The intellectual table: why we eat as we talk. Part two: how is set the intellectual table?

 English and Italian can be also paratactic, especially in the spoken language, but anyway they tend to be more hypotactics. Chinese is paratactic because in Chinese there are no connectors (and, also, in fact, even though, nonetheless, anyway, despite, etc...), so the clauses can only be placed side by side, juxtaposed (a famous example from Julio Cesar is: “I came; I saw; I conquered”). Following Du and Yu (2008) “English emphasizes the complete structure of a sentence and pays much more attention to the grammar rules. […] The sentence structure is relatively complete and the sentence is relatively rigid”. Liu (1991) states that “Comparing with English, Chinese is not restricted to the grammar limitation and its sentence structure is more flexible than that in English” (as cited in Du and Yu, 2008, p.42). As opposite to Italian, the grammar of modern Chinese is more linear and sentences are more simple and clear, not too long and not too articulated. English and Italian develop more like a tree, while Chinese are more like a bamboo.

bamboo

Huang (2009) distinguish the two languages identifying Chinese as “discourse-oriented” and English “sentence-oriented”. Compared to Chinese, English aims at capturing, defining, transferring the meaning. On the contrary, Chinese depends more by the context, and this because “Chinese emphasize function rather than the form” (Lian, as cited in Du and Yu, 2008, p.42). And as Wang notes “English emphasizes formal cohesion while Chinese focuses on semantic coherence. English is controlled by grammar law while Chinese is governed by user convenience” (Wang, as cited in Du and Yu, 2008, p.42). As a result more work is required to the reader, but the meaning is more open. This is the spirit of real Chinese which emphasizes various understanding and reflection in the world. 

In Chinese there is not the same obsession for the precise meaning as in the west, where we are always in search of “the right words”. We think that the right words are those that better describe the object, those that better “grasp” the “essence” of the concept; for the Chinese, words count for the effect that they can produce, rather than the (supposed) meaning that they should transmit. So, the words are “right” or “wrong” depending by the effect that they provoke within the relation, within that context; they can’t be defined in advance. For the Chinese, words rarely help to clarify, but quite on the contrary they add noise, confusion, chaos. Apparently the Chinese are more aware that misunderstanding is structural to speaking, while we westerners still think that everything can be said, that meanings are shared, and that the misunderstanding can be eliminated. Not only the combination of the clauses within a sentence, but all the speech should follow an order with a beginning and an end. Since the presocratics, Western has developed rhetoric. Oration has some premises that need to be exposed, argued, and demonstrated by some proofs before jumping to the conclusions. The structure of the discourse, the way elements are disposed, arranged (taxis), all reflect an attitude. Western has always adopted, from philosophy to art, or food, the monadic solution: the single thought, the perspective, the point of view, the main/only dish. In China, food fits differently: one does not go without the other, the opposite go in combination. In Chinese culture, food can be warm or cold and need to be combined to gain the balance.

Dim Sum

While the western thought developed around the concept of logos, the Aristotelian reasoned discourse (Rahe, 1994), the isolation of parts (concepts and ideas), and the definition of meaning, Chinese thought searched the balance of the opposites and has given more importance to the whole, to the context rather than to parts. The West has chosen the syntax and the Aristotelian logic, believing that logic is founder of the world, thinking the world was a book that just needed to be deciphered, and so embraced the discourse of science. The same did not happen in China, where the source (the authority) was often more important than the evidence. But as Randall Groves notes “instead of causal thinking or logical analysis, China utilized correlative thought, which related image or concept clusters in terms of their meaningful dispositions”, and coherently with our thesis “correlative thinking is best suited to “process” understandings of the world, while causal thinking better accommodates “substance” views”. Probably for this reason many Westerners feel annoyed by the (apparently) a-logical proceeding that some Chinese show. Again Randall Groves “the Chinese give priority to the correlative while the West gives priority to causal thinking. The view that correlative thinking is merely an early pre-logical or pre-scientific form of reasoning is a result of viewing correlative thought from the perspective of causal thinking. If we begin instead from the perspective of correlative thought we realize the interdependence of the two modes”. We are so eradicated in our linear, causal, rational thinking that we feel a certain difficulty to relate to anyone who moves from other premises. The Chinese proceeding is more impressionistic, analogical: it’s more paratactic. But hypotaxis and parataxis represent two ways of proceeding, no one is better than the other. They simply represent different logics, different rhetoric.

