THE CURSE OF LINGUISTIC, CULTURAL AND POLITICAL RELATIVISM
Let us begin with linguistic relativism, because on the face of it, language frames all that comes afterwards. By the way, ‘relativism’ here means ‘the twain shall never meet’, ‘irreconcilable differences’, ‘impossible to translate’ or some such metaphor. I will in the end briefly explore that other famous meaning of Einstein’s ‘theory of relativity’, which may be more appropriate when considering language in the context of culture and politics.
It is a well-worn old chestnut by now, this tired old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that claimed that language determines one’s world-view and/or cognition, and since we have many ‘different’ languages we also have many ‘different’ world-views, and since one language cannot truly ever understand another language, equally ‘different’ cultures cannot ever meet on the level playing field. I (and more notable linguists like Chomsky and Lenneberg) have argued elsewhere that this train of thought is a reactionary plot to establish a hierarchy of linguistic, cultural and political systems that favours the WASPish world we currently live in. It is little wonder then that such twaddle is peddled not only as fake news but also as serious academic discourse. Take a bizarre example I have quoted before, from Claire Kramsch, who in a 2009 interview makes the following observation:
The more people speak English around the world the less people understand one another. So it’s this irony that we’re moving into an era where more and more people speak English and yet less and less do they understand one another because through English they are thinking, they speak English but they think French, or they speak English and they think Hindi. And so it becomes an invisible multilingualism behind the English that they speak and I think applied linguistics has a lot to contribute to that understanding of what it means to have a multilingual mentality, a multilingual competence.
Along the way, myriads of contradictions are piled upon each other, resulting in a web of staggering misinformation, often perpetuated by so-called liberals who mix and match their pet theories in order to sound progressive and enlightened.
Let us take New Zealand/Aotearoa as a case study. Note that is considered progressive to append Aotearoa to New Zealand, in an attempt to acknowledge the indigenous language, named ‘te reo Maori’ by none other than Pakeha. The latter is a Maori term for non-Maori but basically meaning the WASP ruling class of New Zealand. Prior to European colonisation, Maori did not think of themselves as Maori but eventually had to accept the term imposed on them collectively, in order to deal with the colonisers. The missionaries in particular realised that the best way to convert the ‘natives’ was to do it in their own language. Translating the Bible into Maori was the thing to do, and as such they dispensed with any linguistic relativity in order to impose their religious/cultural superiority. Of course this ‘translation’ was in itself an act of linguistic imperialism, as noted by Kennedy Warne who quotes Anne Salmond:
Thus, as Salmond enumerates, an atua, a powerful ancestor, lost all sense of personal connection and was rendered a disembodied god. Wairua, the totality of a person’s immaterial being, became compartmentalised as spirit. Tapu, stripped of ancestral presence, became merely a category called sacred. Likewise noa, rather than fulfilling the role of yin to tapu’s yang, was demoted to profane. A tohunga, an expert steeped in ancestral knowledge, became a religious priest (or, worse, a witch doctor). Karakia, chants which in their very utterance invoke the breath of life, turned into supplicatory prayers. Utu, the principle of reciprocity, was narrowed and sensationalised as revenge. Whakapapa, the matrix of connections among all human and nonhuman life, dwindled into mere genealogy.
“There are no words in English to translate words like tapu, mana, utu and hau, which were (and are) ontological terms, premised on the taken-for-granted presence and power of ancestors in everyday life, and different states of being in te ao mārama, te kore and te pō,” writes Salmond. “Such words presuppose a reality that is, in many respects, fundamentally at odds with Western ideas about the world.”
