture is involved. Both Lakoff
and Pinker agree that the categorization of snow in the Sapir-Whorf debate is a red
herring:

Possibly the most boring thing a linguistics professor has had to suffer ... is
the interminable discussion of the 22 (or however many) words for snow in
Eskimo.
(Lakoff 1987:308)

No discussion of language and thought would be complete without the Great

Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax. Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not
have more words for snow than do speakers of English. They do not have
four hundred words for snow, as it has been claimed in print, or two hundred,
or one hundred, or forty-eight, or even nine.
(Pinker 1995:64)

The origin of the hoax makes for fascinating reading, and is basically a case of
Chinese whispers and wishful thinking. What is more important is that categoriza-
tion at this level is technical. ‘Snow’ is categorization of the environment. This, in
Dilts’ hierarchy, is the lowest level, and as such has little influence on higher levels
of values and beliefs.
Those who spend the winter months skiing will also have a higher number of
special words for snow. This fact will not make the skiers see the world in general
any differently; though, as with any technical specialization, they will see snow
differently. So, both Eskimos and skiers will know more about snow, but as Lakoff
underlines, no change of values is involved. Real labelling of packets in supermar-
kets is another example of categorization at the level of environment. For example,
the labelling of spaghetti in Britain simply states “Italian spaghetti”. In Italy, spa-
ghetti is sold in a variety of prominently labelled sizes: spaghettini n. 1, 2 or 3;
spaghetti n. 5, and so on.
However, a change in labelling does become important when it is, to use Lakoff’s
words, conceptual – i.e. when higher Logical Levels (beliefs and values) are in-
volved. We have already noted that “United States” is conceptually different to
Estados Unidos and that a raccomandazione and comunista can be conceived in
different ways according to beliefs. Most of the examples in the following chap-
ters regarding crosscultural meaning and translation focus on different conceptual
labels.

• Lexical and Conceptual Gaps

Apart from different ways of categorizing what is seen, such as ‘snow’, ‘spaghetti’,
and the ‘United States’, languages can actually lack the concept itself. In this case
there are a number of alternatives. The language can either borrow the language
label, do without the concept, or invent its own label. A number of countries have
academies whose job it is to keep a check on language borrowing, and periodically
Language and Culture 111

recommend their own national labels. The Académie francaise is a case in point. To
help the academy in its task, the French government actually passed a law, in 1977,
banning the use of English loan words in official texts. However, as David Crystal
(1987:4) points out, “it is a law honoured more in the breach than in the observ-
ance”. Yet, this is not stopping more traditionally liberal countries such as Norway
and Denmark implementing the same measures to stem the inflow.
A mediator would be wise to check the current political mood of the (national,
corporate, and any other) culture being translated into, particularly with regard to
translation from English – and respect the preferences of that reality. Microsoft, as
we have already noted, is particularly aware of the repercussions of not taking ac-
count of the local political climate. But sensitivity regarding Anglo-American
(lexical) hegemony is not only one-way. One conference interpreter (Viezzi, per-
sonal communication), for example, was handed a note (while still in the booth)
from an irritated delegate explaining to him that the Italian term for “the budget”
was not la finanziaria but rather il budget.
A number of translation scholars3 have offered lists of translation procedures for
culture-bound terms, all of which include ‘borrowing’ (as in il budget). Bilinguals
often make use of a second language to fill in the lexical gaps. This is also known as
adoption, importation, transfer or transference. Typical examples of English-Italian
late bilinguals speaking are as follows:

Expression Partial dictionary meaning

He’s very simpatico/in gamba. nice, friendly/ smart
It was a real casino/brutta figura. mess up/bad impression
Have you got your lasciapassare/libretto? resident’s pass/official university
booklet with record of exams
The questura want to police station/ permission to
see my permesso di soggiorno. stay document
Fancy a digestivo at the bar? digestive liquor
You can always wait for a condono. remission of penalty (i.e. a
change in the law, making what
was illegal, legal by means of a
small payment)
Ask the bidelli for the key. university porter, janitor, caretaker.

3
See, for example, Newmark’s translation practices for proper names and institutional and cultural
terms (1981);Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1958) procedures and techniques; Ivir’s (1987) procedures
for the translation of culture; Malone’s (1988) trajections; Van Leuven-Zwart’s (1989/90)
microstructural shifts; Hervey and Higgin’s (1992) degrees of cultural transposition; Aixela’s
(1996) procedures for the translation of culture-specific terms; Mailhac’s (1996) procedures for
cultural references, and Gottlieb’s (1997) strategies for rendering idioms; Scarpa’s (2001)metodi
e procedure di traduzione; and Taylor’s translation strategies and culture-bound language.
Particularly useful is Piotr Kwiecinski’s (2001) synthesis of all but the last two mentioned authors.
112 David Katan

These are cases of borrowing where there is no real equivalent single label. ‘Nice’
or ‘friendly’, for example, is too weak a sentiment for simpatico. For casino (liter-
ally a brothel), there are a variety of partial equivalents: ‘cock-up’, ‘balls-up’, ‘hell’
or ‘mess’. Though they carry the right force they either lack something of the noise,
confusion or lack of control. Other examples relate to institutions and bureaucratic
procedures that simply do not exist in the second language. However, a translation
will always be possible. Often circumlocutions or glosses will be necessary. A lengthy
gloss to enter the Collins Italian/English dictionary (1995) is below:

circolazione a targhe alterne (Aut) anti-pollution measure whereby, on days

with an even date, only cars whose numberplate ends in an even number may
be on the road, while on days with an odd date, only cars whose numberplate
ends in an odd number may be on the road.

Examples of words from other languages which have no conceptual equivalent

in English are as follows:

Danish hygge instantly satisfying and cosy

French sang-froid composure, self-possession in a difficult moment
German schadenfreude delight in another’s misfortune
Russian glasnost the policy of public frankness and accountability
Spanish macho exhibiting pride in demonstrating typically mas-
culine characteristics: prowess in strength, sex ...

Bryson (1991:4) suggests, “we must borrow the terms from them or do without the
sentiment”. And in fact all but hygge have been borrowed and assimilated into the
English language.
However, as many who are concerned about Anglo-American hegemony note,
other languages throughout the world are borrowing English to such an extent that
many local people are feeling cut off from their own language-culture. There was a
public outcry in Denmark, for example, when the web page of the SAS Airlines
appeared in English only. As a result, the government in 2002 began an enquiry
into how to limit this English invasion. In Holland, the Peptalk dictionary (Koenen
and Smits 1992) is devoted to the explanation of the conservatively estimated 3600
English words and phrases currently in use in Holland. One of the reasons for this
number of words is as above: there is no equivalent lexeme for the sentiment in the
language: “Often an English word gives a different meaning. Peptalk sounds a lot
stronger than just ‘an encouraging talk’ and therefore seems to give you something
more” (ibid.:5, personal trans.). The authors suggest that these loan words are not
only practical, but also add variety and humour to the language. Newmark (1981:82)
adds a further reason, what he calls ‘local colour’. In these cases, an equivalent
exists for the concept, but the source language is retained to remind the reader of
the context of culture, e.g.:
Language and Culture 113

loan-word used Italian equivalent Literal translation

il fair-play la correttezza correctness
gentleman’s agreement l’impegno sulla parola commitment on the word
le ladies (di Bond Street) le signore (di Bond Street) the ladies (of Bond Street)

However, there is something more at play during the following overheard

conversation:

A: “Quella volta lavoravamo A: That time we were working

night and day [sic] – come “night and day” – as the English
dicono gli inglesi”. say.
B: “Sì, e anche giorno e notte B: Yes, and also day and night as we
come diciamo, e facciamo, noi”. say, and do.

The intended meta-message of speaker A was to impress the overhearer (Eng-

lish) with his command of the language, and to include him in the conversation. It
seems, though, that important and sensitive beliefs about identity were touched upon.
The first speaker’s meta-message, as interpreted by speaker B is that the Italians, not
having an expression for hard work, do not work hard. The listener’s reply empha-
sizes the fact that there is both the expression and the concept supporting it. He also
makes it clear that noi do work hard whereas the English (only) talk about it.
Bryson (1991:174) also notes the use of English to impress. In all the cases he
cites the message is nonsensical. The following are all Japanese products sold
(understandably) on the home market only:

I FEEL COKE AND SOUND SPECIAL (Coke can)

O. D. ON BOURGEOISIE MILK BOY MILK (t-shirt)
ELEPHANT FAMILY ARE HAPPY WITH US. THEIR HUMMING
MAKES US FEEL HAPPY (shopping bag)
SWITZERLAND: SEASIDE CITY (shopping bag)

And, finally, a fashion boutique in Bologna successfully sold a pink blouse to a

highly amused Canadian with what seemed a romantic poem written in English:

She stood in the evening-close

and he came to her
and socked her in the bra

The reason why this and other creative uses of English help to sell products
emerges from a comment the owner of the Bologna boutique made to me: “Who
cares what it says as long as it looks good”. Séguinot (1995:57) makes a similar po
int:
“cultures view the functions of texts differently. [It] is related to the i mportance
114 David Katan

they give to the visual aesthetic. In other words, combinations of words are selected
for their graphic value rather than their meaning”.
Italian, Japanese and many other languages tend to borrow, either to fill a lexical
gap, to impress or because “it looks good”. English, on the other hand, tends to
invent. The English lexico-grammar system lends itself to the short and simple. The
coining of new words from old is common particularly in American English. The
first settlers to America literally invented new compound words from old, partly to
categorize aspects of their new environment unseen or rare in England. Below are
some compound examples, sewing two familiar concepts to produce a new one:

jointworm, glowworm, eggplant, canvasback, copperhead, rattlesnake,

bluegrass, backtrack, bobcat, catfish, bluejay, bullfrog, sapsucker, timberland,
underbrush.

As Bryson (1994:26) points out, “These new terms had the virtue of directness
and instant comprehensibility – useful qualities in a land whose populace included
increasingly large numbers of non-native speakers – which their British counter-
parts often lacked”.
The way the American language has developed also reflects a different way of
thinking. There is an emphasis on transparency and clarity in the individual words
themselves whereas the English is more obscure:

US GB
sidewalk pavement
eggplant aubergine
doghouse kennel
bedspread counterpane (now listed as ‘old-fashioned’ in CED, 1995)
frostbite chilblains

The fact that the English and the Americans feel uncomfortable in each others’
linguistic shoes is further testimony to different ways of thinking. Here, for exam-
ple, is a comment from the British Weekly Telegraph (No. 197, 1995) about one
expatriot’s response to life in Florida:

We greeted people with ‘Hey, how yowl doing?’, learned quickly that it is
cheaper to pump your own gas than to request service and that you go to the
store to buy supplies. But I have still never been able to bring myself to end a
conversation with ‘Have a nice day’.

This same out-of-awareness response is felt by many of those who identify them-
selves with Britain, and leads us to a discussion of the patterns of language, and
how they are related to culture.
Language and Culture 115

5.4 The Language System

• Whorf’s Theory
• an example: advertising
• interplay between language and culture

Whorf’s understanding of the interface between language and culture was not so
much in the lexis (the labelling) but in the underlying patterns. His main interest
was in the grammar – or language as a system. According to Mühlhäusler and Harré,
Sapir was also moving towards a more grammatical or pattern approach to language
in his later writings. They cite the following extract from a Sapir lecture in
1931(Mühlhäusler and Harré 1990:3):

Language is not merely a more or less systematic inventory of the various

items of experience which seem relevant to the individual ... but is also a
self-contained, creative symbolic organisation, which not only refers to ex-
perience largely acquired without its help but actually defines experience for
us by reason of its formal completeness.

