{"id":2199,"date":"2016-03-01T09:52:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T09:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/?page_id=2199"},"modified":"2025-12-08T13:46:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T13:46:20","slug":"reflections-on-language-culture-and-social-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/de\/reflections-on-language-culture-and-social-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00dcberlegungen zu Sprache, Kultur und sozialer Identit\u00e4t"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Peacock<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Buddha repeatedly points out in the course of his teaching career that all languages are cultural constructs and that the relationship between the signs that constitute a language, and what is signified by those signs is purely conventional. He also recognized the role that language plays in conditioning what we might refer to, as \u2018ego consciousness\u2019 and creating the illusion that reality, like language, is composed of fixed and unchanging (unchangeable) elements. This was the theory of language and of being that was current in the Buddha\u2019s day, and was rejected by him.<\/p>\n

The Buddha\u2019s treatment of language would perplex scholars trained in Brahmin philology and offers an entirely different perspective on our relationship to language. One of the discoveries I have made in the course of my own study of the Buddha\u2019s Dhamma<\/i> is that it is distorted when not understood in its own terms. This applies very particularly to his understanding of language. For example, T.W. Rhys Davids and Maurice Walshe in their respective translations of the Agga\u00f1\u00f1a Sutta <\/i>(D\u012bgha Nik\u0101ya <\/i>27 \u2013 a text that deals with the socio-genesis of human societies), observe in footnote comments that the Buddha had in many instances resorted to \u2018fanciful etymologies\u2019 to debunk the Brahmin system of social hierarchy.<\/p>\n

In the first place the Buddha was neither a Brahmin grammarian nor an etymologist interpreting an ancient \u2018text,\u2019 lexicon in hand. He was engaged in face-to-face discussion with people about their real life-world. Many of the changes he was talking about, like the expansion of the agricultural economy, the forceful induction of forest-dwelling people into agricultural labour and the disintegration of tribal society, was taking place under the very eyes of his listeners. The Buddha\u2019s concern was with the emancipation of people from an oppressive ideology, not with presenting an abstract dissertation.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Copernican\u2019 revolution in the understanding of language formulated by the Buddha is rooted in his discovery of the conventional character of language. The meaning attached to sounds as acoustic symbols is purely a social or cultural convention. Language like everything else is a construct and has to be related to the changing conditions of human activities and perceptions. It is not, as the Brahmins thought, a pre-given transcendental reality, it is an historical development. On this view, signs do not fall from the skies pregnant with signification. Each culture \u2018invents\u2019 its own system of signs \u2013 non-verbal and verbal. For him, language and speech are equally constructs \u2013 sa\u1e45kh\u0101tas<\/i>. When language is deconstructed \u2013 visa\u1e45kh\u0101ta \u2013<\/i> it reveals itself as empty of transcendental signification. It is anicca <\/i>and anatt\u0101<\/i>. Non-recognition of this fact spawns dukkha<\/i> and as he points out:<\/p>\n

A bhikkhu whose mind is liberated, neither concurs nor disputes with anyone; he employs the current phraseology of the world without clinging to it.<\/p>\n

This is something we should take cognizance of in our secular approaches to Buddhism. The intrinsic relationship between language and consciousness is elucidated in an exposition given by the Theri Dhammadinn\u0101 (C\u016b\u1e37avedalla Sutta, <\/i>MN. 44). She distinguishes between three forms of sa\u1e45kh\u0101ras, <\/i>human life-activities or constructions: k\u0101yasa\u1e45kh\u0101ras<\/i> (physiological); vaci sa\u1e45kh\u0101ras <\/i>(verbal); and citta sa\u1e45hk\u0101ras<\/i> (mental).<\/p>\n

K\u0101yasa\u1e45kh\u0101ra<\/i> \u2013 physiological activities<\/b><\/p>\n

Dhammadinn\u0101 begins with the bodily before proceeding to examine mental activity. The Buddha, in various discourses, classifies as physiological, those activities, which occur more or less independently of the conscious mind \u2013 autonomic or motoric activity, breathing in and out for example. When asked what she understood by physiological activity, Dhammadinn\u0101 gives breathing as an example. These are physiological activities, she explained, because they are \u2018conditioned by the body<\/i>.\u2019<\/p>\n

Dhammadinn\u0101 begins her exposition of sa\u1e45kh\u0101ras<\/i> at the physiological level in a direct reversal of some speculations found in the Upani\u1e63ads<\/i>. In Upani\u1e63adic<\/i> thought, the personified and divinized wind element V\u0101yu<\/i>, had become a philosophical concept \u2013 \u0100tman-Br\u0101hman<\/i> or Absolute \u2018Spirit.\u2019 Humans according to (male) creation myths have \u2018life\u2019 because the life breath is blown into a \u2018dead form\u2019 by a supreme being (male) to create a \u2018living entity.\u2019 Dhammadinn\u0101 overturns this fantastic fabrication: breath enters and leaves the body because humans inhale and exhale: inhalation and exhalation are physiological processes. Breathing ceases when vital processes run down. Breath comes and goes because humans breathe, and not because the lungs, as it is claimed in some Upani\u1e63ads<\/i>, are worked like a pair of bellows by a spiritual or wind-like being.<\/p>\n

Vaci-sa\u1e45kh\u0101ra<\/i> \u2013 verbal activity<\/b><\/p>\n

Dhammadinn\u0101\u2019s definition is here quite startling \u2013 \u2018reflection and reasoning\u2019 (vitakka<\/i>) and \u2018discursive thought\u2019 (vic\u0101ra<\/i>) are verbal activity. Perplexed by this extraordinary classification, her interlocutor asked how she arrived at this conclusion. She replies: pubbe kho vitakketv\u0101 vic\u0101retv\u0101 pacch\u0101 v\u0101cam bhindati \u2013<\/i> first one applies thought and sustains thought, and subsequently one breaks out into speech, that is why (they) are verbal formation. Dhammadinn\u0101 appears to argue back from speech to discursive thought. In order to systematically present a point of view, a speaker must express her\/his thoughts using words arranged in logical and coherent sequence. This indicates that she\/he had already been thinking things out using language.<\/p>\n