Anne Salmond is Aotearoa’s preeminent Pakeha scholar on all things Maori and Captain Cook, suffice to say here that Warne uses her in an attempt to show off his own liberal-progressive stance on the state of the world and Aotearoa in particular, the point being that Warne waxes lyrical in having discovered a Maori world-view that can only be experienced by breathing and living it, and by the way making language a bit redundant, because according to Salmond, it seems quite impossible to really understand and appreciate Maori language if it is not your first language, i.e. it is impossible to translate key concepts into English (although she herself provides good English paraphrases which explain the Maori words in question quite well), because – to repeat:
“Such words presuppose a reality that is, in many respects, fundamentally at odds with Western ideas about the world.”
This is also a red herring because it presupposes that there is only one, and only one, set of ‘Western ideas about the world’. Let’s take the often cited supposed conundrum of what ‘land’ means: Westerners see it as ‘property/real estate’ while Maori see it as some sort of spiritual relationship to the people, held in common possession. There have been any numbers of Western proponents for land to be the ‘commons’, not least the socialists. But wait: ‘Western ideas about the world’ is a privileged term that only refers to WASPish capitalism (with a kind or not so kind face), so don’t you dare to suggest that traditional Maori societies were atheist and socialist in essence (whether they were or were not is another question). Hence the enterprise, the likes of Salmond and Warne, engage in is a way of acknowledging Maori as the ‘other’ but as a spiritual treasure, not as troublesome hindrance as commonly practiced by the early colonisers and current right-wing politicians.
Which brings us to the political relativism, which is otherwise known as capitalism versus socialism (and the many shades in between). Note Trump’s assertion that America will never be a socialist country! Maori as a disenfranchised minority typically vote Labour, having been not only made into good Christians by and large but also made into good democrats who believe that voting for a government is close to a divine exercise, sanctioned by the churches they go to. Salmond and Warne want to maintain this status-quo, gently coercing Maori into the WASPish fold, being more Maori than the Maori, and BTW explaining it all in English so that the English folk who are bereft of any Maori language or culture, can rest assured that all will be well, as long as we acknowledge that Maori is a beautiful language (we will never understand), that they have a beautiful culture, that they have a beautiful religion that is essentially Christian (what a relief) and that they are eager to engage in Maori entrepreneurship, buying and selling anything but their land (maybe we can educate them on that a bit more). Any Maori exercising his traditional right to become an atheist and socialist will be met with laws to combat terrorism (as was this shameful exercise in the Uruweras with not even a single Maori atheist and socialist in sight).
Which brings us to the last bastion of Western ideas: the law of private property. When you are buying and selling stuff, as a business, you need contract law lest one party involved makes a runner. So how would this work in a society that has abolished private property? Well, in name only, as in the PRC, the world’s number two economy and main trading partner of New Zealand/Aotearoa. Since PRC Chinese now make up a substantial part of emigrants to New Zealand, we are faced with a problem, aren’t we? The problem of linguistic, cultural and political relativism all rolled into one.
For a start, I as a ESOL teacher have to contend with teaching English to speakers of Chinese languages (mainly Mandarin), knowing, as I should from the dominant paradigm, that you simply cannot translate Chinese into English and vice versus, and that ‘their’ culture is so different to ‘ours’, so that we have an impossible task, unless, of course, we take decisive action like ‘teaching’ Chinese students that they have to learn to be ‘polite’, a concept, we know, that does not exist in Chinese culture. Such crazy ideas are advanced by serious scholars at universities; see my blog entry called ‘TESOL without cultural baggage’ where I dare to suggest that language teaching has nothing to do with culture (à la Chomsky) and that academics who preach linguistic and cultural relativism are in fact racists. But wait, there is more: we all know from the news that the PRC is the last evil empire, what with a dictator-President who still quotes the atheist Mao-dze-dong, and commits genocide against the Uighurs (see the ‘liberal’ Guardian media campaign against the Chinese government), hence Chinese immigrants to New Zealand/Aotearoa come brainwashed with horrendous world-views. In other words it is our job to re-educate them, gently of course, as it is not their fault that they have been brainwashed. However, if they persist with their brainwashed ideas about socialism, communism and no real appreciation of private property, they may think what belongs to me belongs to them, and as such contravene NZ intellectual property laws.
