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I don't know. This feels like it is leaning too heavily on single words. Translate aunt, and see that that is similarly difficult. Still, I can't and don't re

by taeric 4y ago

I don't know. This feels like it is leaning too heavily on single words. Translate aunt, and see that that is similarly difficult. Still, I can't and don't reject the idea. Would love to see a comprehensive study. At a personal level, I don't remember these things in school, either. They were archetypes, but nobody was a solid archetype. Such that I find it hard to believe you don't see folks through some of these lenses.

solardev 4y ago
Words (or in their case, characters & the concepts) partially define culture, though. If you don't have an easy word for something, whether it's a personality or a color, it's a foreign idea to you. Sure, someone can translate it for you and tell you what it means, but it's not the same as having it be a part of your culture. Someone can explain "tea time" to me, but as an American, it will always be a Britishism even though I understand the concepts of tea and gathering and hours. It's just not a part of my cultural existence. FWIW, anecdotally, I grew up in a culture much like what I described, and it wasn't until I moved to America that I learned what "nerd" meant. Nobody around me in childhood ever made that distinction. Similarly, I found it odd that Americans identified by musical genres in high school. But sure, these things would be fascinating thing to ethnographically!
- taeric 4y ago
  I think that has been fairly heavily disproven. That language defines culture. I meant my anecdote to be that I grew up in America, and didn't see this behavior at large. Outside of movies. Completely agreed that it is an interesting topic.
  - darkerside 4y ago
    Disproven is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Is there a study you are citing?
    - taeric 4y ago
      Fair. I meant my claim there more as a question. I only have vague memories of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis. Quickly scanning, I can't find anything definitive. Probably the criticism from Pinker, is what I remember?
      - solardev 4y ago
        OK, whoa, sorry... let's take a step back here. I did not mean to imply that language is the sole or complete determinant of culture, or anything remotely that definitive. My statement was overbroad and should've been something way more limited, like "language reflects cultural groupings" or some such. I am not a linguist or an anthro-anything, just a random guy on the internet making observations... sorry if I overstepped. I did not realize the whole color relativity thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...) or the underlying linguistic models (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) were under such continued debate (but of course they are, how naive of me). It's an interesting thing to ponder, but I don't think my underlying claim is extraordinary -- that the ready-built groupings a language has or does not have in part reflects the commonness of their use in that culture. Essentially, that every culture has their own Venn diagrams, and those overlaps may be similar but not exactly the same across cultures. Is that more limited claim under debate? It seems self-evident to me, but that could just be my ignorance. Like when I think of "French food" as an American, a certain type of restaurant comes to mind, but presumably actual French people don't categorize all their cuisines under one simplistic label like that. I know that's the case with Chinese food, at least. Or other examples, the whole "is a burger a sandwich" debate, or how human races are differently perceived by cultures who don't see a lot of them, or how time is measured and communicated differently across cultures, or animal taxonomies before modern genetics and Linnean classification (e.g. a "whale" sometimes called a "whale fish" in other cultures, or whether a bumblebee is a subtype of a honeybee)... all I'm saying is that linguistic groupings evolve differently across cultures because cultures have different needs. I think even the "is this really a thing outside of movies" question is actually another great example of this, where Hollywood has its own cultural groupings, and those may or may not overlap with real-world American schools (and if so, which schools in which areas/subcultures?). Or, how "nerd" and "jock" fall into relative disuse once you enter the white-collar business world, which is its own subculture with imperfect groupings like "designers (who never touch code? not necessarily)" vs "engineers (who never look at UIs? hardly)".
  - rayiner 4y ago
    That’s a different point—you can’t conceptualize an orange if you don’t have a word for orange. OP is making the opposite point: you don’t have a word for orange if you don’t have oranges. The absence of a clear word (much less several) for a “nerd” stereotype might reflect a culture that doesn’t create that categorization. Coming from south Asian culture, for example, we don’t really have a similar concept either.
    - taeric 4y ago
      I get that. I question that you don't have some archetypes, as well. That is too say, you might not have oranges, but you still have citrus fruit. And again, coming from southern us culture, we didn't have direct images of the stereotypes, either. That is largely a movie convenience for story telling.

by taeric 4y ago

solardev 4y ago

Words (or in their case, characters & the concepts) partially define culture, though. If you don't have an easy word for something, whether it's a personality or a color, it's a foreign idea to you. Sure, someone can translate it for you and tell you what it means, but it's not the same as having it be a part of your culture. Someone can explain "tea time" to me, but as an American, it will always be a Britishism even though I understand the concepts of tea and gathering and hours. It's just not a part of my cultural existence. FWIW, anecdotally, I grew up in a culture much like what I described, and it wasn't until I moved to America that I learned what "nerd" meant. Nobody around me in childhood ever made that distinction. Similarly, I found it odd that Americans identified by musical genres in high school. But sure, these things would be fascinating thing to ethnographically!

taeric 4y ago
I think that has been fairly heavily disproven. That language defines culture. I meant my anecdote to be that I grew up in America, and didn't see this behavior at large. Outside of movies. Completely agreed that it is an interesting topic.
- darkerside 4y ago
  Disproven is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Is there a study you are citing?
  - taeric 4y ago
    Fair. I meant my claim there more as a question. I only have vague memories of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis. Quickly scanning, I can't find anything definitive. Probably the criticism from Pinker, is what I remember?
    - solardev 4y ago
      OK, whoa, sorry... let's take a step back here. I did not mean to imply that language is the sole or complete determinant of culture, or anything remotely that definitive. My statement was overbroad and should've been something way more limited, like "language reflects cultural groupings" or some such. I am not a linguist or an anthro-anything, just a random guy on the internet making observations... sorry if I overstepped. I did not realize the whole color relativity thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...) or the underlying linguistic models (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) were under such continued debate (but of course they are, how naive of me). It's an interesting thing to ponder, but I don't think my underlying claim is extraordinary -- that the ready-built groupings a language has or does not have in part reflects the commonness of their use in that culture. Essentially, that every culture has their own Venn diagrams, and those overlaps may be similar but not exactly the same across cultures. Is that more limited claim under debate? It seems self-evident to me, but that could just be my ignorance. Like when I think of "French food" as an American, a certain type of restaurant comes to mind, but presumably actual French people don't categorize all their cuisines under one simplistic label like that. I know that's the case with Chinese food, at least. Or other examples, the whole "is a burger a sandwich" debate, or how human races are differently perceived by cultures who don't see a lot of them, or how time is measured and communicated differently across cultures, or animal taxonomies before modern genetics and Linnean classification (e.g. a "whale" sometimes called a "whale fish" in other cultures, or whether a bumblebee is a subtype of a honeybee)... all I'm saying is that linguistic groupings evolve differently across cultures because cultures have different needs. I think even the "is this really a thing outside of movies" question is actually another great example of this, where Hollywood has its own cultural groupings, and those may or may not overlap with real-world American schools (and if so, which schools in which areas/subcultures?). Or, how "nerd" and "jock" fall into relative disuse once you enter the white-collar business world, which is its own subculture with imperfect groupings like "designers (who never touch code? not necessarily)" vs "engineers (who never look at UIs? hardly)".
- rayiner 4y ago
  That’s a different point—you can’t conceptualize an orange if you don’t have a word for orange. OP is making the opposite point: you don’t have a word for orange if you don’t have oranges. The absence of a clear word (much less several) for a “nerd” stereotype might reflect a culture that doesn’t create that categorization. Coming from south Asian culture, for example, we don’t really have a similar concept either.
  - taeric 4y ago
    I get that. I question that you don't have some archetypes, as well. That is too say, you might not have oranges, but you still have citrus fruit. And again, coming from southern us culture, we didn't have direct images of the stereotypes, either. That is largely a movie convenience for story telling.