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文化研究 – 開欄文
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瀏覽2,795 ｜回應17｜推薦2 |
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1. 我了解文化的過程
我在高一 – 高二時，讀了家父的《中國文化之前途》後(出版年代不詳)，第一次從知識角度接觸到文化的概念。我當時寫了一篇讀後感，發表在《建中青年》。過了60年，現在已經不記得那篇文章的內容。當然，我後來也拜讀了家父的《古代中國文化與中國知識份子》(第5版)。
初中時從歷史課本學到國家積弱一百多年，內憂外患不斷；在國民黨「反共抗俄」教育下，「外有強敵」的陰影揮之不去。很自然的培養出追求富國強兵的意識。初、高中時，在經濟學和社會學的入門書之外，也看了《孫子兵法》和《戰爭藝術》。
大一時修了「社會學」這門課；教授是一位愛爾蘭神父，他非常詼諧。課堂中笑聲四起，更加深了我對社會學的興趣。開始工作後讀了一些介紹世界各地區文化的書(請見「參考資料」)。下班後在加州庫比蒂諾市的迪安薩社區大學修了一門「文化人類學」(Haviland 1983)。上了這門課以後，我從李基教授的《人類的成長》開始，進一步閱讀考古學、考古人類學、人類演化史、人類出非洲史、人類遷徙史、基因人類學、和population等領域的科普書籍和報導。
1980年以後，由於試圖了解「結構主義」，進而接觸到「後結構主義」和「後現代主義」。我花了相當多時間閱讀「後現代」理論諸大師的著作，寫過相關的一篇書評。也開始從「文化研究」領域的角度進一步了解「文化」。
對哲學的興趣，讓我有機會了解語言學(1959，書林)和符號學(1986)的理論。我從初中時就對「行為」和指導行為的「原則」很好奇；對倫理學的探索先後把我帶進社會學、心理學、和認知科學等相關領域的涉獵。我也就能夠從認知科學和心理學(1992)的角度來了解「文化」。理學院的訓練和在高科技產業界工作經驗，則使我養成從現實角度了解事情和事理的傾向。
以上是我試圖了解「文化」這個概念的簡單歷程，也是我相信自己能夠就「文化」相關議題略表淺見的依據。
我本來想把我對「文化」這個概念的了解，寫成一篇系統性的論文；斷斷續續地寫了近三年，終究因為老邁而無法成章。只在這篇拙作中簡要的做了說明(該文第3節)。
此外，我在網上曾多次討論「文化」議題(討論1、討論2、討論3 – 此欄有多篇討論「文化」的文章)；各位可以根據它們和上引拙作，評鑑一下我對文化的了解是否成立和說得通。
請參考本欄的姐妹欄：《古代文化/文明小檔案》。
2. 本部落格「文化研究」目錄
待增補。
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《對無神論者的最佳回應：關你屁事》讀後
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肯恩博士這篇文章雖然以「對無神論者的回應」為立論出發點(請見本欄上一篇)，它涵蓋的議題相當廣泛，分析也說得上深入；「宗教信仰」之外，內容涉及：方法論、科學哲學、和文化批評等等。故置於此欄；並推薦給對這些議題有興趣者一讀。我大概沒有能力長篇大論；略誌我認為該文的要點如下。
1) 我相信肯恩博士這篇文章的重點和精華在於：他對「理性」的分析。
2) 他對「購物狂」、「人本主義」、「自由主義」、和「保守主義」等風氣或思潮的「定性」，可以支持我：所有「XX論」(「XX主義」)都是「意識型態」這個觀點。
3) 他對「權利」本質的看法也和我相當。
4) 我恕難苟同他認為「性騷擾」是「偽善」的評論。防止和/或禁止「性騷擾」，並非該「行為」不禮貌或不適當；而是因為該「行為」侵犯到「被騷擾者」的「權利」。「不得性騷擾」跟「不得誹謗」、「不得搶錢」、「不得殺人」是同一個性質。在維持一個社會的穩定運作上，它們是必須建立的規範。以「動物本性」來開脫「性騷擾」，不只是邏輯謬誤，更是認知上的偏差或障礙。
5) 在全文最後幾段，肯恩博士提及：人生的「荒謬性」，以及「信仰」與「不信」之爭屬於「美感」(而非哲學)上的不同；我認為這兩點相當有意思，只是他著墨不多，對它們有興趣者，可以沿著此思路進一步推敲、推敲。
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對無神論者的最佳回應：關你屁事 -- Benjamin Cain
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如果你覺得「關你屁事」有點粗鄙，可以改用「囉哩八嗦」、「廢話真多」、或「那又如何」等代替。
索引：
obfuscate：混淆
sophistry：此處：狡辯
tu quoque fallacy：「言行不一」謬誤
The Best Religious Response to Atheism is Two Words Long
Why we must reckon with the existential basis of all cultures
Benjamin Cain, 09/03/25
Here’s an irony: the best religious response to atheistic criticisms consists of two words, and few apologists have ever spoken them.
