#something something sapir whorf hypothesis

[egharcourt]

Now and then I revisit Cantonese (my first language) romantic pop songs whenever I feel like it, which I just did, and whoa. The rich lyricism and descriptiveness never fail to captivate me every time. I wish I could translate it fully, but there's a lot of nuance in a single Cantonese sentence that can't be replicated in English. Maybe that's why the emotion of love has always been a visual thing to me that I can never quite put into words in writing, granted that all my works are written in English.

Nothing tugs at your heartstrings like love songs in your native tongue. I guess.

[elodieunderglass]

Hi! I was wondering if you could help me out with a word I've forgotten? I'm trying to remember the name for a concept that (I think) talks about how people better understand or process Things once they have vocabulary to describe it - I've heard it talked about in regards to the colour orange, or coercive control, etc.

long story short i've just read a paper saying ancient Greeks and Romans weren't racist bc they had no word for racism and am trying to form an argument against!

(no worries if this is unanswerable, i'm aware its a bit of a long shot but you struck me as a person who Knows Things)

That’s extremely kind and funny of you. i don’t know much but i am ok at synthesis.

I think you might be thinking of the concepts loosely called the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”, which describes something called “linguistic determinism.” This idea has been “disproven”, as it is just too reductionist as a concept - people are clearly perfectly capable of having experiences that are tough to describe with words. There will be plenty of papers showing how this reasoning is applied.

but it is still commonly thrown around and still considered a useful teaching framework. That’s why you’ll see it referenced online as if it is fresh, new, and applicable - people learn about it every year in college. Also, elements of the framework are probably perfectly sound. It definitely seems to be the case that language shapes brains; it just doesn’t seem to be the case that humans who don’t have specific words for them can’t experience orange, or the future.

(Many things in college are taught using teaching frameworks that may not be, technically, true; the framework is intended to give a critical structure for interpreting information. Then, when we later find evidence that disproves the hypothesis, that single piece of information doesn’t destroy our expensive college education; what we paid for is the framework. This is mostly frustrating in the sciences, when fresh crops of undergraduate students crash around on social media, grappling with their first exposure to (complex concept) and how it’s DIFFERENT to what they learned BEFORE and their teachers LIED TO EVERYBODY and they’re going to save the world from POP SCIENCE by telling the TRUTH. You’ll notice that these TOTALLY NEW INFORMATION reveals map along the semester schedule. The thing here is that getting new information, or information being different from what you were previously told, does not cancel out the fact that you are getting what you pay for - an education. Learning new facts that change our relationships to hypotheses isn’t a ✨huge betrayal ✨ , but the expected process of academia. Anyway.)

You have an interesting response here, and can start by looking at the ways that Sapir-Whorf has been disproved. There will be loads of literature on that.

However, it would be interesting to look at the argument as an unpicking of the other side’s rather weird, ritualistic superstitious belief that a behavior doesn’t exist if the creatures doing it can’t describe it. It is not on the ancient Greeks and Romans to categorise and interpret their behavior for a modern educated audience. They do not have the wherewithal to do so. They are also fucking dead. We can name the behaviors we see, and describe their impacts, however the hell we like.

Sure, the ancient Greeks used “cancer” to refer to lumpy veiny tumors. We can infer that they still had blood cancer, because their medical texts describe leukaemia and their corpses have evidence of it - they just didn’t know it was cancer. But we do, so we can call it cancer. Just because Homer said “the wine-dark sea” in a flight of girlish whimsy doesn’t mean he was unable to distinguish grape juice from saltwater, which we know, because we can observe that he was an intelligent wordsmith perfectly capable of talking about wine and oceans in other contexts. We are the people who get to stand at our point of history with our words, and name things like “this person probably died of leukaemia” and “poets say things that aren’t necessarily literal” and “this behaviour was racist” and “that’s gay” and “togas kinda slay tho” despite Ancient Greeks having different concepts of cancer, wittiness, prejudice, homosexuality, and slaying than we do today.

Now just to caveat that people do get muddled about the concept of racism. Our understanding of racism from here - this point of history, with these words, probably from the West - is heavily influenced by how we see racism around us today: white supremacy and the construct of “whiteness,” European colonial expansion, transatlantic chattel slavery, orientalism, evangelism, 20th century racial science, and so on. This is the picture of racism that really dominates our current discourse, so people often mistake it for the definition of racism. (Perhaps in a linguistic-deterministic sort of way after all.) As a result, muddled-up people often say things like “I can’t be racist because I’m not a white American who throws slurs at black American people,” while being an Indian person in the UK who votes for vile anti-immigration practices, or a Polish person with a horrible attitude about the Roma. Many people genuinely hold this very kindergarten idea of racism; if your opponent does as well, they’re probably thinking something like “Ancient Greek and Roman people didn’t have a concept of white supremacy, because whiteness hadn’t been invented yet, so how could they be racist?” And that’s unsound reasoning in a separate sense.

Racism as the practice of prejudice against an ethnicity, particularly one that is a minority, is a power differential that is perfectly observable in ancient cultures. The beliefs and behaviors will be preserved in written plays, recorded slurs, beauty standards, reactions to foreign marriages, and travel writing. The impacts will be documented in political records, trade agreements, the layouts of historical districts of ancient towns.

You don’t need permission to point out behaviours and impacts. You can point them out in any words you like. You can make up entirely new words to bully the ancient romans with. You are the one at this point of history and your words are the ones that get used.

Pretending that “words” are some kind of an intellect-obscuring magical cloud in the face of actual evidence is just a piece of sophistry (derogatory) on the part of your opponent here. It’s meant to be a distraction. You can dismiss this very flimsy shield pretty quickly and get them in the soft meat of them never reading anything about the actual material topic, while they’re still looking up dictionary definitions or whatever.

[max1461]

Something that I thought would be confusing but just isn't is that Japanese uses the opposite set of direction metaphors for time as English does. So in English, words like "ahead" refer to the future, and "behind" refer to the past. In Japanese it's reversed, 前 (mae) means "in front" and "before", while 後 (ato) means "behind" and "after".

When I first heard about this I thought it would require some kind of difficult retooling of how I visualize time, but turns out it just doesn't. 前 just means "past" to me in a time context and "front" in a space context, mutatis mutandis for 後, and it's no problem. Turns out the spacial metaphor wasn't really load-bearing in my conception of time to begin with.

It's shit like this that makes me doubt the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

[ukulelekatie]

What is the sapir whorf hypothesis?

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the idea that language dictates thought. In the strongest sense of this hypothesis, if you don’t have the vocabulary for a concept, that concept doesn’t exist to you.