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1916

Chinese proceed per analogy rather than pointing straight to the core of the matter, and some time they beat around the bushes. They might let the other imagine something, rather than express it directly. And they emphasize the timing for saying, rather than the message itself. Westerner are obsessed by the truth, by the substance, the content of the message. The truth is the key to the world: everything can be done in name of the truth. As a consequence if one keeps silent, that means tacit consent, even submission, or ignorance. But it’s different in Chinese culture, where the relation comes first: one can be right, but not direct, because this is considered unpolite and a lack of respect. In China a silence is sign of wisdom, because the relation is first of all with the other, not with the (big) Other.

The Western discourse is substantialist, it aims at the core of things. We do not just approach problems, we want to go to the bottom, we want to analyze in depth. We face concepts until we have digested them. Or until we made indigestion. We want to go all the way up to the dessert. Just compare the cutlery and chopsticks. Chopsticks pick up food, do not pierce it. Not to mention the knife, never seen it on a Chinese table. The same word "chopstick" has been derived from "chop chop", meaning quickly (Merriam-Webster). Food and words in Chinese culture are taken in small doses, little by little. Difficult to make real binges with Chinese food. Hard to feel a sense of heaviness after a Dim Sum. Satisfactions are different at the table: the taste of substance in the west, the pleasure of variety in China.

The intellectual table: why we eat as we talk. Part one: an introduction on how the language shapes the way we think and act.

Eating is a moment of conviviality: words and food go hand in hand. Why do we sit around a table; why don't we just sit on the ground, or why don't we lay on the sofa? Eating requires a dispositive because eating is not just satisfying a need. Eating is a simple act, which refers to a complex culture: the attention we give to the food, the attention we give to the dispositive is the attention we give to the word. The same act of cooking is a matter of courtesy and hospitality; cooking requires the semblant, and care of the word. 

The food exists within a story; there is no taste out of the word, the taste comes as a consequence of a telling. The food is caught in a symbolic order; what we like or dislike is not written in the DNA, it is the effect of the language. It is a common experience to change our taste completely and unexpectedly regarding certain food, for example from childhood to adulthood, or when we go to different places. In foreground is always the question of the language; of the word. The same act of eating together is meaningless if it is not accompanied by a good conversation. In Italy, the place where I come from, we can have meals for hours because we mainly meet for talking.

Words and food enter and exit from our mouth[1]. We are hungry for knowledge, thirsty for information, we eat books, we receive tasty or spicy news, we digest a concept and we can say something sweet or bitter. Some ideas are disgusting, some others are just food for the mind. Our relationship with food and eating is also our relationship with the word. It's curious that even within a country the food changes on regional bases, just as the language does with its dialects. In Italy one might be asked to “talk as you eat”, meaning “don’t pretend, use your own words”. 

Many researches have been conducted on language differences and food differences (Mintz, 1996; Mintz and Du Bois, 2002; Debevec and Tivadar, 2006), but most of the times these topics have been treated separately, as belonging to different fields. Linguists explain extensively the differences between English, Italian and Chinese languages, but they generally lack at explaining how this is relevant for us, how this affect us as human beings. Anthropologists, on the other side, concentrated much on the substance: what food in what culture, cooked or raw, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy (isn’t it the same logic undergoing anorexia and bulimia?). I think that we should move from the logic of the “meaning” to the logic of “signification”: we are not just what we eat, as suggested by anthropologists, rather we are as we eat, and we eat as we talk: different eating patterns reflect different syntaxes.

Evidence shows that language structures the way we represent the world. Language is not just a medium of the “mind”. Research from Boroditsky, Schmidt and Phillips (2002) shows that people speaking different languages think differently and that “differences in thought can be produced just by grammatical differences in the absence of other cultural factors”. Starting from language differences my aim is to analyze how they shape our construction of the world, the way we think, the way we eat and the way we approach problems or theories. For example in Italian or in English we can have very long sentences, with lots of phrases connected, all of them having a precise order and subordination to another. Look at the Sonnet 29 from Shakespeare:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings.

