On 5 oct. 06, at 19:00, Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> > On 5 oct. 06, at 17:40, Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> >> Something Bertrand Russell wrote made me notice that often, such
> >> dress codes are an attempt at cultural regression: "formal
> >> manners are most fully developed among barbarians, and diminish
> >> with every advance in culture."
> >> http://www.zona-pellucida.com/essay-russel.html
> >
> > Which would tend to hint that Japan is one of the most barbarian
> > nation on earth...
>
> Interesting; when I learned basic Japanese, I wondered about their
> seemingly ritualized manners and acceptance of authority; it
> appeared they even encoded relations of authority within their
> language. (Though I've never visited Japan, so I don't know. It
> could be that I just hear exaggerations, and what I learned was old-
> fashioned.)
Well, I've been in Japan for close to 10 years and I still can't figure out how to describe the relations expressed in Japanese.
I like the "vector" metaphor. When Japanese would put the emphasis on the "angle" of the vector (hierarchical relation between two actors), French would put the emphasis on the "length" (distance between two actors). Of course there are ways to express distance in Japanese just as there are ways to express hierarchy in French.
But as far as "formal manners" are concerned, I like to think that they are as Wojtek says: only ways to convey an identity. It has to be remembered that most of the Japanese did not have a family name until the 19th century. And at the time, having a name was synonymous with belonging to the "ruling" samurai class. No wonder that the samurai "manners" were then massively adopted and are still considered today as the best of japanese culture (Ikebana, some martial arts, tea ceremony, No, etc).
There is also a very deeply rooted popular culture where the language is not so formal (I'd say the local dialects do not have as numerous ways to express hierarchy as the "standard" language has). So using the very strongly structured standard language does feel extremely superfluous most of the time since the "real" relation between the actors is most of the time not the one expressed by the standard language. But then, maybe that is their way to express "distance" after all :)
Jean-Christophe Helary