Linguistic Clash
Despite the ongoing process of globalization, there has been definitely set an expressed tendency of so-called ‘international and regional integration’. This tendency is obvious to have become so strong nowadays that almost every field of the international community’s life and activity is subject to integration, which implies regional unification on the basis of similar historic background, geographic location or cultural identity. Therefore, we may safely presume that the all-encompassing process of globalization induces an imminent phenomenon of identification. There are various kinds of such identification: economic, historic, national, etc. Within the framework of our topic, dealing with the linguistic clash of communities, I think it would be reasonable to dwell upon cultural identification of those communities, which tends to serve as a ground for those inter-communities’ communicational breakdowns.
At first glance, the concept of linguistic community is easy to explain: it is a community of people who speak this language. However, in reality is not enough for such an understanding. For example, the French, living in France and French-speaking Canadians do not constitute a community. It is impossible to combine in a single language community the British and Americans (though they both speak in English), Spanish and enjoying Spanish people in Latin America, and so on. On the other hand, constituting a different language communities there are people who live in the same city, working for the same companies, but having different national languages, for example, Russians and Tatars.
It is the study of second-order effects bi- and multilingualism in the community social life there was a need in the concept of "linguistic community". This concept of the researcher determines the social framework within a single language or a few languages operate and interact with each other. Linguistic community is a group of people united by common social, economic, political and cultural ties and engaged in daily life direct and indirect contact with each other and with different social institutions with a single language or different languages spoken in this set.
Making allowance for the task, which asks to describe a piece of personal experience of linguistic mishaps, I find it appropriate to address my grandfather’s story concerning this issue. At the end of World War ІІ he chanced to be invited to an embassy party as a newly promoted soldier. The hosts of the party were Frenchmen. So when being asked to deliver a toast, instead of rendering some fancy speech, he started citing a French poem to pay tribute to a child and his mother. The poem said: “The best years of my life I had to spend in the arms of another man’s wife”. Accidentally my grandfather mistook word “arms” for “legs”, so the poem got a strange meaning. No wonder the hosts were dispirited and mortified by such a neglecting act of demeanor paid by the young soldier, so he immediately “spirited away” to his troopship.
The question is also: what are actually the values injured by this faux pas? From my point of view, it is the ethic negligence paid by the soldier, which manifested his mediocre attitude towards the respectability of the hosts and the solemnity of the evening itself.
One may reasonably dispute about the relevance of this case within the scope of the topic in question. Nevertheless, I can surely prove the aptness thereof. At first, the story is unambiguously concerned to “linguistic mis-step”. At second, the factor of the French cultural dainty is what actually made this occasion a “mis-step”. We may safely suppose that such a trifle would make a big deal in the USA, for example, or any other country with shallower ethical code.
I deem it prudent to proceed this speculation with the analysis of the background usually accompanying and serving as a cause of those communicational mis-steps. As a rule humor is the most fertile ground for those confuses. As we may notice, humor varies from country to country, from one community to another. The attitude towards humor is also different. For example, humor makes a big deal in Great Britain where it is aimed at releasing tension. But British sense of comedy is different with its set tendency for “spicy” irony, which can be mistaken for sarcasm in the USA, for instance. But those are general differences.
Linguistic niceties can also show themselves in humor. For example, German-language humor is constructed differently from the way it is in the English language (American and British humor). The key point is that the English language is objectively easier and more flexible as far as the construction of sentences is concerned. A great number of jokes are based on some exquisite word-play. It is not that easily applicable for German because of the complicated syntaxes with its compound collocations the German language is characterized by. That is why German humor primarily tends to express itself in some hilarious idea rather than in word-play.
Considering the things that cause communication breakdowns within or between language communities, I would place a sharp accent on the very attitude paid to those occasions by the members of the communities. As far as my own point of view is concerned, it is not only a linguistic mis-step itself that matters. What actually turns a mechanic mis-step into a considerable inter-communities’ cultural clash is the attitude paid thereto by the members of those communities. Figuring out the ways to help it, I deem it prudent to promote sturdy ground for international interaction and intercultural understanding. It is possible with the help of encouraging specific programs involving intercultural and versatile education. Personally I suppose this is the only way to improve the situation in its general features, while forecasting and preliminary eliminating any possibility of such mis-step is objectively impossible.
Misunderstanding is a phenomenon of communication that we are frequently involvement in our life. As we put our considerations and thoughts out into verbal messages, there would be dependably a plausibility to be seen contrastingly by others from what we really planned to convey. The reason could change from a speaker's mistake of expressing his/her considerations to an audience's mistake of disentangling the message and to the environment that contort the message. More often than not, we may not understand that we misconstrue one another. We understand misconception, however we may not enjoy or require some investment to amending it when it is not a major concern and does not influence further interactions. There could be adding so as to misconstruing that it is undoubtedly altered with just more clarifications or illuminations. A few mistaken assumptions might take days, months, or years to get unwound. Different mistaken assumptions might influence badly individual relations. Others impelled from individual comments might create international issues.
Despite the fact that linguistic clash is predominant and unavoidable in our everyday life, it has been particularly underlined in intercultural relations. It can be said that the investigations of intercultural relations began from and created misconception. Misunderstanding has been considered right around a side effect of internationalization or cooperation among individuals of various nations. Colossal commitments made by intercultural relations researchers ought to be recognized for their effective discoveries of conceivable reasons for misunderstanding that originated from social contrasts. Moreover, the accentuation on linguistic clash has driven a conviction that social distinction was a solitary incredible reason for bringing out misunderstanding. Additionally it carried a thought that individuals with various social foundations have a tendency to misperceive one another more frequently than ones with the same social foundation.
Now let us touch upon the issue of audience. We define the notion of audience as a definite ensemble of people assumed to be the potential spectators, listeners and viewers at a public event. It should be mentioned that this collection of people may not necessarily be composed on the basis of some common interests, tastes or professional similarity. As far as some professional kind of knowledge is concerned, it often happens to be rather difficult to find an appropriate level of displaying the material. For instance, almost every one of us is supposed to deal with some legal material, documentation, consignments and so on. Therefore, there exists an objective need of one’s having at least a slightest notion of law and capability of operating in its basic vocabulary. Notwithstanding the fact of such emphatic demand among wide audiences of average people, the material sources of law (which are legal acts themselves and other normative acts) are still so over-loaded with the sophisticated and tough vocabulary items, that it definitely produces a gap between average people and law, which is by its nature designated to ensure human rights. There are number of ways out in this situation. The first one is to straighten the educational burden in legal studies at educational institutions, to provide better academic acknowledgement of wide masses in legal areas. The second one is to start producing some special average-people targeted academic activity in form of thematic legal literature specifically elaborated for the wide masses, providing rather easy and transparent insight into the fundamental notions of law. From my own experience in this matter I can surely emphasize the need of such “simplification” of knowledge in the area of social law, which is concerned to all the social insurance and other welfare payments, on which a vast majority of people depend on financially.
Drawing a conclusion, it would be relevant to emphasize the importance of simplicity in making things easy and intellectually available to everyone. It is vitally important to keep in mind the differences that exists people of different backgrounds during the process of communication. Cultural diversity is the key element that leads to emergence of the linguistic clashes. People from different origins, of opposite social statuses, having different traditions and being brought up differently will hardly understand each other from the first sight. The communication process is rather difficult and requires special preparation, taking into consideration the differences mentioned above. Nevertheless, easiness and clarity is the most credible way to ensure understanding and agreement between different communities of people, whatever their cultural, historic or linguistic background is.
