The role of language
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 04:46
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The Irish Crimean – Padraig Joseph McGrath
In 2016, for the first time, the People’s Republic of China surpassed the United States in published scientific output. A total of 429,000 scientific papers were published in China. In the United States, the total figure for 2016 was 406,000 published scientific papers.This is an important index of social and economic development, and an index of the shifting balance in geo-political strength. Knowledge-production is not only a key index of geo-political influence – it is also a key contributory factor to it.
That is to say: knowledge-production is a key component of what is commonly referred to as “soft power.”
The present debate on the role of language within ideology-transmission as an element of soft-power, is better informed with a view on this process in another civilizational sphere. In this case, we will topically examine that of the Chinese as it emerges onto terrain which until recently was hegemonically dominated by the Anglosphere.
This essay will base itself in the understanding that language is in itself a vector for pre-discursive ideology-transmission.
The Chinese very clearly had an understanding of soft power over 2,000 years before Joseph Nye coined that phrase, or before it was popularized by Fukuyama. You see this understanding of soft power implied throughout the Analects, which were compiled during the warring-states period (475 BC-221 BC). An example of such are sayings like: “You don’t need an ox-knife to kill a chicken,”
One effect of the global spread of the English language as a lingua franca is that it created something approaching an Anglophone monopoly on knowledge-production, and therefore a disproportionate influence on ideology-production, and this in turn had a pernicious geo-political effect.
At the same time, ideology-production can simply bypass knowledge-production on certain levels. Outside of the Anglophone world, the most irreprarably indoctrinated students are usually those who went to secondary schools which specialized in languages. Thus the students coming out of these schools do not know much on the subjects of physics or chemistry, and they know very little history or geography. Their core-skills are languages – they just subliminally and pre-discursively internalized Atlanticist liberal ideology by learning the English language. This leads us to our central thesis:
Language in itself is a vector for pre-discursive ideology-transmission. In the English language, this happens on at least three distinct levels.
Firstly, the grammar of the English language sets reality up as a list of standalone objects.
Compare the English sentence “There is a desk in the office.” with the German equivalent “Es gibt einen Schreibtisch im Büro,” which literally translates “It gives a desk in the office.”
So in the German sentence, the desk’s existence is postulated in the following way – the desk is thought to “exist” insofar as it is conferred into existence through its participation in some larger context – something which overarches the desk’s existence “gives it” – that is to say, confers it into existence. Furthermore, there is a loose implication that the desk is a manifestation of this “Es” which “gives” it or confers it into existence…. This way of thinking is inescapable if one happens to think in the German language – nothing simply exists in isolation – everything is part of a larger context. The grammar of the German language is pantheistic.
On the other hand, in English, the desk is postulated simply as a standalone object – it exists quite independently of any surrounding objects, independently of any social or historical context, independently of any surrounding physical reality – it’s just “there.” English grammar sets up quite a different ontology to German grammar.
With this in mind, it’s hardly surprising that many of Germany’s most historically noteworthy philosophers and theologians have offered pantheistic interpretations of Christianiaty, and that the empiricist tradition of philosophy
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There are 1.15 Billion who understand Chinese language.
There are 1.06 Billion who understand English language.
Next is 661 Million who understand Spanish langugage.
Your data only includes a subset of English, known as American English. With 406,000 papers. Compared to 429,000 papers from China.
It appears you have excluded British English, Aussie English, Colonial English, Canadian English, and others.
What are the scientific papers total from those?
I suspect not a lot of Nations outside China have a primary language of Chinese.
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The beginning part of the opinion piece .... about the number of scientific papers ... isn't anywhere near as interesting as the major part of the article. At least as far as I'm concerned.
I'm always interested in the memes and assumptions behind common, banal exposures, like advertising, language, TV shows ... even our physical world, like our devotion to clocks and the automobile, and the fact that our schools look like people-factories. They communicate profound, unconscious messages. Take cars: Not only do they communicate that physical effort is to be avoided, so is community (taking the bus is so declasse). They also tell us that a world in which people are herded together into work-hives, far away from where they live, is somehow a normal and even preferable way to live.
But I digress from the article.
This man is pointing out that language defines what a culture considers as "things" (ontology) and their relationships ("logic").
Take, for example, the English language's use of the word "the". We use it all the time ... I went to *the* beach. THE beach? Constantly using the word "the" gives things a specificity and uniqueness that they don't have in. How would that sound if we said instead I went to beach? It sounds more like I went to *a* beach which is more like what really happened.
Why do we capitalize the word *I*? When we speak of our individual selves ... *I* ... is that so much more important than other pronouns that it must be capitalized?