This is pretty controversial in the field of linguistics. Many agree with the concept of linguistic relativity, or the idea that language can influence the way people interact with the world. For example, different languages have different systems of words for sorting colors. In English, green and blue are considered two different colors, while several languages, like Zulu and Xhosa, don’t distinguish between the two and instead have a single word that encompasses both hues (sometimes referred to as “grue” by English-speaking linguists). On the other hand, English speakers consider dark blue and light blue to be different shades of the same color, while Mongolian has two separate words for them. Some languages, like Pirahã, only lexically distinguish between light colors and dark colors.

In other words, if you gave people from different places a bunch of paint chips and told them to sort them all by color, you might find some interesting differences in the results. But just because they’re categorized differently doesn’t mean the colors necessarily look different to different speakers. Most English speakers with normal vision can still tell the difference between light blue and dark blue even if we don’t have distinct terms for them, just like a speaker of a language without blue/green distinction can discriminate between the color of the sky and the color of grass.

The idea that language determines your thoughts (linguistic determinism) also leads down a very slippery slope, often with racist connotations. (Linguistics as a field has quite a long history of racist ideology, unfortunately.) The most famous example of this is Whorf’s conclusion that the Hopi Native Americans have no concept of time because the Hopi language does not have grammatical tense. In reality, there are other structures in this language that Hopi speakers utilize in order to just as effectively convey the past, present, and future as languages that do so with grammatical tense. On the flip side, English does not have a grammatical gender noun class system like Spanish or French does, but no one is trying to argue that English speakers don’t have a concept of gender!

My linguistics professors in undergrad really emphasized how flawed this hypothesis is, despite how convincing it can sound on the surface, and it has stuck with me and my classmates ever since. A few years ago, I was hanging out with some friends from college, and the only friend in the group who didn’t take at least one ling class mentioned something about reading “a really cool article about how language affects the way you think!” I can still hear the collective groan of everyone else in the room when he said that, followed by all of us scrambling to explain the issues and nuances of that claim 😂

[terraced-dreams]

THE HAPPINESS OF NOT KNOWING HOW TO COUNT

Deep in the Amazon jungle, there is an ethnic group that is considered one of the happiest in the world.

This culture's worldview is reflected in its language: it does not have words to designate colors, numbers or the passage of time.

The Pirahãs (pirarrãs) are hunter-gatherers who live along the Maici River, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas.

Apaitsiiso (“what comes out of the head”) is what the Pirahãs call their language, the last extant of the extinct Mura language family.

Their language shapes and is shaped by their worldview: they have no way of counting.

Instead of numbers, they use comparative terms like “bigger” or “smaller.”

For them, 2 fish are “bigger” than 1 fish, just as a large fish is “bigger” than a small one.

A linguist, Daniel Everett, wanted to teach them arithmetic. But after months of effort, they couldn't understand the concept.

None of them learned to add 1 + 3.

Everett, with the help of psychologists, understood that this was simply not how the Pirahã conceived the world.

The Pirahās also lack names for colors, which does not mean that they are not able to distinguish them.

They simply do not categorize the spectrum into more subtle or specific colors, such as teal, yellow ochre, or taupe.

As with numbers, the Pirahãs conceive of colors in terms of relationships: something can be “darker” or “like blood or lips.”

Categories such as “numbers” and “colors” are not conceived in isolation from a whole. They are defined through their relationship with that whole.

The Pirahãs highly value experience and first-hand knowledge.

And that vision of life is expressed in the structure of their language, through the curious use of suffixes: those particles that are added to the end of a word to modify its meaning.

Let's take the Spanish suffix “-ento”. This creates an adjective from a noun and gives it the quality of “state” or “likeness”; as in “amarillento” (yellowish) or “polvoriento” (dusty).

Pirahã suffixes indicate what evidence a speaker has to support what they say.

Linguists call these types of suffixes “evidential.”

There are 3 pirahãs evidential suffixes, which can convey key information succinctly, for which a complete sentence in other languages.

Everett gives an example:

If a pirahã says “Your boat has a hole.”

• One type of suffix would denote rumor: “I know because they told me so.”

• Another would indicate observation: “I can see fish swimming in it.”

• And a third, deduction: “I can see your ship sinking, so it must have a hole.”

Other peculiarities of this language is that everything is spoken in the present, there is no future or past.

There are no terms that identify kinship or descent. The word for Father and Mother is the same.

The pirahãs, who do not reach a thousand individuals, are happy people: they only live in an eternal “now”. In their language there are no past or future tenses.

Many of them have no memories of their grandparents. When asked what life was like for their ancestors, they respond: “The same.”

That happiness is reflected in the fact that they are almost always laughing.

They have no religion and do not believe in any god. They don't believe in anything they can't see or feel. So they do not believe in a supreme spirit or creative deity, only in lesser spirits that can haunt them.

A curious fact is that the linguist Everett was a missionary when he made contact with the Pirahãs in the 70s.

He tried to evangelize them, but the indigenous people lost interest when they learned that Everett had never seen Jesus. These experiences led Everett to atheism.

The relationship between language, culture and thought is a topic that has fascinated linguists.

Does thought condition language or is it the other way around?

Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf developed the hypothesis that language influences thinking and not the other way around.

The “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis”, in its “hard” version, maintains that people from different cultures think differently due to differences in their languages.

Thus, Pirahã speakers perceive reality differently than speakers of Spanish, Portuguese or English.

Few linguists today support that version. The “weak” claim, linguistic relativity, enjoys greater favor. According to this, language influences perceptions, thinking and, at least potentially, behavior. But not what determines them.

Each people, each culture, gives names to circumstances in their environment that their culture tells them is important.

The Japanese have several words (“potsupotsu,” “parapara,” “shitoshito,” and “zāzā”) to describe sensations associated with different intensities of rain.

The Yagan people, indigenous to the Tierra del Fuego region of South America, have the word “mamihlapinatapei.” Its meaning implies “a wordless but meaningful look shared by two people who want to start something but are reluctant to do so.”

The importance of the study of languages, of which some 2,500 are in danger of extinction, lies in knowing the different ways of conceiving reality.

The language of a people is an expression of their worldview, a human quality.

But when does language emerge?

Many researchers believe that language is the heritage of Homo sapiens. Others, like the aforementioned Daniel Everett, think that language has emerged parallel to the development of the brain, and that it would have already appeared even in Homo erectus, perhaps 800,000 years ago.

[pruning-the-minds-garden]

Hypnokink Basics: Special Techniques (pt 3) - Neurolinguistic Programming

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

I don't have an example for this one and will instead link to "Kinky NLP" by sleepingirl

NLP is a bit of an odd creature, because it has such a woolly definition. In the broadest possible terms, it is a suite of techniques that use the way we talk about things to reframe the way we think about things, as a kind of in-language extension of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It also overlaps with conditioning/brainwashing to some extent.

