Re: CHOMSKY & CO.
Brendan McKennedy (suburbantourist@hotmail.com)
Tue, 21 Apr 1998 08:34:16 -0700 (PDT)
is there any connection
>between the linguistic competence and our speculative abilities? Is it
>still true, as they said decades and decades ago, that the more
difficult a
>language is, the more intelligent the people speaking that language?
>Help me find an answer !
>Annalisa
Why, everything's connected, isn't it? I'm a little bit of a holist, or
perhaps chaotist (without really knowing what either of those mean)--but
to not be a smartass, I would have to say that the connection, if it's
there, is small. Intelligence, I think, has very little to do with
language and "difficulty" of language. The only proof I can offer to
you is Huck Finn and, right before your eyes, Holden Caulfield. Holden,
at least (though I'd argue the same for Huck), cannot conceivably be
called unintelligent or unsophisticated--not by any meaningful gauge.
His ideas and perceptions reach far into the metaphysical and into
pretty sophisticated ideas. His language, however, is very simple,
unsophisticated, and for the most part, inadequate to communicate these
ideas to himself or to the readers. This is the problem with the
Sapir-Whorf (I can see Scottie rolling his eyes from across the
Atlantic): that we confuse ideas with their symbols, and will not
understand abstraction until we can say it out loud or on paper. This
is the problem, I believe--correct me, please, if I'm way off--that the
Eastern religions address and attempt to dismiss. And the problem that
Whitman dismissed, and that the Gnostics dismissed. Perhaps not
dismissed, but rather got out of.
The idea that a more difficult language makes a more difficult
population is, I'm sorry, pretty funny. It smacks of eugenics, which
alternately nauseates and amuses me. It may be that, because different
phonemes are used in different languages (phonemes being the meaningless
sounds that make up our consonants and vowels, the sounds we make with
our mouths, noses, throats), different parts of the brain are stimulated
by different languages, and it may be that French, perhaps, stimulates
the Existentialist wrinkle, and that German stimulates the Diffusionist.
It seems a pretty silly theory, though. If anyone else can come up with
any other way that languages can influence intelligence, then I invite
you to give it a shot. I'm sure Hitler had some ideas about it, as well
as Stalin and, presumably, Franklin Roosevelt.
Brendan
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