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Introduction

This resource document offers you some perspectives on how language and culture influence how we think, feel and ACT and therefore how we MOVE in the world.

The document contains pieces of information that emphasise the importance of ‘words’ and the meaning and translation of words. When words are translated from one language to another, they sometime change their form and their energy. Words are ‘energetic’, they lead to vibrations that each of us experiences in our own unique way. (LAO TSU)

Before engaging with the Resource Document, we suggest that you sit quietly for a moment and become AWARE. Notice where your curiosity draws you... and DIVE in!

We now provide information on each of the items in the resource document.

We hope you will find them helpful.

Language and Culture

Ted Talk: ‘How Language Shapes the Way We Think’ by Lera Boroditsky

This book is about the alphabetization of Western culture and how this move into the dominant use of abstract, written letters as a primary means of communication has removed many languages, and consequently also cultures, from our shared embodied experience as well as from our more-than-human surroundings. We must therefore take up the task to make language speak to our senses again and to ‘write language back into the land’. 

From some of the last paragraphs of the book: 

“THE PRECEDING PAGES HAVE CALLED attention to some unnoticed and unfortunate side-effects of the alphabet - effects that have structured much of the way we now perceive. Yet it would be a perilous mistake for any reader to conclude from these pages that he or she should simply relinquish the written word. Indeed, the story sketched out herein suggests that the written word carries a pivotal magic - the same magic that once sparkled for us in the eyes of an owl and the glide of an otter.

For those of us who care for an earth not encompassed by machines, a world of textures, tastes, and sounds other than those that we have engineered, there can be no question of simply abandoning literacy, of turning away from all writing. Our task, rather, is that of taking up the written word, with all of its potency, and patiently, carefully, writing language back into the land. Our craft is that of releasing the budded, earthly intelligence of our words, freeing them to respond to the speech of the things themselves- to the green uttering-forth of leaves from the spring branches. It is the practice of spinning stories that have the rhythm and lilt of the local sound-scape, tales for the tongue, tales that want to be told, again and again, sliding off the digital screen and slipping off the lettered page to inhabit these coastal forests, those desert canyons, those whispering grasslands and valleys and swamps. Finding phrases that place us in contact with the trembling neck-muscles of a deer holding its antlers high as it swims toward the mainland, or with the ant dragging a scavenged rice-grain through the grasses. Planting words, like seeds, under rocks and fallen logs – letting language take root, once again, in the earthen silence of shadow and bone and leaf.”


Ivan Illich: ‘Peace vs. Development‘

(Read here) 

Paragraph 7: "war tends to make cultures alike whereas peace is that condition under which each culture flowers in its own incomparable way." 

This article is about how ‘peace’ is a word that carries different meanings, associations, feelings, and sensations within different cultures and languages. There is consequently not a ‘One Universal Peace’, but a myriad of ways of understanding and living peace. We must therefore question a violent exportation of a, usually European/Western, ‘One Truth’ to what peace can and cannot be. 

Paragraph 2: “it seems that each people's peace is as distinct as each people's poetry. Hence, the translation of peace is a task as arduous as the translation of poetry.”

Article: ‘Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion on the Dance Floor. Embodying Self-Reflexivity as Mindful Dance and Movement Teachers’ in Research in Dance Education. By Hanne Tjersland and Tamara Borovica. 

(Read here)

This article is an embodied invitation to think through our individual and shared identities, cultural blind-spots, and (un)conscious ways of thinking as conscious movement teachers related to how these different dynamics shape how we manage (or do not manage) to authentically include different groups of people in our movement classes and workshops. It is therefore an invitation to reflect, to deeper understand, and to move with whatever might come up.

Page 4, paragraph 2: “We anchor this exploration through our personal ‘inner’ landscape of identities yet bring attention to how it is at the same time ‘outer’ through the ways we embody these identities. Furthermore, we reflect upon how this embodiment of identities influences us as dance and movement teachers and how we are in turn influenced by the embodiment of identities of a larger teaching field. (…) We hope that this simultaneous ‘inner’ and ‘outer’, as well as individual and collective, self-reflective exploration can provide transformative insights in regards to creating more authentic possibilities for diversity and inclusion within mindful dance and movement practices.”

A slightly edited abstract from the forthcoming doctoral dissertation by Hanne Tjersland: “Unfolding Embodied Peaces through Dance and Movement. Open Floor Conscious Dance and Movement Practice as a Transrational Resource for Peace.”

This abstract has been lightly edited for this resource document to provide an example for how words can change their meanings and associations when translated between languages (Norwegian and English in this example) without you having to read the whole context of the dissertation where the abstract if from in order to understand it. The original (and full) formulation of the text can be found in chapter 4.6.4 of the above-mentioned doctoral dissertation. 

From chapter 4.6.4: “The Norwegian word ‘trygg(het)’ directly translates ‘safe(ty)’. Vitally however, ‘trygg(het)’ carries a slightly wider connotation and use as compared to the English word ‘safe(ty)’ alone. It also more explicitly connects to an ‘inner’ sense of (empowered) solidity, (self)anchoring, comfort (with oneself and/or others/life), authentic trust and (self)confidence, in addition to the more ‘common’ English connotation of a physical and/or emotional presence of relational/situational safety. ‘Trygg(het)’ can thus encompass both the English word ‘safe(ty)’ and the English word ‘(self)secure’ yet can also move beyond both ‘safe’ and ‘secure’ to be used in instances where I would in English often use other words instead, including ‘trust/trusting’, ‘(self)confident’, ‘(self)anchored’, ‘solid’, ‘comfortable’, and more. As an example, I can in Norwegian say that ‘jeg kjenner meg/er trygg på meg selv’ (literally translated: ‘I feel/am safe on myself’) to express an authentic experience of self-trust, while I can, in a similar vein, say that ‘jeg kjenner meg/er trygg på andre/livet’ (literally translated: ‘I feel/am safe on others/life’) to express an authentic experience of trust/confidence/comfort with and towards others/life.
(…) 
This is not to say that the English words ‘safe(ty)’ and/or ‘(self)secure’ cannot carry a similar both ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ connotation, yet the difference lies in how explicitly, directly, and almost unavoidably clear that the Norwegian word(s) ‘trygg(het)’ connects me to it.”

Book: 'Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times' by Jonathan Sacks

Quoted information from the book:
Page 273: ‘The best metaphor through which to understand the way in which different cultures see the moral life in different ways is language. The world has many languages – an estimated six thousand – and they have certain features in common, reflecting what has been called a depth grammar, that shapes and is shaped by the human brain, specifically what Steven Pinker, one of the participants in my BBC series on morality, calls the language instinct. But languages, or better, families of languages, are also different and lead us to experience and understand the world in different ways. You will encounter reality differently if you were brought up speaking Mandarin than if you grew up speaking New York American English...’

‘Americans look to resolve conflicts by universal principles of justice. The Chinese prefer mediation by middleman, whose goal is not fairness but the reduction of animosity and the mending of relationship. A famous American reading primer begins, ‘See Dick run. See Dick play. See Dick run and play’. The corresponding Chinese primer reads, ‘Big brother takes care of little brother. Big brother loves little brother. Little brother loves big brother’. Westerners tend to think in terms of either/or, Chinese in terms of both/and: yin and yang, feminine and masculine, passive and active, interpenetrating forces that complete one another’.

Something similar was argued by Carol Gilligan in her ‘In a Different Voice’. Her thesis was that men and women used distinctive styles of moral reasoning. Men found their identity by separation, women by attachment. Men were more likely to feel threatened by intimacy, women by isolation…

Book: 'Braiding SweetGrass' by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Interesting sections from the book:

Page 54: ’I remember paging through the Ojibwe dictionary she sent, trying to decipher the tiles, but the spelling didn’t always match and the print was too small and there are way too many variations on a single word and I was feeling that this was just way too hard…Pages blurred and my eyes settled on a word – a verb, of course: ‘to be a Saturday’. Pfft! I threw down the book. Since when is Saturday a verb? Everyone know it is a noun. I grabbed the dictionary and flipped more pages and all kinds of things seemed to be verbs, ‘to be a hill’, ‘to be red’, to be a long sandy stretch of beach’ and then my finger rested on wiikwegamaa: ‘to be a bay’. Ridiculous! I ranted in my head…

…And then I swear I heard the zap of synapses firing. An electric current sizzled down my arm and through my fingers, and practically scorched the page where that one word lay. In that moment I could smell the water of the bay, watch it rock against the shore and hear it sift onto the sand. A bay is a noun only if water is DEAD. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the word wiikwegamaa – to BE a bay – released the water from bondage and lets it live. ‘To be a bay’ holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shored, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers’.