One common technique of NLP is called an "Incantation," though hypnokinksters might better know it as a "mantra." Repeatedly saying something that you want to be true or to make true about yourself - "obedience is pleasure," "I am a good doll," "I am my Master's perfect fucktoy" or whatever you might want as part of your kinky dynamic - can gradually, over time, make it more and more true and transform your mind. It can reprogram your brain, bit by bit. This has limits, of course, in that there are certain things that are hard-wired into your brain that are unlikely to change, but there are many more than you think that are not. Using something like this does not require a hypnotic induction to work. It might benefit from one, or from being in some other altered state (heightened arousal or the edge of orgasm, for example), but it doesn't require any of that in order to work. All it needs is motivation, and to be used with regularity over time.

A second technique which is often poached from the NLP playbook by many hypnotists, and many (pardon me I feel a bit ill) "pick-up artists" is "mirroring." This technique is, essentially, to help build rapport with someone more quickly by mirroring their body language, word choice, and so on - taking a drink whenever they take a drink, using the same words they do when describing things, etc. I bring it up because this is an example of a technique that, when used carefully, thoughtfully, and in moderation can be very helpful... but when used thoughtlessly and carelessly, can be less than useless.

For example, if you start mimicking every action of a person to whom you are speaking, leaning in altogether too close for comfort, using their exact body language, their precise word choice... that's incredibly creepy. Don't do that. The way I employ mirroring is more targeted. If I notice that a partner consistently uses a certain word to describe something in trance - they see a "scarlet" ball of light, for instance - then I make sure to use that word, not some similar word like "red" or "crimson" when I describe that same thing. However they tell me they experience trance, that is how I describe the experience back to them. If they make it clear that they want [x], [y] and [z] in trance, then that is not only what I want, that is what I am enthusiastic to provide (though that's because of my own personal proclivities as much as it is any mirroring on my part, but it does serve the purpose).

[nem0c]

Hyperion, Dan Simmons

Priest’s Tale. Actually an epistolary narrative concerning a different priest. Catholic but a Jesuit archaeologist who’s main theological precursor is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (coincidentally someone I have read recently owing the nearby bookshop’s sometimes esoteric offering in it’s religion section). Actually an atheist and a scientist. Representative of the most common epistemological position of classic sf. Has an encounter that overturns this system of knowledge, confirms his faith in a living God, and spurs his faith in the necessary mortality of both himself and his Church. Read alongside: James Blish, A Case of Conscience

Soldier’s Tale. Limited 3rd person narration. We’re following one individual but at an emotional distance. We see the economic and political conditions necessary for the re-emergence of a noble warrior caste and limited warfare, something common in military sf, and then the changes which lead to it’s fall and the return of 20th century total war and terror and all the nastiness military sf skipped over. Kassad’s love for Moneta is the courtly romantic love that removes him from his fellow man and encourages his growth both as a knight of the FORCE and later as a butcher of men. Theological question: If a man utilises orbiting x-rays to take out a heretical Shi’a prophet, but then essentially pretends to direct Allah’s anger to prompt the remaining colonists into peaceful submission, is he at fault from a Sunni perspective? Little ‘The door dilated’ reference to Heinlein. Read alongside: Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers (and/or Space Cadet and/or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), Gordon Dickson, Dorsai series (even though I’ve only read Soldier, Ask Not which has an unusual protagonist and narrative for the series), Harry Harrison, Bill, the Galactic Hero

The Poet’s Tale. 1st person past-tense narration. Much discussion of the craft of writing. A lot to disagree with, particularly the notion that you’re using language as a degenerated tool to try and convey with clarity a pre-linguistic experience. Whether there are non-linguistic experiences or not, we are getting at them only through language, and a writer can hardly wield language with such craft and then claim it is a transparent medium. Contrary and excellent bit about the influence of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and General Semantics on sf when an accident that reduces his speech capabilities and leaves him in drudge labour also reduces his experience of life to a tight cycle; and he only escapes through expanding his language use and the conceptual space he inhabits. The Shrike, in it’s appearance as Muse, echoing the Soldier’s courtly love. Does a prophecy create the future it predicts? Read alongside: Choose your favourite Samuel Delany, A. E. van Vogt’s Null-A series, any William Burroughs.

The Scholar’s Tale. Limited 3rd person narration. The relative normality of Sol’s life provides good background on the day-to-day existence of the Hegemony. The mysteries of the Time Tombs get some exploration here. Theological concern: You are a Jew and Israel (and the whole Earth) is long, long gone and dead. The exile is forever. The Messiah h’aint coming. You’re having dreams in which a disembodied voice commands you to repeat Abraham and sacrifice your only living child; who is herself ageing backwards owing to contact with the Shrike. You are an agnostic scholar of ethics. What do?

The Detective’s Tale. 1st person past-tense narration. Neo-noir and cyberpunk plot starting in a run-down slum sector of some heavy g industrial world. Nice nod to Asimov’s Robot Detective novels both in that this is about a cynical human detective learning to trust a robot, and in the aside about residents of such planets usually developing agoraphobia. The cybrid (a manufactured human body piloted by an AI that is actually present in the Cloud) is a recreation of Keats. Contrary to the personality crises and shoddy cartesian assumptions of some cyberpunk, he is adamant that he is not the same person as the real Keats, and clears up the detective’s assumptions about AI: While they may appear to be disembodied ghosts inhabiting another plane, temporarily possessing manufactured bodies, that plane is a very much real and material computer network. Using both noir and cyberpunk’s penchant for consipracy to uncover the political situation between the Human Hegemony, the Ousters, and the AI Core. As Keats plans to escape the AI Core to a section of space with extremely limited access to the network, he must inhabit this manufactured body. Ending on an AI Word becoming Flesh in order to cause an immaculate conception in the detective for the onset of a future human/AI Messiah. Edit: Almost forgot, but I like the part where the hacker character has aged out of his youthful subculture and taken a sensible job as a public sector data analyst, only to realise his own betrayal and throw in for one last stupid hack when given the opportunity.

We skipped over the Templar. He vanishes in an actual closed-room mystery but the investigation turns up some possible characteristics. A story told without the narrator’s presence.

The Consul’s Tale. Initially 1st person present-tense account of a love affair with two time structures running side-by-side that is revealed to concern an event occurring decades prior to another person. Followed by a confessional. Interrogation of the colonial ambitions underlying various Galactic Federations in print sf.

In all instances, a story dealing with the various ways of writing an sf text, encapsulating an age and pronouncing its death. The sense of approaching apocalypse is palpable, with the Shrike as its avatar. Extremely good stuff and I am tempted to read the sequel as it depicts that Fall of an era, but I can’t see how or why you would speculate in a positive sense beyond that negation. It seems the author didn’t, as Endymion still gives us a narrative of the downfall of a particular age and state, but it swaps out the secular Hegemony for the Catholic Church in space.