And these are just simple things. What about the European languages that insist that everything is either masculine or feminine ... even chairs and tables? OR, confoundingly, German, which actually has a neuter gender but refuses to use it for many inanimate objects?
And then there is Chinese. The language doesn't have pronouns; or past, present, or future tense. It doesn't have possessives. I think that comes from the fact that the WRITTEN language is still pictographic ... each word is designated by a symbol; as opposed to the English language which can be entirely written by 26 symbols. The number of individual pictographs required to express a reasonable diversity of ideas and objects is in the tens of thousands. That represents a worse barrier to learning than the non-phonetic nature of English, and made pre-printer typesetting impossible, which meant that printed books .... that store of knowledge which could be widely shared ... didn't happen in China.
I have been told that Mao created a sort of pidgin Mandarin ... 8000 symbols ... which could be taught to the illiterate peasants. But just imagine going thru life with only 8000 words!
How do you "modify" a picture of "running" or "shopping" to indicate that this happened in the past, or will happen in the future? How do you indicate that this is somebody's house, not just "a" house?
The Chinese language has some interesting workarounds ... you don't say "My sister" but "little sister". You don't say "I went to the store" but "
I think that lack of flexibility in the Chinese language really inhibits certain thought processes, but enhances others.
Anyway, it's family-time. TTUL
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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I was wondering about any effect on certain fields.
The International Language of Mathematics, for symposium etc, is English.
For International Science, English.
For International Aviation, English.
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Which is why the author was pointing out the linguistic hegemony of the English language.
One of the things I'm really bad at is learning languages, because so much of it is just sheer rote memorization. Did I forget to tell you I have a really bad memory for disconnected items, altho I remember things pretty well once they're in a logical structure? So arbitrary things just really, really grate on my nerves.
In my Catholic "grammar school" the nuns did a pretty thorough job of banging the various kinds of words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions) and sentence diagrams into us. I'm probably one of the few people on the board who even knows what a sentence diagram is.
Then, I had to learn another language in public junior high/ high school (French) and I had to learn either Russian or German as part of my Chemistry degree (German), and I hated every effing moment. So one of the things that drives me bug-nuts about most European languages is the practice of
a) assigning inanimate objects a gender, at random. The (female) jacket, the (male) beer.
b) And them making sure that every word related to that object matches it in terms of gender and number. *La* table, versus *les* tables.
Seriously? What idiot thought THAT up??? Oh yeah ... the Romans and the Germans.
And then there's that cute German practice of putting the verb at the END of the sentence. We to the library go. Some of those sentences are LONG, and you have to wait all the way to the end before you find out what happened.
Anyway, things that are arbitrary drive me nuts if I have to learn them. I've always thought that - GRAMMATICALLY - the English language is far superior to the other European languages because it is vastly simpler. And - like JO - I think that if we could straighten out the problem of English SPELLING, it would make English a vastly superior language overall. (The spelling problem comes about because English picks up foreign words like gum picks up lint. The whole "ie" versus "ei" spelling problems is because French and German treat them exactly the opposite, and we use words of both origins, thanks to William the Conqueror.)
*****
That word-atomicity in English is what the author calls "pre-discursive ideology transmission". When you learn a language, you HAVE to learn its underlying rules, and those rules posit a certain mindset. By making English the lingua franca (bridge language, common language, trade language, vehicular language, or link language) of business, we also transmit the underlying logic of the language. It is "pre-discursive" because it can be taught without actually TALKING ABOUT it, like advertising and TV shows have their own "pre-discursive" ontology logic.
Just to loop back to other cultures, I've also wondered about the near-universal adoption of the 7-day week (originating in Sumer) and the solar calendar. Although it seems to be almost a universal "fact", it has its own illogic. For example, the months would be a lot more logically-arranged if each month was four weeks long. That would mean the months would be lunar months, instead of this Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November crap (Which is just as bad as "i before e, except after C) but that would mean that there would be 13 months, and SOMEbody obviously thought 13 was an unlucky number!
It is such an integral part of so many cultures, when I run into people who have a different calendar ... especially a non-solar one ... like Ethiopians ... I wonder how their agriculture ever survived, because its usually non-agrarian cultures with the lunar calendar and agrarian ones with the solar calendar (It's important to know when to plant!)
Anyway, enough random maundering.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?ti
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And yet, Yoda is understandable. Some people can even speak Yoda.
OTOH you make me chagrined that I seldom use sentence structure anymore.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And then there is Chinese. The language doesn't have pronouns; or past, present, or future tense. It doesn't have possessives. I think that comes from the fact that the WRITTEN language is still pictographic ... each word is designated by a symbol; as opposed to the English language which can be entirely written by 26 symbols. The number of individual pictographs required to express a reasonable diversity of ideas and objects is in the tens of thousands. That represents a worse barrier to learning than the non-phonetic nature of English, and made pre-printer typesetting impossible, which meant that printed books .... that store of knowledge which could be widely shared ... didn't happen in China.