Whorf built on Sapir’s later work, and based his theories on the form and the
function of language tense systems. He was able to show that there existed two
types of languages: temporal and timeless. In Hopi, a native American-Indian (Am-
erindian) language, the tense system is not organized primarily by time whereas the
Indo-European system is. Pinker (1995:63), on the other hand, cites the anthropolo-
gist Ekkehart Malotki who was equally able to demonstrate exactly the opposite.
The controversy continues. We are fortunately not particularly concerned with Hopi,
but we will find that within the Indo-European system the use of language reflects
cultural priorities not only with regard to time but also with regard to every other
aspect of the environment. In the next section we will see how the structure of the
language itself does have an effect on the translation of certain cultural values.

• Advertising
A striking example of how the language system reflects different realities comes
from advertising. The linguistic label, or strapline, in an advertisement cannot sim-
ply be translated. In fact, few, if any international marketing strategies have ever
been successful using a translator for a major campaign or to translate the slogan.
Instead, the whole text has to be redesigned, because selling the same product to
different countries is not the same as selling to the same world with different labels
(Bassnett 1991:28-29; Séguinot 1995).
We have already mentioned in Chapter one that translators and interpreters will
always be at a disadvantage compared to mother tongue speakers with regard to
culture-bound styles and meaning. This is even truer when translating into their
second or ‘B’ language. Some well-known examples of gaffes in the (non) translation
116 David Katan

4
of advertisements are reported in a variety of publications and widely on the internet.

Non-Translated Imports Origin Destination Connotation

Kinki Nippon Tourist Agency Japan US/UK sex tourism
The Ford ‘Pinto’ car US Portugal small penis (slang)
Colgate’s ‘Cue’ toothpaste US France title of French porno magazine
‘Koff’ Beer Finland US/UK a cough
‘Bich’ biro France US/UK a bitch

Translated imports Back translation

GM slogan ‘Body by Fisher’ US Belgium Corpse by Fisher
Come Alive with Pepsi US Taiwan Pepsi brings your ancestors
back from the grave
Nothing sucks like an Sweden US Electrolux is the worst
Electrolux quality
Electrolux performs good
oral sex

Séguinot (1995:58-59) gives a number of examples of other ways to produce adver-

tising gaffes. These have less to do with the translator’s skill but much more to do
with his or her control of the design, layout and destination of the final translated
text. Pitfalls include automatic hyphenation of electronic texts, non-sensical chop-
ping or shortening of sentences to fit in with layout, and arbitrary selection and use
of pictorial material. All of these pitfalls point towards the need for the translator to
become a mediator, and take a more active part in the process of communicating
with the target culture.
A report in the American magazine Business Week (25/4/92:32) brought to light
a very real problem in communication across cultures. The Nike athletic shoe com-
pany wanted to translate their slogan “Just Do It”. The problem was that this
three-syllable action-packed slogan has no syntactic or semantic equivalence in many
of the languages that they wished to translate it into. Phil Knight, the CEO, “was
dismayed when he previewed an advertising campaign that didn’t measure up”.
“Rather than ‘Just Do It’, he says, ‘it could have had the tag line of Toyota or Gillette
or a lot of different companies’”.