[thoughtsfromthewindowsill]

Fun fact: "gender" was a linguistics term for at least a century before we have evidence for it as a word for subgroups of people.

It comes from the same root as "genre" & originally just meant a type/sort/category. Linguistic genders are just groups of words that take the same modifiers, often based on word endings. It just so happens that an easy way to delineate male & female versions of the same thing is to use the same word with different endings, which puts the word into two genders which linguists then called "masculine" & "feminine" not because of any inherent qualities but more in the sense of "the group which includes the masculine/feminine words".

And languages can have all sorts of genders! Lots have a neuter & animate/inanimate is pretty common; there's apparently one Australian language that has something like 15 linguistic genders! Some languages have no genders!

So yeah, person whose tags got screenshoted, the word genders are completely arbitrary. It's all just a social construction of putting random mouth noises in various orders to facilitate communication (the arbitrariness of the sign is part of what makes it language!); a gender is just a group with similar characteristics!

Personally, the next time someone gets high & mighty about gender at me, I just might follow the example of the African language Luganda & say my gender is "large objects & liquids"

(also @spacelazarwolf idk if anyone's looked into it from a gender perspective - they probably have - but your musings on language & sociology might benefit from investigation of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)

it’s so funny to me when terfs and other transphobes talk about “biological pronouns”

you realise there is nothing about a vulva that means you have to call someone who has one “she”, right? and nothing about a penis that means you have to call someone who has one “he”? like that is literally a socially constructed idea based on the perceived gender of a person with a certain set of genitals.

you cannot be actually critical of gender if you are not critical of the ideas about it that society has created, you fucking clowns 💀

[adrenalinezetaax]

Pirahã and the Case for Linguistic Relativity

Pirahã is a topic that has fascinated me since I first heard about it years ago, when I was in high school. It’s a language spoken by a hunter-gatherer tribe in the Amazon that is the last surviving member of its linguistic family. This tribe was the subject of considerable interest when it was first contacted by linguists because it seemed to provide evidence for linguistic relativity—the hypothesis that language influences one’s perception of the world.

Throughout the eighties, the linguist Daniel Everett conducted research on the languages spoken in Amazon basin. He was surprised to find that one of those languages, Pirahã, had no numbers, only terms for “few” and “many.” When he tested speakers’ ability to match two quantities, he found that they performed less accurately when he hid one of those quantities from view and asked participants to recall it. Supposedly, the absence of number vocabulary compromised their ability to count as predicted by the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

Everett also made the startling claim that recursion, the ability to embed syntactic structures—at that time held to be an innate feature of language according to the theories of Noam Chomsky, was not in fact universal, using his research of Pirahã as evidence. The ensuing debate became the point of much controversy, with Chomsky calling Everett a “charlatan.” Pirahã is an outlier in several other respects as well: it also lacks color terms and according to some linguists is among the languages with the fewest phonemes (by some counts ten total), which allows speakers to communicate by whistling or humming.

If it is true that language influences how we think, then speakers of Pirahã are not unlike the fictional inhabitants of Tlön in the famous short story by Jorge Luis Borges, which imagines a language without nouns. Instead of saying “moon,” they say “to moonate,” and so on. In Borges’s story, this makes them idealists in the tradition of philosopher George Berkeley, who holds that the existence of the material world is an illusion.

However, many arguments for linguistic relativity tend to rest on misunderstandings about how language works—for example, by failing to distinguish between synthetic languages (which combine concepts into single words) and analytic ones (which separate them). A famous example is the claim that Inuit (or “Eskimo”) languages have fifty unique words for snow. This view is often attributed to Benjamin Whorf, who lends his name to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The assumption is that having a larger vocabulary grants speakers access to a richer repertoire of concepts, when they have in fact only a few word roots for snow with many different suffixes, similar to compound words in English, because Inuit languages are synthetic. Likewise, that Pirahã might require more words than English to express the same concept should not preclude speakers from learning it.

The debate surrounding linguistic relativity recalls certain philosophical problems regarding the nature of translation. The philosopher Hilary Putnam devised a thought experiment: he postulated a language where the word gavagai could refer to either a rabbit or “undetached rabbit parts.” Both of these are plausible descriptions of the same object, which means that precise translation is impossible. This is relevant to the linguistic relativity hypothesis because proponents often assume that a concept only exists in a language if it can be expressed in a single word—but if any word can be decomposed into arbitrarily simpler concepts, then no word expresses a concept unique to that language.

For instance, the world mamihlapinatapai in the Yaghan language is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as “the most succinct word.” It is often translated as “a look that without words is shared by two people who want to initiate something, but that neither will start.” Many claims have also been made of “untranslatable” words like saudade in Portuguese or poshlost in Russian. Is “snowflake” a combination of the concepts “snow” and “flake,” or is it a distinct, third concept? Resorting to what philosophers call “natural kinds,” the categories that exist out in the natural world, doesn't really resolve the issue, since it begs the question.

In Uncleftish Beholding by sci-fi author Poul Anderson, we see how the vocabulary for certain concepts might be derived in a language without native words for them. He attempts to explain atomic theory in “purist” English by avoiding French, Greek, and Latin loanwords.[1] This is no easy task, but it is possible. For example, he uses the word “waterstuff” for hydrogen (from the German wasserstoff) and “samestead” for “isotope.” This constraint yields rather inspired sentences: “elements are composed of particles called atoms” becomes “the firststuffs have their being as motes called unclefts.”[2]

While Anderson's essay is facetious, such purism is characteristic of linguistic revival projects around the world, and various scholars have attempted to institute similar proscriptions for other languages in earnest. In one striking example from 1969, Filipino linguist Gonsalo Del Rosario wrote Maugnaying Talasalitaang, a dictionary with proposed translations of numerous academic terms into Tagalog, which traditionally relied heavily on loanwords from Spanish and English.

Everett’s work remains contentious among linguists, and many scholars have rejected his claims. When it comes to Pirahã, I suspect the real explanation for the tribe’s innumeracy is cultural. Sustained isolation and a lack of agriculture would negate the need for counting, which is an acquired skill. If anything, Pirahã shows that culture determines language, rather than the other way around.

[1] In a similar vein, Randall Monroe, the creator of xkcd, wrote an encyclopedia using the thousand most common English words, underscoring the irony that some concepts become harder to understand.

[2] It goes without saying that modern English's dual inheritance is what gives the language its flavor: Borges, who spoke English fluently, noted how a sentence’s meaning shifts when one switches from the Germanic “ghost” to the Latinate “spirit.”

[awful-roffle]

The Sapir Whorf hypothesis has to do with whether or not language shapes our brains and how we think or if it doesn't! So like, if my memory serves, native Chinese speakers think as time being something that goes up and down, while native English speakers see it as left to right!

