site banner
ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

33
Top Bottom New Old Controversial
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In Hungary, the culture war angle seems a bit different than that. Here academic (usually leftist) linguists emphasize descriptivism and that no dialect should be stigmatized, there is no single correct way to speak, the standard language is more like customs of clothing while real language is organic and biological. I generally agree by the way. There's even a term, linguicism to describe prejudice against non-standard speakers, which may prevent people from getting hired etc. While there's a connection to the topic of Gypsies, these linguists also speak out in favor of not shaming non-Gypsy Hungarians for their dialect, inclusivity etc.

Why doesn't it work out like that in Germany?

Germans hate individualism with a passion. Blame it on protestant puritanism, or prussian uniformity, or whatever animation the nazis ran on, but each German thinks he knows exactly how things need to be in the world, and any aberration must be expunged with a vengeance. The right way to brew beer, the right way to build a machine, the right way to drive a car, the right way to engineer a society, the right way to respond to a novel virus, the right way to speak German. I'm fully prepared to believe that all of the current progressive mania is based on whatever the Frankfurt School did, because this modern big-government, small-individual ideology is exactly something Germans could come up with.

Maybe Hungary doesn't have the same hardon for collectivism?

I was specifically reacting to you attributing your wife's switch to standard German to some leftist influence. I would imagine German leftists would want to distance themselves from that Prussian style rigidity that you mention.

Superficially they do, and even substantially in some ways, but a leopard can't change its spots and more often than not they drift towards the same old uniformity-for-uniformity's-sake that most people here love.

There's even a term, linguicism to describe prejudice against non-standard speakers, which may prevent people from getting hired etc.

Language is for communication. If you speak in a dialect that is not mutually intelligible with the standard, or is only with difficulty, communication becomes more difficult. This is not "prejudice", this is a legitimate consideration.

That's not even the issue here. There are practically no speakers of dialects remaining who cannot make themselves understood without switching to the so-called standard. What we have is the remaining dialects, which are almost universally mutually intelligible given any but the dumbest or deafest listeners, being opposed by the dominant strain of cultural leftism.

Depends how close to the border you get. As a high-german speaker, I can say from experience that spoken Plattdeutsch is completely unintelligible to me. I'd have had more luck talking to that person in English - which is a problem if you're trying to book a room for the night! :) (We got through it with sign language.)

Sure, it happens. But how often?

That depends on whether the dialect actually hinders communication no?

This may or may not be the case, I might understand your accent perfectly well but still not like it for prejudicial reasons, e.g because it outs you as a backwards farmer or a privileged type worthy of resentment.

Motte: We're protecting against prejudice against those with clear but low-class dialects

Bailey: We're protecting people who speak unintelligibly and placing all the burden of communication on those who speak the standard dialect, and if they complain we call them bigots.

Are you saying that concern for dialect based discrimination is always a motte-and-bailey or just that it's exploitable as one?

The latter I don't doubt, the former I have to disagree. Sometimes it really is just about class, other commenters have already mentioned cases where intelligibility isn't an issue.

This doesn't happen in Hungary though. There are specific stigmatized grammatical quirks that are present in some dialects but they don't make understanding harder.

Imagine for example if there was a German dialect where instead of "größer als" they'd say "größer von". L And people who learned it so in their village would be ridiculed for it or assumed uneducated. "Haven't you paid attention at school? That makes no grammatical sense! It makes me cringe like hearing nails on a chalkboard!"

I know that in German there are dialects that aren't mutually intelligible with the standard, so there it can make sense to require standard knowledge for a job (not sure whether that's legal though). But in Hungarian we only have slight pronunciation differences, some regional words and some minor grammatical differences.

The question still stands: why don't inclusive German leftists fight for the proud right to speak dialect and fight against linguicism, encourage dialect use as a form of diversity etc? (maybe they do)

a German dialect where instead of "größer als" they'd say "größer von"

In English there are relatively few grammatical differences between the American and British standard dialects, but 'different than' vs. 'different from' strikes me as a perfect analog here.

Though both of those have a whole country where they are part of the local standard.

I know that in German there are dialects that aren't mutually intelligible with the standard

Those are few, and spoken by very few people, and even then most of them are very well able to modulate their speech to find some compromise in which they're intelligible while still retaining as much of their dialect as possible. Unintelligibles used to be more prevalent of course, but they're nigh-nonexistent by now.

The question still stands: why don't inclusive German leftists fight for the proud right to speak dialect and fight against linguicism, encourage dialect use as a form of diversity etc? (maybe they do)

Because tribal ideologies aren't designed in advance and built on rigorously logical foundations. Instead they coalesce around condensation nuclei and after that only shift under pressure. German leftism coalesced around cosmopolitanism, antinationalism and high german with as many anglicisms as possible as its common tongue because this distancing from dialects and even your own language signals that you have no actual national allegiance.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats