Language and Knowledge

In a recent post by Ken Allen, I commented

"...literacy is more than the language. Governments and certain societies want to control language, but it has a deeper goal. What they want to control is the knowledge, the means of communication, and the structures that are behind the language, imposing their ideas through the restriction of language."

Ken then challenged me to come up with an example of what I meant by controlling knowledge through language. I came up with the example of using the passive voice in American English. In the States, we are taught in schools not to use the passive voice (The paper was handed in). In the passive voice, there is no action agent unless the speaker (or writer) puts it in (The paper was handed in by the student).

How does this affect knowledge creation? By requiring that there is an agent for action, the language is reinforcing the American cultural value of the belief that man has control over every thing (even nature). An extension of this is that every idea is tied to a specific person (thus the obsession with identifying plagiarism in schools and identifying owners of "intellectual property." In other cultures, ideas might be considered communal or community owned. But in American English, we have a language based mechanism that helps to reinforce that every idea comes from an individual (the active voice preference).

However, American English and English in general is much more flexible and less constrictive in limiting ideas. An English speaker can (and often does) make up, borrow, or modify words when there is no word or expression that fits a specific idea. Simply look at the tech words that have come into use in the last 5 years (to google something, wiki, social software, texting, just to name a few).

I am more familiar with the control of ideas for francophones. In the '80's and 90's there was a big controversy over the use of "le marketing" over "publicite". This had more to do with the fear that American marketing practices might take hold in the French organizations. However, rather than letting a French version of marketing evolve (so that le marketing was not the same as marketing in English), companies were fined for using the word, but did not necessarily create their own form of the concept. There was a gap in expressing what they were doing. Now, I am not saying that this influenced the direction the French marketing departments took on. However, the fact is that English became a language of choice for many multinationals companies, because French was not allowed to evolve naturally. The action did not control French ideas so they maintained their "Frenchness" but rather encouraged those that worked with French businesses to use another language.

Epistemology, knowledge and culture.

George Siemens commented on an article about knowledge and epistemology "changing". He questioned the entire idea of "collective knowledge" saying that what the article discussed was more information than knowledge and that he did not really believe in the idea of knowledge being created collectively,

I have heard his arguments before. However, I feel that having been immersed in a foreign culture (including having to speak the language every day) and moving between these cultures, that there is no doubt that knowledge is created collectively. Does this mean the individual is left out of the equation? No. However, what is hegemony except the result of collective knowledge that individuals are not aware of until they are introduced to ideas outside of their own cultural understanding?

Many times, an idea will come to mind in French, Spanish, and even German and Dutch (two languages I am not fluent in, but I have been immersed in through work and student exchanges). One example is the idea of "resumee" in French. There is not a good translation of the concept, however, I find myself telling students to resumee their papers at times. Although translated as summary, the word carries more meaning towards writing an abstract in which there are some judgments and conclusions drawn which a regular summary would not include. These cultural assumptions are collectively developed as a why of knowing without having to explain (tacit knowledge).

It is important to acknowledge both the individual and the culture (group) and the bilateral influence. Each individual will understand the collective knowledge differently depending on their experience, but the culture is not stagnant (despite the culture police that try to make it so) and is affected by individuals.