And then there's how we categorize color and more. It's really interesting and similar to that thing you reblogged, lol. Languages!

-Rimworld anon

SICK

i wonder how that correlates to history & how languages originally developed too

[max1461]

Forgot to add the question bit to the last ask but basically how plausible do you think something like that is to be a significant thing? Either in the sapir whorfy way of language means people conceptualise failure differently, or the reverse where because that culture conceptualises failure differently for other reasons that's why the language doesn't have a word for it?

In reference to this.

I don't really know, because the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has basically not been tested (strong Sapir-Whorf is probably unfalsifiable, but weak Sapir-Whorf might be something you could investigate empirically), but my intuition is "there's no effect". I really doubt that what loanwords a language borrows is determined with anything like this semantic granularity.

So, ok, Bengali speakers have borrowed the English word "fail" to describe failing a test. I strongly suspect this is related to like, the education system, or media or something—basically exposure to the English word in that context. And English is a prestige language, so people want to borrow English words for all kinds of shit. In Japanese, the native word for test is shiken, but you can also use the English loanword tesuto. Why? I don't think any particular reason, really. It just caught on somehow. Why did English borrow the word amateur from French? Because French culture has more hobbyists? I somewhat doubt it.

Moreover, I doubt that Bengali speakers generally know English well enough to pick up on the subtleties in the semantics of English "fail", and judge that those semantic subtleties are better suited to "failing a test" than whatever the native Bengali word it. That seems... unlikely to me.

Like, OK, I want to clarify: I'm not saying your sister's research is bunk. For any given loanword (or really, even linguistic feature), if you're lucky, you might have enough data to track its spread like a virus. You know, "when did it enter the language, with which groups did it first get popular, etc. etc.". And I'm sure there are interesting sociological observations to be made here, on the micro level. Like this is a bunch of humans interacting, so of course the spread is going to be affected by human social processes, if you're looking at it with that much granularity. I don't doubt that at all. The thing that I doubt is that usage of loanwords can tell you something deep and abiding about how people from different cultures think about things, rather than just being related to a bunch of basically incidental and contingent facts of history.

[vergi1ius]

In linguistics, we have a concept called The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The basics of this concept are some degree of "If you don't have a word for it, you can't conceive of it."

Now, there are several degrees of this. The conception above is the strictest example of it, which is generally not accepted among linguists. A looser definition might be something like "It's much, much harder to talk about concepts you don't have words for." (For example, people who speak a language with more color words distinguish colors more quickly/easily than those who speak words with fewer color words).

Newspeak is weaponized Sapir-Whorf. To purposely restrict vocabulary to eliminate any thoughts of rebellion.

As pointed out above, progressives have been consistently adding vocabulary to the world, to better voice the thoughts and feelings of the oppressed and non-mainstream.

One time I heard a dude online compare new and obscure LGBT terminology to newspeak. This I think is one of the biggest examples I have seen of people with their whole chest ignoring the basic themes of 1984.

In 1984 the whole point of newspeak was that it shrinks. Ideas that could once be communicated now cannot. Everything is simplified as much as possible. You cannot explain complicated ideas of freedom or equality because the words no longer exist, or they don’t mean what they once did.

More specifically, there is canonically no word for “gay” in 1984. There are only two words for the entire spectrum of sexuality. “goodsex” and “sexcrime”. If you’re gay it’s the exact same as being a pedophile. And those are is the exact same as cheating on your wife, which is the exact same daring to fuck your wife just because you feel like it. Which is no different than literally any sex act that might offend big brother.

Do you see what’s happening? In 1984 can no longer ask your wife to peg you or something because the word for pegging is the exact same word for pedophile. And you can’t come out as gay because all you can say is that you did a criminal sex act, which means you cannot make a case for your rights either.

Inventing made up words to describe obscure things that previously lacked words would literally be a perfect remedy to newspeak. This language would counter every barrier to communicating the necessary concepts. Because it’s what literally every normal non-dystopian language does.

[jhviscomms]

W3 Oded Ezer Workshop Day 3: (08/02/23)

At the start of the third day I was quite happy with my idea from the day before so I was just going to try and come up with something in one of the formula and enjoy myself.

Oded noted before his talk that the 'exceptional concept' isn't obvious and that research is so important to help us find our way.

The Innovative Project: Use brand new technology, or one from another field

That hasn’t yet been adopted in graphic design

Create a unique experience or visual idea

A new technology or new to GD + what can I do with it that hasn’t been done yet? = my project

The Design Fiction Project: A speculative project based on an existing futuristic scenario

Illustrates it visually

An existing futuristic scenario + A visual representation of the scenario using my expertise in design = my project 

Initially I was torn between both ideas, they were both quite challenging and both seemed harder than the previous days. Either way, i'd have to find a new purpose for something that already exists or has been conceptualised.

I started looking at next-gen stat tracking and data analytics in sports since its something that i'm interested in. However, nothing was coming to mind.

I changed my outlook and started focusing on the design fiction brief. I thought about a film i'd watched the other day: Arrival. The film is about aliens landing on earth and trying to share their language with humans.

The alien's language is made up of strange circular symbols with smaller details, I took some notes on them to explain the context of my idea.

(these are very important to understanding what i'm on about)

Heptapods use a Semasiographic form of language, which means their spoken language has no relationship with the written one, contrary to human languages.

The film implies that the human form of writing is a wasted opportunity, as we write the same thing we speak.

The Hetapods also make sounds which humans cannot understand and have no connection to the symbols.

The sounds are Hep-A and the symbols are Hep-B

Hep-B demonstrates the Hetapod's non-linear way of moving through time.

The Heptapod language is nonlinear, their language has no past, present, or future tense.

They can see all of time at once as their brains are wired to this circular form of communication. When Louise learns their language she too can look into the future. Essentially, she is rewiring her brain to the Heptapod language, which is discussed briefly in the film as “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: The language you speak defines the way you think”, thus now she too has a nonlinear perspective of time. 

I wanted the humans and aliens to understand each other universally and not just Louise. I thought about how us humans understand each other: translation apps, facial expressions and body language.

I spoke to some other people about it, and Josie reminded me that at the end of the film Louise wrote a book about how to understand the alien language and did my job for me.

I briefly considered looking at a different TV show before coming back to Arrival. I thought about the book and if people would read it, I imagined if hypothetically this scenario happened and aliens came to earth from the future and this person wrote a book and told us that in 3000 years the aliens needed help and that we needed to read this book to understand them.

I do not think a lot of people would read the book:

people like reading less and less these days

people would be scared of the aliens and inter-galactically xenophobic towards them

thus, parents would shield their children and tell them to not read it, just as people didn't want to co-operate in the film

With people not trying to protect the environment in the climate crisis, and people not getting vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic, both of these things would protect others so I have my doubts if people would read the book or not

I wondered if in this hypothetical world, I could create an alternate way of communicating with the aliens, from app's to kindles to bionic arms produced by apple. I decided that this was taking me out of my comfort zone which is what Oded said not to do, so I decided to think about a world where people did read the book.