For centuries, skeptics, secular humanists, and philosophical naturalists have refuted religious dogmas and rejected religious institutions and practices. God doesn’t exist, so the scriptures and creeds are absurd, and religious organizations are grandiose frauds making a mockery of our potential to progress by solving problems with reason and empathy.
Christianity and Islam have been especially insistent that theism is rational. Otherwise, how could the monotheist’s gruesome eschatological narrative be justified? How could outsiders deserve to be punished forever in Hell if there were any good reason to reject these religions?
The Catholic Church, for instance, confronted ancient Greek philosophy and tried to absorb not just its content but its methods and standards. For the Church to be universally valid for humanity, God had to conquer all terrains, including those that demons had supposedly distorted to undermine God’s Creation. Everything had to point to God, according to the monotheistic narrative, so reason couldn’t be an entire cognitive faculty that subverts the Church and its scriptures and traditions. The Church had to assimilate human reason, resolving the conflict between faith and reason by mounting a quasi-philosophical defense of Christian theology.
That defense has only ever been grossly sophistical and casuistic. Apologists beg the question and perpetrate fallacy after fallacy in defense of the plainly ridiculous. So, theism is irrational, and atheistic arguments are superior to theistic ones. I’ve argued as much in around a hundred articles to date.
Nevertheless, there’s an adequate religious response to that philosophical demonstration of theism’s irrationality, and as I said, the response is only two words long: “So what?”
Again, we know historically and theologically why some apologists thought they had to show that their religions are rational. But what they missed is that the ideal of hyperrationality, of ensuring that all our beliefs and practices are impeccably logical and empirically well-supported, is practically a mental disorder.
The problem is that secular cultures are irrational too. Liberalism isn’t deduced or scientifically demonstrated. What’s rational is the understanding that there’s a naturally evolved species of clever animals, called “humans,” and that the members of this species are normally able to think for themselves.
But the conviction that people ought to be free to do what they like isn’t strictly rational. Instead, the liberal’s conclusion that people should be liberated from all forms of oppression and servitude is based on the horror of naturalness. This moral side of liberalism reduces to an aesthetic impulse of disgust and an existential choice to side with personhood against manifestations of impersonality in nature.
We don’t know that humans have rights. We feel we do because nature’s physicality plainly has none, due to its impersonality, and that fact implicitly disgusts all who partake of civilized progress. We want humans to have rights because we don’t want to be as monstrous as the lifeless, mindless, amoral bulk of the universe. That disgust or pride isn’t strictly a rational judgment. It’s a judgment based on fear, alienation, loathing, and hope. We hope we can live up to liberal humanist ideals that we dream up and that fly in the face of nature’s indifference.
Secular societies and their humanist institutions are quite irrational in various respects. Consumerism, for instance, is palpably irrational and even self-destructive. Our addiction to social media is irrational. The destruction of the biosphere to feed our appetite for meat is irrational. The idolizing of spoiled celebrities is irrational. The assumption that culture can progress because science and technology can is fallacious. Our culture wars, such as the political one between Republicans and Democrats in the United States, are often infantile.
Hence, when the skeptic argues that theism is irrational, the theist is free to say, “So what?” That is, the theist can ask why we should expect any culture to be rational since culture stems from engagement with the human existential condition. Reason isn’t a sufficient response to the horrific facts that surround us. We must respond to nature’s monstrousness not just with logic and scientific investigations but imagination (as in art) and discipline (as in noble virtues, leading ultimately to a transhuman graduation of our species).
For instance, the theist believes that God exists. That belief is preposterous, and the arguments that would make it rational are fallacious, so reason doesn’t support theism.
But what’s the typical atheist’s corresponding core belief, and is it rational? Suppose the atheist is a naturalist and a humanist. Naturalism (the view that there are no metaphysical miracles) is rational insofar as it’s grounded in science, but that turns out to be not so meaningful because scientists have discovered that nature is profoundly counterintuitive. So, if by “rational” we mean something that conforms to ordinary, intuitive human reasoning, the naturalist’s scientifically supported view of nature isn’t rational.