If she had assumed a body\/consciousness dichotomy, she would have classified conscious thought as mental activity and speech as physical activity. But Dhammadinn\u0101 is arguing that conscious activity is already, or initially verbal activity. Speech is merely the exteriorization of linguistic activity which had begun in the mind. So, what then is mental activity according to the Buddha and the early Buddhists?<\/p>\n

Citta-sa\u1e45kh\u0101ra\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2018Perceptions and feelings are mental activities (constructions).\u2019 These she explains \u2018are mental things, dependent on mind and therefore [they are] activities of the mind,\u2019 whereas, discursive thought and reasoning are dependent on language.<\/p>\n

Metaphysical thinking assumes that language and thought inhabit a realm of their own. It is on the basis of these unquestioned assumptions that they argue that both are traceable to a metaphysical source. In contradistinction, Dhammadinn\u0101 traces thought to its earthly matrix. Language and thought, on this view, are situated between physiological and mental activity. Conditioned by physiological activity there is breathing; conditioned by breathing there is speech. When breathing ceases, not only speech but the ability to make a sound cease.<\/p>\n

The Buddha\u2019s understanding of language, understood in its own terms, provides insight into the socio-genesis of individual consciousness. Language, as has already been stated, is a social construct. The conscious mind thinks via the medium of language. When a growing child learns a language it is, by that fact, inducted into the representative or symbolic world of language. The child, as the Buddha put it, begins to live \u2018with a mind that is limited,\u2019 and this limitation is not wholly of the child\u2019s own making. The limits are prescribed by culture, which determines the thinkable from the desirable, and the unthinkable and the not-to-be-desired. These delimitations and the precarious balance that the ego or self achieves are from their inception, symbolic transactions.<\/p>\n

The verbal signs a child learns governs what is exorable and inexorable. A growing child does indeed perceive difference, but the differences it learns to speak of, and be silent about, are culturally conditioned. Through a common language a growing child is initiated into a collective delusion that perceived differences are \u2018signs\u2019 of substantial differences<\/i>. But as the Buddha observed, \u2018the differences spoken of<\/i> among humans are only<\/i> conventional\u2019 (Sutta Nip\u0101ta, <\/i>611). By covering up the social origins of language historically and personally, metaphysicians can attribute it to a transcendental signifier, such as a god.<\/p>\n

The social production of identity<\/b><\/p>\n

In a debate with the Buddha, a Brahmin scholar called Assal\u0101yana (\u2018he was a master of the Three Vedas with their vocabularies, liturgy, phonology, and etymology, and the histories as a fifth; skilled in philology and grammar, he was fully versed in natural philosophy and the marks of a Great Man\u2019 Assal\u0101yana Sutta, <\/i>MN. 93), reiterated the standard claim that children are born with pre-fixed natures, which determine their social identity, position and consciousness. The Buddha in reply, asked pointedly: \u2018Do you know whether the foetus (gandhabba<\/i>) in a womb is noble, a Brahmin, a peasant or a sudda<\/i>?\u2019 Assal\u0101yana has to concede that he has no way of knowing that. If this is so, the Buddha asked, pursuing the matter further: \u2018Do you know who you are (by nature)?\u2019 \u201cNo, we do not,\u2019 Assal\u0101yana admitted.<\/p>\n

The radical implication of this admission is an inspiration to all those who may be committed to ending sexism, racism and other prejudices. Identity, in this sense, is socially imputed and internalized by growing children. The Buddha stressed this in another exchange with Brahmin scholars:<\/p>\n

A person\u2019s lineage could be traced on the paternal and maternal sides. Where there is production of individuality in a khattiya <\/i>family, it is reckoned as a khattiya.<\/i> (The same is repeated for a child born into a brahmana, <\/i>a vessa <\/i>or a sudda<\/i> family). Wherever it is that there is production of an individuality<\/i>, it is reckoned according to that. (Gha\u1e6d\u012bk\u0101ra Sutta, <\/i>MN. 81)<\/p>\n

It is society, not a pre-existing identity-consciousness, which stamps the child with a name and identity. Signs penetrate the womb and stigmatize the baby, for better or for worse, even before it is born. A child is spoken about<\/i>, from the moment parents, relatives, and neighbours become aware that a woman is pregnant. The Buddha is not a speculative philosopher for whom \u2018self-consciousness\u2019 is an abstract essence inherent in each separate individual. He is an empirical proto-psychologist who diagnoses and discloses the social origins of identity consciousness.<\/p>\n

Applying the principle of dependent arising (pa\u1e6dicca-samupp\u0101da<\/i>) consistently, the Buddha explains the socio-genesis of social differentiation and its reproduction from generation to generation by cultural factors, foremost of which is language. No one comes into the world, from the Buddha\u2019s perspective, with a consciousness pre-fabricated by a creator or by a self in a previous birth: \u2018apart from conditions there is no origination of [identity] consciousness\u2019 and this is an invariable law. Individuality \u2013 or identity consciousness is iddappaccayat\u0101<\/i> \u2013 \u2018thus-conditioned\u2019 or specifically conditioned.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Peacock The Buddha repeatedly points out in the course of his teaching career that all languages are cultural constructs and that the relationship between the signs that constitute a language, and what is signified by those signs is purely conventional. He also recognized the role that language plays in conditioning what we might refer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"ase":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239600,"href":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions\/239600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodhi-college.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}