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Sorry but what is implied apart from your ignorance? Given are concrete examples: Germanisation and Russification, nothing implied. What are examples of your c
by thraway180306 8y ago
Sorry but what is implied apart from your ignorance? Given are concrete examples: Germanisation and Russification, nothing implied.
What are examples of your cultural wars? Anecdote about some villagers? Appeal to human nature? Where and how did it manifest in the history concretely as a cause?
Upthread @lkubner links to interesting piece he wrote about multicultural history of Poland where there was no war over any of this for many centuries. 30-year war on the other hand had less to do with Germans fragmented into 200+ states than with enforcing religious homogenity.
- mmjaa 8y agoThere is no doubt that people don't want to have new language and culture forced on them. There is also no doubt that people enjoy creating new language, and thus new culture. The strife comes when there is no agreement. The Austrian dialects don't form on the basis of individual expressions of power - they form through consensus, the same mechanism by which wars are fought. The point is, I believe that there is a balance between obsessively differentiating ones culture through new invention, and establishing the basis of cultural peace through common language. You've correctly indicated the extremes - but within the scope of those boundaries, there is a means of peace, which is: always be as willing to learn a new word as you are in creating a new word. This is not so easy - there are definitely limits - but those limits are extended with every new word learned, and the contract with every strange word encountered.
- thraway180306 8y agoSorry, but none of your sentences make any sense. What is fought about with Austrian dialects? What is the consensus mechanism, what does the notion of individual expression of power mean? You mean self-expression is a power structure? Did you just hereby invent this notion, or is it some echo of power structures inherent in language stereotypes passed as having anything to do with dialects? What is obsessive about differentiating, what is "establishing basis of cultural peace". These make no sense to me at all. I indicated nothing, just repeated concrete examples you choose to ignore for the second time. Then instead of giving your own you choose to muddy the waters with some incomprehensible original philosophy.
- mmjaa 8y agoDialects are established collectively. If I like your new word/dialect, I use it. That is the consensus. Wars are established collectively. Nobody fights a war as an individual - always as a group. Just like language and dialects are assumed at the individual level, through collective means. The rights of cultural groups, composed of individuals, to compose their own language, is the basis of civilisation. It is also the basis of war and that is the quandary - because it is not as dialectic as you imply (black/white). Its a balancing act - as you have indicated. Enforce cultural mechanisms (language) through violence - war - and you will encounter resistance. But give people the opportunity, at the individual level, to assume whatever cultural positions they may, using language, and you attain peace.
- thraway180306 8y agoPlease. Stop. You write with letters. Wars are waged writing letters. Also thinking is a tool of war. Therefore stop, don't trouble yourself, and be at peace.
- emodendroket 8y agoI don't know how you really tease them out; "standardization" efforts typically take the dialect of one place and say "well that's the standard; now everyone needs to talk like that."