Science popularizers like to conceal the cosmicist, horrific upshot of scientific theories by diluting them with archaic figures of speech such as the “laws of nature.” Nature obeys no laws, according to scientific objectifications.
If by “rational” we mean scientific, then sure, scientific theories are rational. But the arcane mathematics and detachment needed to make sense of scientific discoveries of deep space and time stretch the human mind, so that nature ends up consisting of a host of virtual miracles. Think of black holes, quantum mechanics, and the strangeness of organic processes in a mostly lifeless universe. Those things are “natural” and “rational” in that scientists can explain “how they work.” That is, scientists can model them without fully understanding them by reconciling human intuitions with the real patterns’ cosmic enormity.
Humanism, too, isn’t ultimately so rational, as I said. Instead of hoping for a deity to save us, we hope we can save ourselves from natural extinction. We do have some evidence that we can solve our problems with reason, but we have just as much evidence that we can spoil our progress and that reason itself can be used for ill. There’s a leap of faith in either case.
Now, you might be thinking that this “So what?” response commits the tu quoque fallacy of distracting from theism’s irrationality by charging the skeptic or atheist with hypocrisy. This would be fallacious only if the question of theism’s rationality were important, which is precisely the question at issue. If all cultures are fundamentally irrational, there may be nothing so special about theism’s irrationality, in which case the “So what?” response wouldn’t be a fallacious distraction. On the contrary, the theist would concede that theism is irrational, and point out that such cultural irrationality is inevitable, citing secular cultural irrationalities as examples.
Indeed, this irrationality isn’t so surprising because of the brain’s evolved modularity. The brain consists of numerous systems that work independently, so there need be no coherent framework that reconciles their outputs. The attempt to find some such consistent synopsis of the brain’s multifaceted outputs is just the laying out of a worldview or culture, and those products are bound to be irrational, to some extent, because the brain includes some “nonrational,” illogical, or unscientific modules.
For instance, the brain has a genetically determined impulse to defend itself at all costs. Even if a brain would save the rest of humanity by sacrificing itself, the average brain wouldn’t want to carry out that heroic act. The brain would feel it’s unfair, and would search for alternatives because the human brain evolved from animals that are programmed to prioritize the survival of themselves, their offspring, or their group.
Hypocrisy is built into human cultures because culture attempts to square a circle. With cultures and worldviews, we attempt to rationalize the conflicting sides of our nature. Theistic religion is one such irrational overarching narrative, and materialistic consumerism, humanism, liberalism, or conservatism is another.
Or think of the hypocrisy involved in having an animal’s sexual urges while being professionally obliged to adhere to civilized codes of propriety in public places. Again, hypocrisy and irrationality are baked into personhood because the latter runs on animal hardware. We mitigate that inner conflict with rationales that smooth the edges and distract us from the absurdity of our basic condition in life. We mentally compartmentalize to avoid cognitive dissonance.
But this has little to do with rigorous, scrupulous reason. Our behaviour may be instrumentally rational or prudent, but the goal of self-preservation is faith-based. We only trust that we deserve to live and to be happy.
The conventional conflict between atheists and theists ends with a rationalist standoff: the atheist shows that theism is irrational, and the theist resorts to sophistry to obfuscate the weakness of his or her existential convictions and traditional practices.
But that conflict is lame and pointless. The deeper conflict is aesthetic. Which side is liable to create the best art in the widest sense of “art,” meaning any culturally meaningful product of the imagination? Has theistic culture become clichéd? Does that culture still inspire those who are most informed about the world, in the highly educated parts of developed societies, or do those populations tend to be more secular, so that they crave artistic greatness that has nothing to do with religious fictions?
Written by Benjamin Cain
Ph.D. in philosophy / Knowledge condemns. Art redeems. /https://benjamincain.substack.com / https://ko-fi.com/benjamincain / benjamincain8@gmailDOTcom
I collect my Medium writings in paperback and eBook forms, and I put them up on Amazon. Check them out if you’d like to have them handy and to support my writing. Some recent ones are The Torment of Cosmic Mindfulness, The Faltering Uplift of Intrepid Apes, Mirages in a Cosmic Wasteland, Our Oddity in Deep Time, Aristocrats in the Wild, and Questing for Epiphanies in a Haunted House, each of which is over 500 pages and filled with my articles on philosophy, religion, or politics.