Tens of thousands of pictures to explain things, and not a single one for "I". Also, no possessive nouns...
That's an insight into Communism that I didn't think about before.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Well, obviously Dec is the 10th month, Nov is the 9th month, Octo is the 8th month, and Sept is the 7th
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Which is why the author was pointing out the linguistic hegemony of the English language.
One of the things I'm really bad at is learning languages, because so much of it is just sheer rote memorization. Did I forget to tell you I have a really bad memory for disconnected items, altho I remember things pretty well once they're in a logical structure? So arbitrary things just really, really grate on my nerves.
In my Catholic "grammar school" the nuns did a pretty thorough job of banging the various kinds of words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions) and sentence diagrams into us. I'm probably one of the few people on the board who even knows what a sentence diagram is.
Then, I had to learn another language in public junior high/ high school (French) and I had to learn either Russian or German as part of my Chemistry degree (German), and I hated every effing moment. So one of the things that drives me bug-nuts about most European languages is the practice of
a) assigning inanimate objects a gender, at random. The (female) jacket, the (male) beer.
b) And them making sure that every word related to that object matches it in terms of gender and number. *La* table, versus *les* tables.
Seriously? What idiot thought THAT up??? Oh yeah ... the Romans and the Germans.
And then there's that cute German practice of putting the verb at the END of the sentence. We to the library go. Some of those sentences are LONG, and you have to wait all the way to the end before you find out what happened.
Anyway, things that are arbitrary drive me nuts if I have to learn them. I've always thought that - GRAMMATICALLY - the English language is far superior to the other European languages because it is vastly simpler. And - like JO - I think that if we could straighten out the problem of English SPELLING, it would make English a vastly superior language overall. (The spelling problem comes about because English picks up foreign words like gum picks up lint. The whole "ie" versus "ei" spelling problems is because French and German treat them exactly the opposite, and we use words of both origins, thanks to William the Conqueror.)
*****
That word-atomicity in English is what the author calls "pre-discursive ideology transmission". When you learn a language, you HAVE to learn its underlying rules, and those rules posit a certain mindset. By making English the lingua franca (bridge language, common language, trade language, vehicular language, or link language) of business, we also transmit the underlying logic of the language. It is "pre-discursive" because it can be taught without actually TALKING ABOUT it, like advertising and TV shows have their own "pre-discursive" ontology logic.
Just to loop back to other cultures, I've also wondered about the near-universal adoption of the 7-day week (originating in Sumer) and the solar calendar. Although it seems to be almost a universal "fact", it has its own illogic. For example, the months would be a lot more logically-arranged if each month was four weeks long. That would mean the months would be lunar months, instead of this Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November crap (Which is just as bad as "i before e, except after C) but that would mean that there would be 13 months, and SOMEbody obviously thought 13 was an unlucky number!
It is such an integral part of so many cultures, when I run into people who have a different calendar ... especially a non-solar one ... like Ethiopians ... I wonder how their agriculture ever survived, because its usually non-agrarian cultures with the lunar calendar and agrarian ones with the solar calendar (It's important to know when to plant!)
Anyway, enough random maundering.
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Quote:Oh, very interesting. I never noticed!
Well, obviously Dec is the 10th month, Nov is the 9th month, Octo is the 8th month, and Sept is the 7th month.
Quote:But the earliest 7-day week was found in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE
The 7 day week maybe adopted due to the Bible's designation of The Sabbeth, and spread via Crusades, Pilgrims, Missionaries. Other Religions may as lso have a basis for 7 day week.
Quote:I never knew that! Oh, the random stuff you learn when you look things up!
Mesopotamia invented new technology. They were the first to use the wheel. The wagon was a transportation revolution for farming and trade. They developed a number system based on 60--this explains why we have 60 seconds in minute and 60 minutes in an hour.
Quote:
They used a 12 month calendar with a 7 day week.
https://sites.google.com/site/1ancientcivilizationsforkids/ancient-ira
q-mesopotamia
Possibly the early tribe of Israel came up with a 7-day week independently, but many historians give the nod to Sumer.
Quote:There are time zones a half hour out of sync???
I'm wondering if there is a language basis for some places and regions having Time Zones which are a Half Hour out of synch with their neighbors. Or is it purely a geographic nature?
