A language’s gaps can encode cultural values the colonizers misread as rudeness

Evidence

Together we learn to count and to say pass the salt. Someone asks, “How do you say please pass the salt?” Our teacher, Justin Neely, a young man devoted to language revival, explains that while there are several words for thank you, there is no word for please. Food was meant to be shared, no added politeness needed; it was simply a cultural given that one was asking respectfully. The missionaries took this absence as further evidence of crude manners. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 186

Categorization

• XREF: The absence-of-‘please’ contrast parallels ch6/ch7’s gift-ethic: sharing is assumed good manners in a gift economy, so politeness needs no explicit word. — connects to: The slur Indian giver masks a genuine cross-cultural economic misunderstanding — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 103; Language can distort as well as transmit human culture; Racialization infantilizes the colonized and scars their language — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2498 (+2 more)
• SHARE: The observation that a shared-food culture needs no word for please, and that missionaries read this as rudeness, is a perfect point for a colleague working on moral panics over cultural difference.

Broader Connections

• Language can distort as well as transmit human culture #expands (0.72)
• Racialization infantilizes the colonized and scars their language #expands (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2498
• An ethnic name became a moral category encoded in language #exemplifies (0.70)
• Colonial moral epithets encoded specific class and racial transgressions #exemplifies (0.70)