Published in Philosophy Today
Philosophy Today is dedicated to current philosophy, logic, and thought.
Further reading
* The Uncomplicated Core of Existentialism
* The Irrelevance of All Philosophical Proofs of God
* Why Religion Shouldn’t Be Rational
* The Futility of Arguing About God
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導致社會紛爭的7個文化偏見 - Tanner on Truth & Myths
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7 Cultural Myths That Divide Us More Than Religion
Some lies are so old they smell like Grandma’s attic, but people still fight over them like they’re worth dying for.
Tanner on Truth & Myths, 09/26/25
Plenty of people blame religion for every war, feud, and dinner-table screaming match. Sure, religion has blood on its hands. But what rarely gets airtime are the cultural myths — the stories societies tell themselves about who they are and who the “enemy” is. And truth be told, those myths are doing an even better job at dividing us.
1. Myth of the “Pure” Nation
Every country loves to pretend it has some sacred DNA. Politicians foam at the mouth about “pure bloodlines” and “real citizens” as if people haven’t been mixing, migrating, and mating since the dawn of time. Newsflash: there is no “pure” anything. You’re a cocktail of ancestors who came from everywhere, and so am I.
But the myth lives on. Nazis bought into it. White nationalists wave it like a dirty flag. In Turkey, Greece, China, America — pick your country — this myth is used to say, “You don’t belong here.” It divides neighbors more brutally than any verse in a holy book. Religion tells you who God is. National purity myths tell you whether you’re even allowed to exist.
2. Myth of Gender Roles
Religion talks nonsense about Eve tempting Adam, but it’s cultural myths that did the real heavy lifting. “Men work, women stay home.” “Boys don’t cry.” “Girls are born nurturers.” None of that fell from heaven — it’s campfire crap passed down so men could keep power and women could keep folding laundry.
Look around: the cultures that scream the loudest about “traditional gender roles” are usually the ones hiding the highest rates of abuse and inequality. It’s not faith that makes people cling to this junk. It’s the myth that society will collapse if a man takes paternity leave or a woman runs a company. Religion might bless the cage, but culture is the one that welded the bars shut.
That said, Islamic culture historically put less pressure on men than Christianity. Muhammad himself wasn’t afraid to show emotions. The records tell us he couldn’t help but weep openly, even in public. That example alone makes the Christian macho myth of the “stoic man” look as fake as a televangelist’s smile.
3. Myth of Racial Superiority
Every empire from Rome to Britain told itself the same bedtime story: “We are better, smarter, cleaner, braver than those savages over there.” Slavery? Colonialism? Genocide? All neatly justified by this cultural myth.
Religion sometimes got dragged in as a sidekick — think “chosen people” slogans or missionaries painting God white — but the engine driving it all was cultural arrogance. This myth is stickier than gum on a shoe. It survives even after DNA studies, civil rights, and endless wars. People cling to it because it strokes their egos. And nothing divides faster than telling one group they’re gods and the other they’re dirt.
The education system is one of the biggest culprits here. On the surface, schools preach diversity, but in Western countries kids are still taught that white Europeans “invented” science and math. The narrative goes so deep that people genuinely believe when Europe was in the Dark Ages, the entire planet was stumbling in the dark with them. Often it’s not deliberate malice — it’s cultural bias so baked in that people don’t even see it.
4. Myth of the “Model Family”
The church sells the “holy family” narrative, but culture feeds it steroids. You know the script: a man, a woman, 2.5 kids, a dog, a house with a white fence. Stray outside that box — be single, childfree, queer, divorced — and suddenly you’re “destroying society.”
This myth makes life hell for millions. Kids are disowned, women are trapped in bad marriages, men drown under breadwinner pressure, all because culture insists only one way of living counts. Religion might slap the word “sacrament” on marriage, but the cultural myth is what makes people panic if you don’t play house the “normal” way.
5. Myth of the “Enemy Within”
Cultures love to invent traitors. Jews in medieval Europe. Muslims in modern Europe. Communists in Cold War America. “They look like us, but they’re dangerous.” This myth is a virus that spreads panic and paranoia.
It’s not theology driving this. It’s culture weaponizing fear. Every time an economy tanks or a government screws up, the leaders dust off this myth. Blame the outsider, blame the immigrant, blame the neighbor. While you’re busy hating each other, the elites get away with murder — sometimes literally.