Quote:So, another thing I learned ... lunar cycles are 29.5 days, not 28. The rotation of the earth (day), the revolution of the moon ("month") around the earth, and the revolution of the earth around the sun (year) don't conveniently coincide, and they definitely don't coincide with our calendaring system. Leap year is a pretty good approximation of "days" to "years", but the lunar cycle and the 7-day week are off by slightly more than a day, drat it! And the cumulative lunar cycles definitely don't coincide with a solar (or stellar) year ... a lunar year is about 11 days short of a solar year; the two only line up every 33 years. The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, Jews use a combination lunar/solar calendar. That explains why Easter is tied to the phase of the moon.
The 365 day cycle was established beyond the purview of Caesar, Kaiser, Emperor, King, Czar, Tsar - so would you prefer it divided into 73 weeks of 5 days? Lunar cycles would be close to every 6 weeks.
Quote:I agree. Also, sailing cultures would probably be more attuned to high and low tides.
I'm not familiar with a trend of Lunar Calendars, but I would imagine them less prevalent in Latitudes farther from the Equator, when the Solar cycle is more critical. But on the Equator, what difference does it make what time of the year it is - other than the stars changing position in cycles near 13 moons, but still drifting for multiples of 13 moons (regaining synch every 396 Lunar cycles, or about 11,682 days - or 32 Solar Years)?
Thanks for thinking these random thoughts with me!
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:Assuming you meant 33 Lunar Years, approximately equal to 32 Solar Years.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Oh, very interesting. I never noticed!
Well, obviously Dec is the 10th month, Nov is the 9th month, Octo is the 8th month, and Sept is the 7th month.Quote:But the earliest 7-day week was found in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE
The 7 day week maybe adopted due to the Bible's designation of The Sabbeth, and spread via Crusades, Pilgrims, Missionaries. Other Religions may as lso have a basis for 7 day week.Quote:I never knew that! Oh, the random stuff you learn when you look things up!
Mesopotamia invented new technology. They were the first to use the wheel. The wagon was a transportation revolution for farming and trade. They developed a number system based on 60--this explains why we have 60 seconds in minute and 60 minutes in an hour.Quote:
They used a 12 month calendar with a 7 day week.
https://sites.google.com/site/1ancientcivilizationsforkids/ancient-ira
q-mesopotamia
Possibly the early tribe of Israel came up with a 7-day week independently, but many historians give the nod to Sumer.
Quote:There are time zones a half hour out of sync???
I'm wondering if there is a language basis for some places and regions having Time Zones which are a Half Hour out of synch with their neighbors. Or is it purely a geographic nature?Quote:So, another thing I learned ... lunar cycles are 29.5 days, not 28. The rotation of the earth (day), the revolution of the moon ("month") around the earth, and the revolution of the earth around the sun (year) don't conveniently coincide, and they definitely don't coincide with our calendaring system. Leap year is a pretty good approximation of "days" to "years", but the lunar cycle and the 7-day week are off by slightly more than a day, drat it! And the cumulative lunar cycles definitely don't coincide with a solar (or stellar) year ... a lunar year is about 11 days short of a solar year; the two only line up every 33 years. The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, Jews use a combination lunar/solar calendar. That explains why Easter is tied to the phase of the moon.
The 365 day cycle was established beyond the purview of Caesar, Kaiser, Emperor, King, Czar, Tsar - so would you prefer it divided into 73 weeks of 5 days? Lunar cycles would be close to every 6 weeks.Quote:I agree. Also, sailing cultures would probably be more attuned to high and low tides.
I'm not familiar with a trend of Lunar Calendars, but I would imagine them less prevalent in Latitudes farther from the Equator, when the Solar cycle is more critical. But on the Equator, what difference does it make what time of the year it is - other than the stars changing position in cycles near 13 moons, but still drifting for multiples of 13 moons (regaining synch every 396 Lunar cycles, or about 11,682 days - or 32 Solar Years)?
Thanks for thinking these random thoughts with me!
6
I don't recall the answer to this: are Tides more severe at the equator, or closer to Poles? Tides are more severe when other planets align, right? Tides farther from the Equator change severity more based upon which month/season it is, right? (How inclined the Sun and Moon appear in our sky, meaning "winter" tides are more moderate, right?)
The month of Sextilius (6th) was changed to August when Caesar Augustus modified the Julian Calendar.
The month of Quintilius (5th) was changed to July when Julius Caesar reset the existing calendar into the Julian Calendar.
The original 4th month was named for Juno.
The original 3rd month was named for Maia, Goddess of Spring.
The original 2nd month was named for Aphrodite, Goddess of Love.
The original 1st month, the month to resume war, was named after Mars, God of War.
The Intercalendar month at the end of the year was abolished, I think by either Numa Caesar around 700BC or Julius. Some years have 12 moons, some h
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