This is where Mai Chen comes in, the most prominent lawyer in New Zealand/Aotearoa. Being of Chinese extraction herself but being a good old Kiwi by birth and upbringing, puts her into a bit of a muddle: how to explain her ethnic compatriots’ strange behaviour when they come before the law? Discussing her paper called ‘Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Parties in the Courts: A Chinese Case Study’ on RNZ, she comes to the conclusion that the PRC legal system is fundamentally different from the NZ one, mainly because the PRC system is totally corrupt while ours is not (she cites the supposed case of a high-ranking Communist Party official who may dismiss the judge, as opposed to the other way round in NZ). Then she comes up with the old chestnut that Chinese people in general have this cultural obsession with ‘saving face’, hence when in a NZ court, they will go to extreme lengths not to plead guilty because it would be bad for their reputation. Well, come on, isn’t that a fairly universal obsession, if not a NZ one? Winston Peters, current Deputy PM, is suing various government and public servants because they besmirched his reputation as an ‘honest’ man? In business, Mai Chen says, Chinese do deals by shaking hands without any documented contracts, hence when before the courts they just argue about who said what – quite unlike NZ where contract law is the first step of any business transaction. True? Well, sometimes, like anywhere else but when you look at another report by a legal academic, Ruiping Ye, of Victoria University, entitled ‘Chinese in New Zealand: Contract, Property and Litigation (2019), one cannot escape her contention that Chinese in the PRC, after the cultural revolution, were supposed to trust no one, hence made sure all business dealings were documented. Obviously Ye (not from the PRC) thinks that the Cultural Revolution was the most terrible period in recent PRC history but again when you read her paper, there are actually no details of PRC laws given (as if the evil communists don’t have any). She does however go to great lengths to explain that the Chinese ‘traditionally’ subscribe to the common laws promulgated by Confucius, suggesting that lawyers in New Zealand (note her absence of Aotearoa) should acquaint themselves with these Confucian concepts so as to understand Chinese litigants better. This may well be the case for expatriate Chinese who never lived in the PRC, e.g. of Malaysian, Singaporean or Taiwanese extractions. Confucius who is celebrated in the Western World as a great Chinese philosopher and religious leader was of course denigrated by the Chinese communists, closing down many of the temples dedicated to Confucius, eschewing a religious society (Marx: religion is opium for the people). Ye does not even begin to comprehend all the implications, and of course, neither does Mai Chen. I am not an apologist for the PRC government, past or present but if they are accused of capital crimes, let them defend themselves in a court of law that is independent of political, cultural and linguistic bias. As Chomsky has said, the US Government would be found guilty of war crimes in places like Vietnam and Iraq, if held to the same standards used in the Nuremburg trials, and so would be many other Western governments. Obviously the PRC is the last great thorn in the side of the WASPish Western world-view – and if so, say so, and don’t beat about the bush with nice theories about linguistic, cultural and political differences. As a linguist and language teacher I can only repeat what many other bio-linguists and educators have said before me: differences in languages are surface features of a common humanity. Culture is contested. Politics is a class struggle. Only if the workers of the world unite and succeed in their struggle to be free of linguistic, cultural and political oppression, can we save the planet from continuous wars and environmental degradation.
Addendum: I was going to say something about Einstein’s ‘Theory of relativity’, which is quite a different kettle of fish. This type of scientific relativity, in its simplest terms, is the uncertainty of what moves in the universe ‘relative’ to each other: is it the lift I am in, or is the building moving up or down? When seemingly stationary on a train and another train slowly passes, which train is actually moving? The human eye cannot be certain. If we extend this metaphor to language, culture and politics, we should shy away from all certainties and dogmas (religious and political) and adopt a genuine world-view, common to all languages of the planet, that all people, all life forms and all else, are natural phenomena that can and should exist together in ‘relative’ peace and harmony.
Mai Chen
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