6. Myth of Progress = Good
We’re told civilization marches forward, always getting better. Industrial revolutions! Digital revolutions! But culture smuggles in the lie that all progress is automatically good. We poisoned rivers, cooked the planet, filled oceans with plastic, and somehow people still chant “innovation” like it’s holy scripture.
Religion at least warns about hubris. Cultural myths? They turn hubris into a marketing plan. This myth divides us between those who cheer endless growth and those who dare say, “Wait, maybe this is self-destructive.” The cheerleaders call them backward. The skeptics call the others blind. And so we fight.
7. The Myth of the “American Dream” (and Its Cousins)
If you heard it once, you heard it a million times: work hard, play by the rules, and you’ll succeed. It’s cultural snake oil. Reality: your chances depend on where you’re born, the color of your skin, and how rigged the system is. Yet this myth runs so deep that people blame the poor for being poor.
This one divides worse than any church doctrine. It makes the rich smug and the poor ashamed. It turns solidarity into suspicion. Instead of fighting the system, we fight each other — because culture told us the ladder is real, even when it’s nailed to the wall.
Why These Myths Divide Better
Religion at least has boundaries — you can leave a church, argue theology, pick a different faith. Cultural myths? They’re invisible chains, dressed up as “common sense,” so most people don’t even question them. They slip into your language, your movies, your school textbooks. You don’t notice them until someone breaks the script — and then you’re ready to exile them.
That’s why cultural myths divide harder than religion. They’re not sold as beliefs. They’re sold as “the way things are.” Religion says, “believe this.” Culture says, “you were born into this, now shut up and obey.”
The Verdict!
Cultural myths survive because they’re useful to someone. They justify power, control, money, and status. Without them, leaders would have to admit the world is chaotic, unfair, and human. Instead, they hand us neat little lies, and we gulp them down.
We like to imagine myths are dusty tales about gods and monsters, but today’s myths are slogans on billboards, lines in political speeches, and bedtime stories about “the good old days” that never existed. And while we argue over those fairy tales, the real problems — climate change, inequality, corruption — are busy burning the house down.
Written by Tanner on Truth & Myths
I write about the myths that shape religion, culture, and politics. Blunt takes, sharp history, no sacred cows—just dragging hidden truths into the daylight.
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This post was written and edited with the assistance of Grammarly.
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《女性乳房吸引力的根源》讀後
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我大概在初二前後讀的《幼學故事瓊林 》；全書中我現在只記得下面這一句話：
「新剝雞頭肉，明皇愛貴妃之乳」(身體•18)。
此書著於明朝，但作者的依據想來應該是唐代筆記或軼事之類。由此可見，中國的「乳房崇拜」至少有一千多年歷史。
這個例子雖然不能支持「乳房吸引力」完全是生物性質，與文化或社會建構毫無關係；但是，這個記述足以顯示：中、西文化在「女性審美觀」這一點並沒有本質上的差異。
我很少接觸中國古典文學，也沒有讀過整本的《金瓶梅》和《紅樓夢》；不過我相信，中國文學史上「黃色小說」或「性愛小說」這類作品，數量上也許沒有西方文學裏多，但應該不在寥寥無幾之列。《素女經 》據說成於漢代或更早，可見中國文化在這一方面也說得上源遠流長。至於是否博大精深，就非我有資格說三道四的了。
該文原載《當代心理學》網誌(本欄上一篇)，我覺得置於此欄比較合適。也就不揣簡陋，多說幾句來呼應本欄意旨。
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女性乳房吸引力的根源--Noam Shpancer
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請參考本欄下一篇《讀後 》。
What Is It About Breasts? Science Explores the Big Question
Is the sexualization of breasts a cultural artifact or a biological adaptation?
Noam Shpancer Ph.D., Reviewed by Lybi Ma, 07/02/25
Key points
* A debate exists about the role female breasts play in sexual arousal.
* Some claim that the sexualized breasts are an artifact of male dominated culture.
* Others argue that breasts are attractive because they signal sexual maturity and fecundity.
What is it about female breasts? The intrigue resides in the fact that female breasts provoke interest and carry meaning far beyond their biological utility as effective baby feeding devices. In our culture, the sexual connotations of female breasts may have eclipsed acceptance of their function. Breastfeeding in public, to wit, is still widely shunned, in large part because an exposed breast is seen first and foremost as sexual provocation.
While contemporary popular culture often busies itself with debating whether exposed breasts are empowering or degrading to women, social scientists have been more interested in the question of whether the sexualization of female breasts is a mere cultural artifact, a byproduct of the dominant male gaze and the repressive patriarchal system, or a biological adaptation by which breasts—because they signal fertility and lactational capacity—have become sexually arousing to heterosexual males. The question is whether breasts are attractive when and because they are covered, as the cultural constructionists claim, or covered because they are inherently attractive, as evolutionary science hypothesizes.
A recent (2025) study by Polish researcher Michal Stefanczyk and colleagues took a novel approach to exploring this question. They studied 80 men from among the Dani people, a horticulturalist ethnic group residing in the Central Highlands of Papua. This indigenous, isolated, non-Western population has in recent decades undergone social norm changes regarding women’s attire. Specifically, previous norms of toplessness have been supplanted by the more recent norm of breast-covering.
Participants were divided into two distinct groups by age. Younger ones (mean age=24) have grown up in a culture where covered breasts have become the norm. Members of the older group (mean age=50) grew up when breasts were exposed. Participants were interviewed one at a time and were asked questions about
whether touching their partners’ breasts was a part of their sexual repertoire, whether their levels of arousal at the sight of exposed breasts, and
whether their partners’ breasts were an attractive feature for them.
Comparing the Results for Both Groups
The researchers found that older men (who grew up during the topless era) did not differ in their views, preferences, or behavior compared with younger men raised in times when women covered their breasts publicly. Both groups reported frequently touching their partners' breasts during sex and high sexual arousal at the sight of naked female breasts. Interestingly, both also placed relatively low importance on their partners’ breasts in evaluating overall attraction. Female breasts, it appears, are inherently at play in the mating game, although they may not be central players.
These findings suggest that male sexual arousal at the sight of elicited female breasts might be an "innate mechanism rather than a cultural by-product of specific, sex-differentiating social norms.” The results contradict the idea that breast covering results from cultural sexualization of the female body and the high importance assigned by a culture to the female breast, common Western culture conventions, and that regularly seeing naked female breasts will remove the attendant curiosity and sexual charge. By showing that female breasts need not be usually concealed to provoke sexual connotations, this study, conducted with a non-Western sample, provides evidence for the claim that breast attractiveness is coded into our biology and is thus quite independent from social dress and sexuality norms.
The authors conclude that "this study offers preliminary support for the hypothesis that male sexual interest in female breasts is an evolutionarily based tendency and neither an effect of the Westernization of clothing habits (and thus, covering female breasts in public) nor the ‘sexualization of what is hidden.’”
At the same time, the fact that a certain tendency is coded genetically does not necessarily make it immune to social influences. Culture's influence on human behavior runs wide and deep. Attraction to female breasts may be universal, yet whether and how breasts are shown in public is guided by societal norms and dictates, and varies greatly across cultures and throughout history. Such variations, it now appears, represent attempts at managing the attraction, but, as is the case with the sexual impulse in general, can neither engender nor eliminate it.
About the Author
Noam Shpancer, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Otterbein University and a practicing clinical psychologist in Columbus, Ohio.
本文於 修改第 1 次
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我沒研究過「破音字」；但是我知道英文中也有「雙關語」；而造成(英文)「雙關語」效果的方式之一是利用「諧音」。
由於「雙關語」要靠各種語言在其發音、結構、文法、性質、和意義等層面的獨特性來達成，自然就具有「文化」上的特殊性。西方語系中基於「諧音」的「雙關語」，幾乎不可能翻譯成中文；但英、法語言各自這類「雙關語」之間，互相翻譯的機率可能高達30-40%。
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胡兄研究過破音字嗎?
中國古代小說家運用破音字寫出
拐彎罵皇帝的小說
避免殺頭的厄運
這在西洋文學是不可能做到的!
(請參考:西遊記罵誰?一文)
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我認為你標題中「反映」兩字用得相當簡潔扼要。
我不是很清楚「表徵」的意思，原本以為它類似「表達」、「顯示」、「象徵」這類詞彙。上網搜尋後，找到以下的說明：
「釋義
事實的表現足以證明某種意義。
例：國民平均所得的高低是國家開發進步程度的表徵。」
由於「釋義」中有「證明」一詞，倒讓我產生了些迷惑；我的問題是：
你認為：
「語言」和「文化」之間，有「證明」這種關係嗎？(1)
歡迎你多花點時間，進一步談談：
1) 你所了解的，「語言」和「文化」兩者間的種種關係。
2) 語言能夠「反映」文化的「原因」或「特性」。
附註：
1. 此處不排除《教育部國語辭典簡編本》的編者們用詞不當。借用該《簡編本》的文字，我會這樣來「釋義」：
「事實的『呈現』足以『顯示』某個『概念』的狀態』，或該『概念』蘊含的意義」。
請參考《維基百科》對該詞的說明。
本文於 修改第 1 次
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語言、行為和感覺-Antonella Gismundi
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推薦2 |
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我會試著寫一篇文章，比較深入的討論作者吉絲芒迪女士所提到現象和概念。
Speaking a different language can change how you act and feel
Antonella Gismundi, Edited by Matt Huston, 10/31/24
Edited by Matt Huston
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For many multilinguals, switching between tongues can lead to shifts in personality, revealing the malleability of the self. (1)
As I take my seat on the plane to Bologna, the realisation washes over me: I will soon be home. It’s in the quick whisper that I overhear, the joke shared in an accent that I’ve missed, or the laughter of a child in a familiar intonation. These sounds in my native language, Italian, ease me back into an old reality. (2)
I’ve been living in Taiwan for more than a decade. When I first arrived, fresh out of university with a one-way ticket, my plan was to study Chinese for six months and return to Italy. Instead, I stayed, completed my Chinese course, earned a master’s degree, and gradually built a life in Taipei, where I now hold a corporate job. (3)
Every year, though, I return to Italy to visit my family, and with each trip I feel as if I’m leaving behind parts of my trilingual identity that I have no use for during my stay in the Italian countryside. There’s the straightforward and outgoing persona I adopt when speaking English, a second language that has gradually overtaken my thoughts and dreams. And there is my Chinese-language side: corporate, polite and detached. (4)
When I’m in Taiwan, Chinese is the language of work and everyday interactions with acquaintances and strangers. Even after more than a decade of practice, it feels limiting when I try to connect with others on a deeper level. For me, speaking in Chinese feels like being stuck in a less articulate version of myself. I fail to capture nuances that come naturally in Italian or English, and I painfully notice my inability to express the full range of my emotions, opinions and knowledge. (5)
The sense of loss, of there being a ‘missing piece’ when one speaks in a different language, can be unnerving. For some, what is lost could be a desirable side of their personality, like being able to exchange small talk or banter confidently. Navigating social interactions might get especially daunting for those who are learning languages in which social roles and hierarchies are embedded in various language forms and structures. In Japanese, for example, verb morphology shifts according to the relative status of the person you are speaking to. When speaking to your boss, you would use polite forms, and when discussing your boss with an external client, you would need to use humbling forms to refer to your superior. These layers of linguistic complexity may leave even advanced learners feeling hyperaware of every word they utter. (6)
Yet, where some experience hesitation, others might see an opportunity for boldness. It’s possible to embrace the diluted emotionality that comes with speaking a second language. This detachment can allow one to break free from the social inhibitions of a first language. I have felt this myself in English. In this language, driven by a ‘why not’ attitude, I found myself stepping onto a stage for the first time and trying out different kinds of performance, eventually landing a theatre gig during my student years. The thought of attempting the same in Italian makes me crumble with anxiety. But in English? The stakes felt lower, and I embraced a side of myself that might never have emerged otherwise. (7)
This sort of detachment might explain why some multilinguals code-switch to a non-native language when using emotionally charged or taboo words. If you speak more than one language, ask yourself: in which language do you find it easier to say ‘I love you’? And in which one do you swear more liberally? For me, cursing in a foreign language feels strangely playful, as if it gives me permission to access a different version of myself, perhaps one less bound by social accountability. (8)
Feeling like another version of yourself seems to be fairly common among those who switch from a native to a non-native language. In one survey of more than 1,000 multilinguals, 65 per cent reported feeling ‘like a different person’ when they used different languages. Prompted for further thoughts, these respondents cited not only different levels of naturalness across their languages, but also differences in the attitudes or perspectives they adopted, their emotionality or expressivity, and other qualities. A person’s level of proficiency and cultural immersion seem to be significant factors: a fluent speaker who is living abroad and constantly exposed to local cultural norms is far more likely to experience this ‘feeling like a different person’ phenomenon. (9)
Research across several languages, countries and cultures has also found evidence of specific personality differences depending on which language someone is using. A landmark study published in 2006 involved Spanish-English bilinguals in the United States and Mexico who took personality tests in both languages. Participants tended to score higher in extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness when responding in English – patterns that echoed personality data previously observed in monolingual people from the respective countries. In a more recent example, researchers asked Swedish-English bilinguals to fill out a personality questionnaire for an imaginary job interview, using either Swedish or English, at either a Swedish or American company. In one of these experiments, participants who filled out the questionnaire in English had higher extraversion scores. In a somewhat different experiment that included open-ended interview questions, participants using Swedish rated themselves as more agreeable and conscientious. (10)