4
e.g. Seeleye and Seeleye-James (1995:15-16), http://www.i18nguy.com/translations.html
A high number of examples in the literature are actually urban legend. The Chevrolet Nova car,
quoted by Seeleye, is closer to nueva than it is to “no va” (doesn’t go), which would not be the
Spanish term anyway (no funciona). Yet, as Dave Taylor in “Global Software”, says: “Similar to
much of internationalization, there are glimmers of truth in the story, yet upon further examination,
it is difficult to see how much is misunderstanding within the market, and how much is more of a
misunderstanding of the marketplace”. David Rickes, however, notes that General Motors did in
fact change the name of the automobile to “Caribè,” with a resultant increase in sales”. http://
www.intuitive.com/globalsoftware/gs-chap5.html
See also http://spanish.about.com/library/weekly/aa072301b.htm and http://www.i18nguy.com/
translations.html
Language and Culture 117

The problem was that the slogan did not catch the dynamic feel of “Just Do It”.
However, worse was to follow in Japan. The company headhunted a successful
Japanese manager, Yukihiro Akimoto, and brought him to America “for a four-
month immersion in Nike culture and operations”. The result was that he stopped
smoking and began to run. His employees even followed suit:

But in many respects, Akimoto just didn’t get it when it came to the Nike
brand. As he was preparing to leave for Tokyo, Knight says, he began pre-
senting Nike executives with possible Japanese translations for ‘Just Do It’.
One alternative sounds more like ‘Hesitation makes Waste’. The Nike team
were horrified. “We said ‘No! Don’t translate it!’”

In Japanese, as Business Week points out, the language system cannot create a
“just do it’ semantic equivalent. However, this is not just a semantic problem. As
we have already noted, Japan’s competitive advantage is due to long-term thinking,
and not to just doing it. So, neither the concept nor the language comes naturally to
Japanese culture.
This takes us back to Whorf’s (1956:212) (stronger) version of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis:

The background linguistic system (in other words the grammar) of each lan-
guage is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is
itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental
activity, for his analysis of impression, for his synthesis of his mental stock
in trade.

Further evidence of the problems involved in translation is the NIH syndrome. An

article from The New York Times entitled “Continental Divides on the Box” focuses
on the translation of TV commercials: “Films that aren’t home-grown are referred
to by advertising executives as NIHs – ‘not invented here’ –and are frowned upon”.
The advertising executives generally feel that something is missing in a translation,
and that a translated advertisement would not be as well accepted as a home-
grown one.
This feeling was actually tested in a European study, which asked 600 consum-
ers from Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Italy to watch 48 TV
commercials from all over Europe, all of which had already won international awards.
The article concludes with the following statement: “Even though the ads had been
translated, the consumers liked the films from their own country best”. Clearly,
domestic culture images or ideas expressed through the home culture language pro-
vide the most congruent and effective message.

• Interplay between Language and Culture

It does seem clear that there is a link between language and the context of culture.
Indeed, as Bateson remarked (in Eriksen and Nielsen 2001:66) “the main problem
may be that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis cannot – on some level or other – not be
118 David Katan

true”. As Peter Farb (1973:186-87) says in Word Play: What Happens When Peo-
ple Talk, “The true value of Whorf’s theories is not the one he worked so
painstakingly to demonstrate”, but “the close alliance between language and the
total culture of speech”. It is also clear that, at a lexical level, though English does
not have a single dictionary entry to express simpatico or targhe alterne, this does
not mean that the concepts cannot be thought or understood. Roman Jakobson
(1959:236) went further in his much-quoted paper ‘On the Linguistic Aspects of
Translation’: “Languages differ in what they must convey and not in what they
can convey”.
This is certainly true, up to a certain point. However, even though “Hesitation
Makes Waste” might technically denote the values behind “Just Do It”, it cannot
convey the out-of-awareness feeling. There are two points to be made here. First,
how languages convey meaning is related to the culture. Secondly, though languages
can convey concepts from other cultures, people (including translators and inter-
preters) tend not to realize that their perception (through language) is, in fact, bound
by their own culture. And here Pinker actually does agree (1995:57):

Finally, culture is given its due, but not as some disembodied ghostly process
or fundamental force of nature. ‘Culture’ refers to the process whereby par-
ticular kinds of learning contagiously spread from person to person in a
community and minds become coordinated into shared patterns.

And it is to the creation of these shared patterns that we now turn.