In on the Joke: Understanding Language as Culture

Language is everything: It is who we are, how we live, think, act, dream, want, feel, see, breathe, die. It does not describe our cultures, it is our cultures. Observe England between the years of 1200 AD and 1600 AD and you will see the vowels stretch and shift, in a series of gradual changes transforming the language from Middle English to Modern English, which modern linguists have baptized “The Great Vowel Shift”. At much closer proximity, though, what our parents thought was “groovy” is not really that to us anymore, and, even more immediate yet, in our own lifetime there are several carcasses of once excessively used expressions from a former time of a teenage or pre-teenage period of self-expression, now sadly decaying in a slow state of neglect. In most of the cases they will remain deceased and if they return, will only re-appear in newly acquired garment called “retro” or under a thick layer of irony.

In the history of the universe tentatively marked as “known” to us, when placed into a time frame of an hour, the history of humankind equals 3 seconds at the most. The development of the languages flies by at warp speed and not only the words change but their idiomatic meaning does, too. Its formalities and rules change that same pace, whether editors and proof-readers and translators like it or not, and the more languages you consult, the clearer the picture emerges from the infinite galaxy of communication: Ever heard (and seen) a Frenchman say “Bof… eu, ouais, mais, ben… j’pas”? It is safe to say that it cannot be said spot on with all its connotations and implications in any other language except French. Just as the exact meaning(s) of the ever-so German Spießer will never be as aptly expressed in any other language than German because it is an utterly German phenomenon. Starting orthographically with the double-“s” that looks like a “B”, and concluding with the flood of ideas and symbols which is drawn within the consciousness of a German brain. To an outsider it is merely a sound; a fashionable European touch to formerly German orthography at best.

The space of the unclear is where the transferal of actual meanings to other languages seems virtually impossible. It is where language truly shows as the scaffold, bricks and mortar of culture. It is the amoeba of our cultural consciousness re-creating words and meanings in the constantly changing flux of history. The task of translating is one that forces us to address such difficulties and the best you can hope to accomplish is to extract a word from one language, re-shape it, and wrap it around another. The deeper you delve into what one particular language signifies, the more you risk going astray and backwards into your own perceptions of the original language you started out with. Translating essentially is like constantly having to explain an inexplicable inside-joke to someone who wasn’t there.

Or, as historian Bruce Cumings once put it: “Most practitioners cannot read the languages of the countries they study. We need people to translate the Vietnamese experience. Translate it into what? English, as a service to diplomatic historians? Into American conceptions of the world?“ As surprisingly few among us realize, translating presents an impossible undertaking, or at least when we look at the language like a math equation: x times German does not equal y times English. Or does so very rarely. On top of that - English? Which one? British? American?

Let’s see.

If there is one thing American English does not qualify for, it is moderation. In a majority of the cases the sound of it will be too loud, too round, too full, too voluminous, and thus, perceived as obnoxious and excessive to a given European ear. An impression that sets in before even approaching the point of understanding what is actually being said. Getting to the literal meaning, though, doesn’t deplete the “overly everything”-effect. Because the American way of speaking is like the American way of pronouncing, like the American way of living: exaggerated, bacchanal, rakish, spoiled, crude, and just too darn much of everything, while every “thing” is just too darn big for the individuals in possession of it.

Or so says your average European snob in your average gross generalization that can never account for the individual. Because, however much we despise anything that is not easy, one-dimensional, and tangible, there is more to the American manner of expression than small-talk, too. But one fact certainly remains: There is nothing more American than the way Americans speak. Not their cars, and houses, their jobs, their Green-back, their Democracy, their sports, or their a-historic chimera of a misled white egocentrism that some actually dare call patriotism. There is nothing more French to the French than the way they speak. Not their Revolution, not their Vichy-Fascism, not their cheese, the Eiffel Tower, or their soccer world champs. There is nothing more German to the Germans than the way they speak. Not their Nazis, not their sausages, their emperors, their Berlin Wall, their bureaucracy, their uptightness, their numbness, their socks and sandals, or their soccer world champions.

And however much, on the other hand, we want to be non-judgmental and open-minded, there is such a thing as mentality; probably one of the most interesting fields of the Human Sciences. One that, like a few others, is hard to grasp and define because it directly concerns the intrinsic schizophrenia of all humankind: its condition of being made up of individuals, who live in herds. Its condition as being inconceivably large, ever-changing, and divided into countless numbers of groups, cultures, and countries.

There is the English of George W. Bush and there is the English of Martin Luther King and there is the English of Shakespeare and Hemingway. Can these even be classified as the same languages? Would they laugh at the same jokes? They can - because they belong to one cultural tradition on some level. And then they cannot - because there are different layers to those traditions and mostly because each of these people are individuals.

Dealing with language is dealing with identities. What does it mean to be American? What does it mean to be German? Or one of the most interesting questions of recent history and world politics: What does it mean to be Jewish? Or Israeli? Is it a religious signifier? An ethnic one? A political one? Can it be derived or assigned to social affiliations?

The answers to all of those questions are not what everyone involved so desperately wants them to be: simple. Unfortunate as it is, humans don’t like diversity. We go to war out of that desperation; out of the lack of embracing the complexity of communication. We are dying fighting the fact that in its ultimate consequence, every human being communicates in a different way. We are hardly capable of coping with the fact that each nation, people, religion does.

Drawing lines on maps in an attempt to reorganize the world as did colonialists in the 19th century and others afterward is the opposite of getting the joke – of understanding language, culture and therefore humans. It is the horrific irony of such concepts as colonialism and imperialism. They assume that their military and economic prowess makes them entitled to another land (or their resources, anyway). A reality that for hundreds of years has brought unrest and calamity to far too many regions of the world. Acting upon such destructive principles truly is spoiling the fun for everyone.

The route towards not annihilating ourselves will lead along a constant re-defining of the semantics and semiotics of our personal, social, political, historical terms in all the different languages and forms of expression. This is bad news inasmuch as it is a daunting task that requires a lot of effort, resources and many, many bright minds with even braver hearts. The good news is, though, that accomplishing it will begin with a private deep-cleansing of the slate, which everyone can do for themselves. And it’s as easy as this: RETHINK. Rethink a mindset that assumes that some societies are more valuable than others. RECONSIDER. How race, gender, nation, and economic potency were artificially invested as the benchmarks for supremacy or subordination. How these markers became hallmarks for cultural and moral superiority to further authorize the enslavement and obliteration of cultural “otherness”.

You don’t have to be able to procure the long-gone emotions related to that transitory moment in the past when everyone laughed at one very special joke. But you certainly have to embrace the fact that there exists something those others are justly laughing about, and that there is a good chance that it is just as funny as the joke your buddies back home were telling you the other day.