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

This is one long sentence of 20 phrases! It is like a huge lunch of 20 dishes, from appetizers to the coffee. Following Cerantola (2010) one might ask: how to translate all this huge amount of food into Chinese? Most probably on a Chinese table we would see 20 different plates and cups at the same time that we wouldn’t even be able to distinguish where to start from, because actually there is not a temporal sequence, there is not something that comes before and something that follows. 

This is the difference between hypotaxis and parataxis. According to the Oxford Dictionaries (on-line resource) hypotaxis is “the subordination of one clause to another”. Parataxis on the contrary is “the placing of clauses or phrases one after another, without words to indicate coordination or subordination, as in Tell me, how are you?”. Linguists consider this as one of the most important typological distinctions between English and Chinese (Nida and Taber, 1982; Ning, 1993; Li, 2006;). And what is the syntax of our eating patterns? We can say that at eating Westerners more than Chinese emphasize the subordination, the sequence and the structure.  

During an Italian lunch you see dishes coming one by one: first some appetizers, then pasta or rice (which we call “il primo” meaning literally “the first” course), meat or fish (which is the main course, also named “il secondo”, the second course), some vegetables and finally dessert, fruits and coffee. The name of the dish itself indicates the order of arrival on the table: pasta is a first, even if paradoxically we were to reverse the order of arrival on the table. There’s a precise order and every dish is “subordinated” to the others, just as for the sentences of a period. For example we usually don’t mix meat and fish as main dishes: one excludes the other. A lunch itself is structured around a main dish, develops a theme that arise from a dominant flavour. Quite opposite, what do we find on a Chinese table? On the Chinese table we find at the same time (there is not temporal sequence) meat and fish, tofu and mushrooms, sweet and sour foods, and the Dim Sum and is just as the most evident example.

So a parallel between the way we talk, think and eat might be more than just a joke. The language structures us so deeply that we don’t even notice, but everything around us reflects the same premises that support our discourse: from art to science, from food to architecture. For example: isn’t this the structure of the city of Hong Kong itself? Is HK not set like a Chinese table, with lots of different districts one next to another, without any possibility to individualize any clear order and any real center (around which develops the story and the discourse of the city), otherwise so typical in Italian cities?

Bibliography

Boroditsky, L., Schmidt, L., & Phillips, W. (2003). Sex, Syntax, and Semantics. In Gentner & Goldin-Meadow (Eds.,) Language in Mind: Advances in the study of Language and Thought. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.

Cerantola, L. (2010), L’altro Giappone o la bellezza della paratassi [The other Japan or the beauty of parataxis], Novembre 2010, from http://dweb.repubblica.it/dweb/2010/02/13/attualita/attualita/084jap68184.html

Debevec, L., Tivadar, B., (2006), Making connections through foodways: contemporary issues in anthropological and sociological studies of food, Anthropological Notebooks, XII/1, pp.5-16

Li, S.J. (2006), On How to Achieve Functional Equivalence in Translation between Chinese and English, Sino-US English Teaching,Dec. 2006, Volume 3, No.12 (Serial No.36)

Mintz, S. 1996 Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press. 176 pp1996 Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press. 176 pp1996 Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press. 176 pp.1996 Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press. 176 pp.(1996), Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Power, and the Past, Boston: Beacon press

Mintz, S., Du Bois, C.M., (2002), The anthropology of food and eating, Annual Review of Anthropology

Nida, E.A., Taber C.R., (1982), The Theory and Practice of Translation, Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Ning, Y. (1993), Chinese as a paratactic language. L2 Talk: The SLAT Working Papers (University of Arizona) 1, 1–15.

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[1] With Freud we could say that food and words are attached to the oral drive

No courtesy, no courtship (and no courtyards)

  

The medieval court was the household of a monarch, or an important nobleman, the place where he used to live and carry out its functions of control over territory. In large courts many thousands of people (namely the courtesans) were living: officials, servants, as well as others in hope of political or financial gain, and even jesters and musicians. As well as being the centre of political life, courts were usually the centre of fashion, literature, music and art. Courtesy today merely refers to good manners and polite behaviors, but in medieval times it was the attribute that characterized the virtuous nobility, basing on the code of conduct of the chivalry, and referring primarily to honesty, loyalty, generosity, and humility. In the beginning courtesy had nothing to do with behaviors toward women or with what we call good manners, while at today we say "be a cavalier" meaning "be a gentleman". Courtesy distinguishes a refined behavior from what is rude and vulgar: “To be courteous means to behave as if one were at court, to be courtly. […] Originally, courtesy meant the special consideration one knight showed to another. For example, a knight should always give his noble opponent an even chance, never attacking one who was unarmed.” (E.L. Skip Knox[1]). During the Renaissance courtesy was the main attribute of the perfect courtier, who was example of virtuous civilization and possessed good judgment, discretion, generosity, prudence, honesty, measurement, and above all grace and nonchalance. Knight was the one who possessed these qualities, not only pretending to have these qualities (courtier now has a negative value, indicating someone who is fake). The knight was not expected to give favors to others around him; he was expected to behave accordingly to a noble code, respecting higher ideals. He was not supposed to be "kind" to others; he was not expected to be "polite": he was expected to respect and cultivate a moral order. I wouldn't say that the knight was somehow in relation to the Other, after all he was referring to a rather normative code; but this dispositive was probably preserving the dimension of the speech, introducing a third element who could break the specular representation, the duality, interposing something between “I” and the “other”. 

This is something we can see also in the courtly love, where the lover functioned well as semblant, sort of fictional lover (fictional because everything was played within a strict set of rules, which in most cases did not led to an intercourse) whose function was to allow the man to sing the Love. Courts were present in most of societies, but only in southern France and Italy it has led to develop such culture, which was later spread to the entire West. it was something that was never developed in China, where courts were regulated by other mechanisms, such  that courtesy is of a difficult translation. To some westerners some habits of Hong Kong people may seem rude. Of course, it is not simply that Chinese culture lack of regulating what is polite and what is rude, what is respectful and what is offensive; quite on the contrary, in Chinese culture there is often the concern to not bother the other, to not disturb. But much concern is given to the other, while too little attention is given to the word; the relation with the Other seems to be neglected. This is well- documented by an article titled “Courtesy in Hong Kong: Manners and Etiquette”[2]:

“Many travel guides written about Hong Kong during the 1980s and 1990s had remarked on the rudeness of Hongkongers. While understandable, courtesy in the city has improved dramatically in recent years. And these days, Hong Kong consistently ranks highly among Asian cities when it comes to customer service. Sometimes, there could be crowds of people pushing and shoving and neglecting to say "please" or "sorry". It is unusual for someone to hold doors for strangers. Don't expect the supermarket or bank cashier to ask about your day or to make chit-chat. In non-tourist areas, staff in shops and restaurant might not even say "thank you" when you pay. However, don't take this personally. This apparent 'rudeness' is not menacing or mean-spirited. Hong Kong is a fast-paced society where people often neglect pleasantries for efficiency. It does not originate from an abundance of aggression or the desire to offend. If anything, Hongkongers usually go out of their way not to offend. For example, you will rarely hear people debate politics in public or confront strangers on their conduct. They want to go merrily and speedily on their way with the fewest obstacles. It is generally considered strange to strike up pleasantries with a stranger, or to thank a bus driver. Saying "good morning" to a person you don't know at a bus stop will probably be viewed with some apprehension.

Hong Kong is not a touchy-feely kind of place, but times are changing. In the last decade, perhaps due to increased tourism and international trade, courtesy in Hong Kong has changed dramatically. Now, when you enter a department, convenience or chain clothing stores, staff will greet and thank you for your patronage or visit, even if you haven't bought anything. Wherever tourists or Western people congregate, you can expect courtesy meeting Western expectations.”

 I quite agree with this picture. What I further argue is that Hong Kong has not developed any courtesy, while it has probably developed a sense of politeness. It is then not surprising that Hong Kong is well known for its level of customer service; Hong Kong people can be extremely polite and respectful, probably more than westerners, but there is a big difference between courtesy and politeness. One difference between courtesy and politeness is that the former involves an attention to the dimension of the word, to the language, while the latter refers to a code (elegance), where the word is taken as a sign. Courtesy requires an ethical and intellectual dimension; the feeling can be “honest” or “fake” (this is the opposite meaning that courtesy has taken through the years), but in both cases it cannot avoid the question of the word (la parole), in both cases it means that the unconscious is at work, the question of the Other is not neglected; on the other hand, politeness is a favor given to the other, it is an obligation, nothing more, the issue of the word is excluded.

Again, what makes the difference is the centrality given to the word. I find it interesting that the article claims in Hong Kong “people neglect pleasantries for efficiency”, and I argue that it is not by chance that what is constantly neglected is the dimension of the speech. This is a first difference: speaking is considered a pleasantry, kind of a surplus, and not something essential; it is even an “obstacle”, a waste of time. Of course, we know that the time-saving explanation is first of all a good excuse; nowadays many places have a fast-pace life, so why elsewhere people do not give up on courtesies? I claim that the reason lies in the way we consider the word and the human relations. For example, we can see how people make business worldwide, in South America, in India or North Africa. In all these places the bargain takes a longer time and involves the ability of establishing a good relation with the other in the first place. We can see clearly that bargaining means much more than just making a deal: the best rhetorical and interpersonal skills are required, the Other is at work. The business then comes as a consequence of the conversation, depending by the relationship established. Usually a lack of time, a lack of interest, or a lack of desire will lead to  an unsatisfactory deal. This is quite different from how businesses are conducted in Hong Kong. What is the logic undergoing the way people do business? This is also tied to the question of the word, which found one of its best expressions in the (street) market. I would say that politeness is the attention given to the other, while courtesy is the attention given to the word, to the speech (then to the conversation, to the relation). Courtesy will lead to taking care of the moment we do business, so that at the end of the deal both persons involved will be satisfied of the deal. Politeness, on the other hand, will not add value to the deal, and the same deal will probably result less satisfactory. 

Some attempts of being polite at any cost can even turn out to be ridiculous. When you enter a department store or a big restaurant the staff will greet you and thank you for your visit, even if you haven't bought anything. But this is the point: no attention is given to the relation; words are repeated mechanically, to anyone indistinctly. Some employer standing at the entrance for hours will be greeting and repeating the same sentences to everyone who is entering or leaving. This probably because someone has learned that greeting is a “good manner”, but if this is intended to be part of the customer care, the consequence is that it might soon become annoying.

And what can we say about the attitude towards love and relationships in Hong Kong? Courtship was not born here. Courtship, which still refers to the medieval courts, was a particular way of using the word to address the object of love (a style which has been lately named “courtly love”). The troubadour spoke of the physical beauty of their ladies, as the feelings and desires the ladies rouse in them, such that scholars cannot determine how erotic or how platonic courtly love was. And so were the way the knights express their love for their lovers. This gives us an idea of the continuous tentative of posing the word at first, even though an abuse of certain rhetoric has later lead to some stereotypical repetition and rather empty, arid words. But what can we say about the courtship in Hong Kong? Does it happen through words? Or isn’t Hong Kong more oriented toward its modern, quicker, task oriented version: the dating? Can we say that there is much invention, or poetry in the way people build love relationships in Hong Kong? Can we say much space is really given to romance in Hong Kong, or isn’t the city rather split between the so called “serious” relationships and its opposite “one night stand” (an apparent opposition which should deserve further investigation)? 

Troubadour

I would point out that the same word "romance", which comes from the old French romanz, began life as the name for a narrative poem about chivalric heroes (only by 1660s was the term applied to the distinctive  love relationship commonly featured in such poems). How is the romance translated in Chinese? 

Ah, Hong Kong also lacks of courtyards (not surprisingly), but this is of minor importance…

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[1] http://boisestate.edu/courses/westciv/medsoc/11.shtml

[2] http://iguide.travel/Hong_Kong/Courtesy/Manners_and_Etiquette