Working on Common Cross-cultural Communication Challenges by Marcelle E. DuPraw and Marya Axner
(Read here)

Tao Te Ching. Examples of English translations of Chapter 28.

Below are 4 translations into English of Chapter 28, but they are all uniquely different. Different words, different worlds and different challenges. What do you notice and how do they affect you? Compare them with translations in your own language.

Tao Te Ching From: (https://tao-in-you.com/lao-tzu-tao-te-ching-chapter-28/)

J H McDonald

Know the masculine,
but keep to the feminine:
and become a watershed to the world.
If you embrace the world,
the Tao will never leave you
and you become as a little child.

Know the white,
yet keep to the black:
be a model for the world.
If you are a model for the world,
the Tao inside you will strengthen
and you will return whole to your eternal beginning.

Know the honorable,
but do not shun the disgraced:
embracing the world as it is.
If you embrace the world with compassion,
then your virtue will return you to the uncarved block.

The block of wood is carved into utensils
by carving void into the wood.
The Master uses the utensils, yet prefers to keep to the block
because of its limitless possibilities.
Great works do not involve discarding substance.


Lin Yutang

He who is aware of the Male
But keeps to the Female
Becomes the ravine of the world.
Being the ravine of the world,
He has the original character (teh) which is not cut up.
And returns again to the (innocence of the) babe.

He who is conscious of the white (bright)
But keeps to the black (dark)
Becomes the model for the world.
Being the model for the world,
He has the eternal power which never errs,
And returns again to the Primordial Nothingness.

He who is familiar with honor and glory
But keeps to obscurity
Becomes the valley of the world.
Being the valley of the world,
He has an eternal power which always suffices,
And returns again to the natural integrity of uncarved wood.

Break up this uncarved wood
And it is shaped into vessel
In the hands of the Sage
They become the officials and magistrates.
Therefore the great ruler does not cut up.

J Legge

Who knows his manhood’s strength,
Yet still his female feebleness maintains;
As to one channel flow the many drains,
All come to him, yea, all beneath the sky.
Thus he the constant excellence retains;
The simple child again, free from all stains.

Who knows how white attracts,
Yet always keeps himself within black’s shade,
The pattern of humility displayed,
Displayed in view of all beneath the sky;
He in the unchanging excellence arrayed,
Endless return to man’s first state has made.

Who knows how glory shines,
Yet loves disgrace, nor e’er for it is pale;
Behold his presence in a spacious vale,
To which men come from all beneath the sky.
The unchanging excellence completes its tale;
The simple infant man in him we hail.

The unwrought material, when divided and distributed, forms vessels. The sage, when employed, becomes the Head of all the Officers (of government); and in his greatest regulations he employs no violent measures.


Stephen Mitchell 

Know the male,
yet keep to the female:
receive the world in your arms.
If you receive the world,
the Tao will never leave you
and you will be like a little child.

Know the white,
yet keep to the black:
be a pattern for the world.
If you are a pattern for the world,
the Tao will be strong inside you
and there will be nothing you can’t do.

Know the personal,
yet keep to the impersonal:
accept the world as it is.
If you accept the world,
the Tao will be luminous inside you
and you will return to your primal self.

The world is formed from the void,
like utensils from a block of wood.
The Master knows the utensils,
yet keeps to the block:
thus she can use all things.

Finally

We hope you will find the resources and examples presented here helpful as a way of engaging with our individual self, with others, with our communities and with our wider spheres of soul and spirit through an awareness of LANGUAGE and CULTURE.