I thought about a different way to read it and some alternate ways of reading time that I could use, clocks, sunlight and circadian rhythms, before I realised that i'd gone off track again.

The aliens came to earth because they needed help, but nowhere does it say what they need help with. I theorised that they needed access to human medical supplies, so my first idea was to make some kind of satirical day-in-the life video of humans looking after old aliens and giving them human medicine since I thought it would be quite fun.

I found some references but I won't put them in since I'm not going to go ahead with this specific idea following the feedback I got. I also had a few ideas for how my peers could develop their ideas, I told most of them after the session. I also thought of an idea for the milestones brief that i'd read. I thought of maybe playing with something to do with the different hours in the day.

Oded's feedback was essentially, don't do a video when I don't like videos as much as books. He suggested that I make a book showing this new world where humans and aliens co-exist and both groups can move through time in a non-linear way. He said to not look at the film and to think how the story would continue, however, he also said don't write anything so I think that I misunderstood. I also thought about maybe putting myself into this world and using some first person perspective. I didn't think much of this idea before speaking to Oded but now I really like it. I don't think I quite get it yet so I might chat to him again afterwards.

Oded gave us a summary talk where he encouraged us to try and fail, and not be afraid of it. He also said that we just need to follow each step of the formula and not to try and succeed, just be ourselves and have fun. He also encouraged 'stealing' from other designers, not copying.

We were left to try and reflect and improve on some of our ideas:

Idea 1: The Journalling app

slightly boring

I was distracted

Might just be a cool UI project

Nowhere near an exceptional concept

Idea 2: The Patty Hearst Editorial

More interesting

Very intrigued by the story and case

I want to share the story in an easily digestible way, 

The formula was a revival project, this wasn’t right for that, I’m not reviving the story, its already incredible, it just needs a new format

The book as a format is not quite right, its too boring for how passionate I am about the story

It can be exceptional in the right format but for now its just exciting until I find that format

Day 3: After-Arrival new world book 

Weird

Didn’t like it at first but it grew on me

Started out with the language, ended up with the ‘after the movie’ world that I created 

dying aliens and everyone being able to move through time in a non-linear way

Oded said do a book because I like books

Not quite sure what Oded meant, either

(1) In this world where no one wants to read, make people want to read the book of how to talk to aliens?…

(2) Or a book about the new world with aliens and people, able to communicate and move through time

(3) Maybe I’m imagining the content of the book of how to talk to them, based on the script of the film, maybe can get more playful over time as the humans learn how to travel through time. Blur till end, use something to unblur, what did she use in the film…

Maybe use my own perspective, put myself in this new world…

Exceptional with refinement

Weird

Didn’t like it at first but it grew on me

Started out with the language, ended up with the ‘after the movie’ world that I created 

dying aliens and everyone being able to move through time in a non-linear way

Oded said do a book because I like books

Not quite sure what Oded meant, either

(1) In this world where no one wants to read, make people want to read the book of how to talk to aliens?…

(2) Or a book about the new world with aliens and people, able to communicate and move through time

(3) Maybe I’m imagining the content of the book of how to talk to them, based on the script of the film, maybe can get more playful over time as the humans learn how to travel through time. Blur till end, use something to unblur, what did she use in the film…

Maybe use my own perspective, put myself in this new world…

Exceptional with refinement

Oded gave some more feedback on people's refined ideas. He also asked for some ideas for refining the workshop, I thought of maybe people potentially writing their specialism's on their name cards since what we were good at seemed to hold lots of weight in the workshops. He also gave us his email to contact him and emphasised the importance of doing nothing in idea generation.

I managed to catch him before he left and thank him and ask for some final clarity on my idea. He confirmed that it was in fact the third idea he was suggesting to me. I'd make the book that is seen in the film, we only see the front and back cover but we know that its Louise's guide on how to communicate with the hetapods. The film's plot is essentially a process of how she learnt the language so i'd be taking parts of the film's plot and shaping it into the book. I'm not sure yet if i'd be changing the covers at all, probably not but it still really intrigues me. I'd also obviously play with the idea that understanding the language of the hetapods allows for people to move through time in a non-linear way, which I think could create some really interesting experiments. He said that it can be technically fantastic but it'll become very special depending on how I play with time.

[meichenxi]

Ooh anything about linguistics and/or Chinese linguistics that interests you- what do you find most interesting?

Ooooo thank you! First let me apologise for the lack of rigour i.e. sources - I am ILL.

HMMMMM ok...let me talk a little bit about one thing I find fascinating - the idea of 'linguistic complexity'. It's an interesting topic that a) demonstrates the failures of linguistics that only takes Indo-European languages into account; b) demonstrates how a conflation of linguistic and moral judgements leads to absolute chaos; and c) proves that sometimes the purpose of all models and hypotheses is to be a useful aid in description, and not to be 100% accurate. Which means that multiple models can exist at the same time. Also, it shows just how cool Classical Chinese is.

I'm going to make this into two posts because I have been asked to wax lyrical on this stuff twice...this one will be a general overview of what linguistic complexity is and some of the issues around it, and the other post (@karolincki 's ask) will be an overview of these issues as pertaining to Modern and Classical Chinese.

Linguistic complexity: an introduction

What is linguistic complexity? Basically what it says on the tin: how 'simple' or 'complex' is one language in relation to another. If you automatically think that sounds dodgy - aren't all languages equally complex? what is a simple language? etc - just hold on. We'll get there.

A very important starting point: complexity here only refers to linguistic complexity. There are many ways to measure this, but broadly speaking it refers to the amount of stuff in a language a learner has to deal with. Are there genders? Well, that's more complex than not having any, because it's an extra thing to remember. Do you have to express whether the information you're conveying is something you personally experienced or hearsay? Again, more complex than not. Different tenses? Essentially, you can look at complexity like this: if you were describing this language or putting it into a computer program, what is the minimum length of description you would need? The longer the description, the more complex the language. In a standard understanding of complexity, a language like English is more complex than a language like Vietnamese (English has more tenses, moods, conjugations, irregularity...), and a language like Georgian is more complex than a language like English (Google a single verb table of Georgian and you will see what I mean).

(this will be long)

What complexity does not mean is anything to do with the cognitive abilities of the people who speak it. It doesn't mean that people who speak English are unable to conceive of the difference between a dual and a plural (2 apples and 3 apples), just because the language doesn't mark it. It doesn't mean people who speak Chinese are unable to conceive of the past conditional ('I should have gone...') just because they don't have a separate tense for it. It doesn't mean Italian speakers don't know whether they experienced the thing themselves, or heard about it from someone else, just because they don't have a set verb ending for it. All linguistic complexity means is what the language requires you to express.