While these studies relied on people rating aspects of their own personalities, some research has explored differences in how people are perceived by others depending on the language they use. In one study, Hong Kong Cantonese-English bilinguals spoke with two different interviewers – who varied in terms of their ethnicity and the language they used – and these conversations were observed by external raters. During their conversations with ethnically Chinese interviewers, the bilinguals were rated as more extraverted, assertive and open when using English rather than Cantonese. (11)
This makes me wonder: am I also perceived differently depending on which language I’m speaking? What does my language reveal – or conceal – about who I am? While it is difficult to clearly discern these variations within myself, I have observed them in others. For example, I once misjudged a friend as curt and distant, having interacted with them only in English. It was only when I saw them conversing in their native Chinese that I realised how warm and engaging they truly were. It was as if I were meeting a completely different person. (12)
For many multilinguals who feel like or seem like a different person depending on which language they are using, language and cultural cues might be priming different self-perceptions, triggering shifts in personality trait expression in ways that align with the corresponding linguistic and social environment. For someone who is working in a Taiwanese cultural context and trying to fit in with the way others speak and act, ideals such as loyalty and hard work might become especially salient and something to emphasise in one’s self; whereas, in the US, it might be qualities like assertiveness and initiative. Even as a multilingual person’s core self remains a constant, their present context might change the lens through which they perceive their own identity – including which aspects become amplified or toned down in their mind – as well as how they interact with others. (13)
In social psychology, tweaking your behaviour based on contextual cues in order to suit community norms has been described as ‘cultural frame switching’. Interacting in a particular language can serve as one of these cues. The cultural frame-switching model also suggests that people with a higher degree of cultural awareness are more susceptible to cultural priming. (14)
How is this cultural awareness developed? Speakers with a higher degree of immersion – those who live abroad or have strong community ties – are more likely to develop ‘pragmatic competence’ in their target language. This kind of competence goes beyond the accurate use of vocabulary and grammar: it involves understanding and using language in socially appropriate ways. It means knowing not just what to say, but also when and how to say it, and being able to predict how it will be received. This is essential for social functioning in the society where a language is spoken, and it is hard to acquire in a classroom context, without authentic interactions with other speakers. Motivation and adaptability are also crucial in this process of internalising new language conventions. (15)
Not everyone is willing to adapt, or to adapt in full. Some language learners deliberately resist adopting certain native-speaker norms – a phenomenon known as ‘pragmatic resistance’. A non-native speaker might understand what native speakers are expected to do and say in certain social situations (such as when accepting an invitation, apologising, or responding to criticism), but still decline to follow these norms. This resistance is not solely about discomfort with a particular norm; it can also be about preserving a sense of authenticity and personal integrity. To give an example: in Taiwan, in some contexts, women are expected to speak in a higher-pitched tone and to punctuate their statements with sentence-final particles (such as 喔 ō, 啦 la, and 耶 yé) that add a coquettish flair to their speech. Doing this never felt natural to me, and, as a result, I have often been told I ‘sound like a man’ in Chinese. (16)
Pragmatic competence and pragmatic resistance are continuously balanced and renegotiated, as multilinguals ‘try on’ different social identities throughout their learning journey. Each social interaction, observation and experience adds to this dynamic, as individuals work out how to move between worlds fluidly – and to dial up or down different aspects of themselves – while remaining sufficiently true to themselves. (17)
Embracing the idea of wearing different ‘masks’ can transform a potential source of uneasiness into something amusing, even empowering. When I was writing my dissertation in Chinese, having to use a language in which I lacked complete fluency freed me from the perfectionism that had always haunted my academic work. What initially felt like a gap in my abilities, a ‘missing piece’, became an opportunity for self-realisation. (18)
The experience of shifting personalities and expressions, while not universal – and certainly not identical for everyone – offers a fascinating glimpse into the human capacity for adaptation. By observing and reflecting on these shifts, multilinguals can turn what might seem like a challenge into an avenue for growth. As they switch between languages, they can approach their interactions with introspection and awareness, each transition potentially unlocking new insights into who they are and who they could be. (19)
Antonella Gismundi is a data analyst with a background in linguistics and psychology. She lives in Taipei, Taiwan.
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