A relational language with no bare ‘I’ pronoun shapes personal identity.

Evidence

Traditional Vietnamese law rested not upon the notion of individual rights, but the notion of duties—the duty of the sovereign to his people, the father to his son, and vice versa. Similarly, the Confucian texts defined no general principles but the proper relationship of man to man. Equal justice was secondary to social harmony. This particular form of social contract gave the individual a very different sense of himself, of his own personality. In the Vietnamese language there is no word that exactly corresponds to the Western personal pronoun I, je, ich. When a man speaks of himself, he calls himself ”your brother,” ”your nephew,” ”your teacher,” depending upon his relationship to the person he addresses. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 729

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s theme of the relational, situated self of postmodernity replacing the abstract universal modern subject. — connects to: Personal identity depends on language’s temporal unification of past, present, and future — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 98; Identity is constituted through relation to what is other and different from itself — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 378; Identity is constructed through discourse and dialogic interaction, not self-creation — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 23 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Identity is constituted through relation to what is other and different from itself #corroborates (0.78) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 378
• Individual identity forms dialogically through a constitutive outside, not autonomously. #corroborates (0.78) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 363
• Identity is constructed through discourse and dialogic interaction, not self-creation #corroborates (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 23
• Every identity is constituted relationally through what it excludes #corroborates (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 371
• Personal identity depends on language’s temporal unification of past, present, and future #expands (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 98
• Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other #corroborates (0.72)
• Identity is a contradictory, multi-discursive, non-closed totality #qualifies (0.70)