I'm putting this out there very clearly because this sort of thinking is bound up in a lot of racist ideas and ideology. You'll have heard of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Unfortunately named, since they never really worked together, and Edward Sapir was actually a relatively cool dude for the time who argued against linguistic relativity - i.e. the language you speak determines how you think. Yes, in the 19th (and much of the 20th) century, when certain linguists referred to 'simple' and 'complex' languages that is what many of them meant: speakers of a simple language are 'simple', and a complex one are 'complex'. But there was a huge backlash against these racist ideas, and that backlash was hugely influential is shaping the direction of typology (the branch of linguistics which is broadly concerned with these sorts of questions). More on that later, but for now: please understand that when I say linguistic complexity, I am not implying a single thing about the people that speak it.

Back to complexity. Of course language, like any system, is made up of moving parts: you don't just need to consider how many parts it has, but also how interdependent they are, whether they interact with each other in a predictable way, how likely they are to change. You might also want to consider how easy the system is to learn for somebody who has never used it before. And then, of course, languages are more complex still because they are not machines, but ever-changing things: do you count a rule like the conditional inversion in English, which only applies to a total of three verbs? Is that less complex because fewer verbs use it - and therefore you need to think about it less - or does that make the system more complex because you need another, meta-rule to say when you need to use it and when not? What about irregularity? Is a language like English that doesn't have many rules but has a sizeable amount of 'irregular' verbs more or less complicated than a language like Swahili which has a lot more rules, but follows them assiduously? And what happens when some people use one rule and others don't - do you count those as the same language (lumping), which may render the grand overview less accurate, or do you count them as totally separate languages (splitting), in which case when do you stop?

Hmm. Complexity. Is. Complex.

Those are a lot of factors that need to be considered here. Even saying something is 'irregular' doesn't mean very much without further quantification. For example, if I say that the 'irregular' verb ring goes to ring, rang, rung in English, you can very easily find other verbs which conjugate similarly: sing, sang, sung etc. So is that really irregular? Or is it just another, less productive rule? But then if it's a rule, why do we say fling, flung, flung and not yesterday I flang the ball? What's going on???

And what about 'total' irregularity, so called 'suppletion', where (and this is a very scientific explanation) a random non-related word just seems to appear in a paradigm, like it's got lost on the way home? Like I go, I went; like to be, I am, he is, I were; like good, better, best. Ok, so is the irregularity in I go and I went somehow....more irregular than irregularity in I sing and I sang? Uhh. Ok. And then is the irregularity in bad, worse, worst somehow more irregular than better and best, because at least for better and best you can see the -er and -st endings?? Finally, what about a 'spoken' but very predictable irregularity, such as the way we have a reduced vowel in 'says'? Where do we count that? Is that more irregular, or less irregular? Is it maybe 33% irregular?

I think you get the point. And of course all of this becomes more complex when you start to consider the interaction of lots of different systems at once. What about tone? If you have regular tone like Chinese, most people would agree that it's more complex because it's an added thing. But tone probably only developed in part as a response to losing some really important sound contrasts that other languages have kept...and also there is no possibilities of 'irregularities' in tone the way there are in something like verb conjugation...you can't just have a random sixth tone. And then what about syntax? If you have lots of very complex word ordering rules, is that more or less complex than a language where you have to rely on the human being to use pragmatics to infer what the ever loving fuck is going on?

Yeah. This is sort of just one of those things where every year a new linguist comes up with a spicy new matrix to 'measure' complexity and then everyone shits on them in journals and then comes up with their own idea which is promptly shat on. I don't know either.

Ok, so how is this relevant to Chinese?

To answer that question we need to circle round a bit to the history of typology that I vaguely alluded to earlier. At various points - depending on how racist the linguist in question was - people in the 20th century were starting to realise that all of this stuff about 'complex language = complex civilisation / complex thought' wasn't quite as water-tight as they'd hoped. Perhaps it was their better judgement, but it's also likely to have been influenced by a lot of contact suddenly with Native American languages - many of which are vastly complex by literally any metric you could possibly imagine, but the people speaking them were not colonising other countries and building amphitheatres and all of those necessarily, comfortingly European ideas of 'civilisation'. This movement away from such racist ideology, even if it was fuelled in part by a different type of racism, meant that suddenly everyone was very wary about making statements about linguistic complexity at all. It smacked of all the things they were trying not to be associated with.

I'm going to quote some Edward Sapir here for no other reason than I think it's really unfortunate that he's most famous for something that has the potential for incredibly racist ideology that he literally never said:

'Intermingled with this scientific prejudice and largely anticipating it was another, a more human one. The vast majority of linguistic theorists themselves spoke languages of a certain type, of which the most fully developed varieties were the Latin and Greek that they had learned in their childhood. It was not difficult for them to be persuaded that these familiar languages represented the “highest” development that speech had yet attained and that all other types were but steps on the way to this beloved “inflective” type. Whatever conformed to the pattern of Sanskrit and Greek and Latin and German was accepted as expressive of the “highest,” whatever departed from it was frowned upon as a shortcoming or was at best an interesting aberration. Now any classification that starts with preconceived values or that works up to sentimental satisfactions is self-condemned as unscientific. A linguist that insists on talking about the Latin type of morphology as though it were necessarily the high-water mark of linguistic development is like the zoölogist that sees in the organic world a huge conspiracy to evolve the race-horse or the Jersey cow.'

People generally began to get the hang of it after this, and stepped away from linguistic classification at all. There was a broad consensus that that sort of thing was done with, a thing of the past. It's kind of funny, because of course people's unwillingness to look at the complexity of language because 'all people are the same' shows that they still think language and culture/cognition are intimately linked! It was done out of a desire to not be racist, but you can't even reach that conclusion unless you have a sneaky secret bit of bioessentialism going on in your sneaky little brain. Because if the complexity of language doesn't reflect the complexity of your thought, why would it matter whether some systems are bigger than others? That they had more parts?

It literally wouldn't matter at all..

So what happened next? Linguists started to revisit these old linguistic classifications and ideas of complexity, but in the hope of proving, instead, that actually all languages were equal. You can definitely see the theoretical aims here: not only is a good from an ideological point of view (again, if you still equate linguistic complexity to complexity of thought), but it's also quite handy if you believe that all human babies approach language learning with the same biological apparatus ('Universal Grammar', if you believe in that, and other cognitive principles). If all babies have the same built-in gear, you sort of want the task they are given to be of roughly the same magnitude. That's one of those things linguists like to call theoretically desirable - which just means it would be neat if it did.

We're getting to Chinese. I promise.

So how you could make systems so vastly different as English and Georgian and Chinese roughly the 'same' level of complexity? One answer is irregularity: languages with huuuuuge verb and noun declensions like Georgian tend to have very little irregularity, where languages with less extensive systems like English tend to keep it around for longer. There are lots of reasons for this I won't go into, but it's a general trend. Irregular systems are more work for the brain to remember, which, predictably, is more 'complex' for a learner to acquire. Compare a language like English and German: German may have more cases and declensions and rules, but once you learn them...that's it. Compare that to English, where you'll be learning phrasal verbs and prepositions as a second language learner until the day you die (and possibly beyond). It's a different type of 'complex', but it's still deserving of the title.

That obviously doesn't work for a language like Chinese. Chinese has no conjugations, and so can't possibly have any irregularity in the same way. But fear not: there are lots and lots and lots of ways in which languages often exhibit what might be called 'complexity tradeoffs': languages with complex tone, for example, almost always have simpler sound systems elsewhere, and many languages with complex case arrangements tend to have free word order. One thing is complex, another...simplex (a word unfortunately genuinely in use).

This seems nice. We like this. It means that the different parts of the same system may be differently sized, but the whole system in total is about the same as any of other language. There’s just one problem: this isn’t how languages seem to work.

For every example of a complexity trade-off you can find, there are other languages which don’t have any such ‘trade off’ at all. There are plenty of languages where grammar is complex and the sound system is complex; or languages like Icelandic and German where there are cases but fairly rigid and fixed word order; or other cases where there is a huge amount of irregularity but also crazy verb systems, and so on. A language like Abkhaz has supposedly 58 consonants in the literary dialect: but it also has insanely complicated grammar. No trade-off there. Finally, it has long been presumed that whilst verb morphology etc is simpler in languages like Chinese, syntax would be more complicated: recently, a number of studies have proved exactly the opposite. Both, in fact, are simpler.

In conclusion, where does this leave us? Whilst the idea behind complexity trade-offs is well-motivated but not totally sound, and whilst these do not always seem to be present in the way you might hope, what this does do is force us as linguists to question whether we have spent enough time considering the types of complexity that are present in languages like Chinese, and how we reconcile that with more ‘familiar’ complexity. It’s interesting to think about because it shows what happens when you fail to consider these things.

That’s all for the overview on linguistic complexity today!! I’ll talk specifically about complexity in Chinese in the next ask, because this is already very long. Be aware, I’m not going to give you any answers necessarily - these questions are way above my pay grade - but boy can I give you some thoughts.

[pruning-the-minds-garden]

Hypnokink Basics: Special Techniques (pt 3) - Neurolinguistic Programming

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

I don't have an example for this one and will instead link to "Kinky NLP" by sleepingirl

NLP is a bit of an odd creature, because it has such a woolly definition. In the broadest possible terms, it is a suite of techniques that use the way we talk about things to reframe the way we think about things, as a kind of in-language extension of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It also overlaps with conditioning/brainwashing to some extent.

One common technique of NLP is called an "Incantation," though hypnokinksters might better know it as a "mantra." Repeatedly saying something that you want to be true or to make true about yourself - "obedience is pleasure," "I am a good doll," "I am my Master's perfect fucktoy" or whatever you might want as part of your kinky dynamic - can gradually, over time, make it more and more true and transform your mind. It can reprogram your brain, bit by bit. This has limits, of course, in that there are certain things that are hard-wired into your brain that are unlikely to change, but there are many more than you think that are not. Using something like this does not require a hypnotic induction to work. It might benefit from one, or from being in some other altered state (heightened arousal or the edge of orgasm, for example), but it doesn't require any of that in order to work. All it needs is motivation, and to be used with regularity over time.

A second technique which is often poached from the NLP playbook by many hypnotists, and many (pardon me I feel a bit ill) "pick-up artists" is "mirroring." This technique is, essentially, to help build rapport with someone more quickly by mirroring their body language, word choice, and so on - taking a drink whenever they take a drink, using the same words they do when describing things, etc. I bring it up because this is an example of a technique that, when used carefully, thoughtfully, and in moderation can be very helpful... but when used thoughtlessly and carelessly, can be less than useless.

For example, if you start mimicking every action of a person to whom you are speaking, leaning in altogether too close for comfort, using their exact body language, their precise word choice... that's incredibly creepy. Don't do that. The way I employ mirroring is more targeted. If I notice that a partner consistently uses a certain word to describe something in trance - they see a "scarlet" ball of light, for instance - then I make sure to use that word, not some similar word like "red" or "crimson" when I describe that same thing. However they tell me they experience trance, that is how I describe the experience back to them. If they make it clear that they want [x], [y] and [z] in trance, then that is not only what I want, that is what I am enthusiastic to provide (though that's because of my own personal proclivities as much as it is any mirroring on my part, but it does serve the purpose).

[hungwy]

do you have a take on language preservation? as in, making efforts to teach dying languages to the younger generation of the people who speaks it. Sometimes i wonder if the only really meaningful thing to do is to record as much native knowledge and material and resources as possible for posterity and that's it. I get the idea that making a new generation of people learn what's basically a foreign langauge to them in the name of "their heritage" is a bit of a flimsy premise with the result of a bunch of people speaking a language in a way that doesn't compare to how their ancestors spoke it.

Typing this at work sorry if its not too good or forgetting stuff

IMO people are free to relate to their family or community past how they like, like learning an endangered or moribund language or reviving some form of an extinct language. The problem of whether or not that revived form is faithful to what it was like alive is a philosophical question that probably won't be sufficiently evidentially answered in the case of reviving dead languages, but authenticity isn't always a big deal for tradition, honestly. It sounds like you have more a problem with how we as humans relate ourselves to the past than with reviving languages. You seem more curious of what the metaphysical reality of history and descent is. I can't help with that.

Learning a language, even a dead one, exposes one to a worldview that may or may not be familiar to us. The perspectival bias of language comes in the meaning of words, what words exist, what metaphors exist and how you use them to describe them, etc. This is the famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis where the language you speak affects your worldview. Now imagine how useful a language might be in reconnecting someone to a heritage they want to relate to. It's not really possible to ignore "how the ancestors spoke it" and completely screw the way of speaking into a soulless shell of communication. The learning and practice of speaking is the reconnection to the history and the value of revitalization. Maybe that form will mold to the new speakers as they must navigate an environment the language isn't conformed to, but the speaker will also be restrained by the opinions and perspectives of old. Authenticity is a stance that something should be a certain way -- prescriptivism -- and we know that language is pluricentric, complex, overlapping, constantly changing, stealing from other speakers and dialects and languages.

Anyway it doesn't make logical sense as outsiders of that experience, practice, and descent to comment on whether or not that way of relating to a past is authentic or meaningful.