Language can distort as well as transmit human culture

Evidence

A grammarian is not a kind of scientist studying the actual structure of language; he is a kind of butcher, converting it from organic tissue into marketable and edible joints. Language as it lives and grows no more consists of verbs, nouns, and so forth than animals as they live and grow consist of forehands, gammons, rump-steaks, and other joints. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 443 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

This is a particularly poignant case of cultural destruction because the Druidic decision not to write meant that destruction was operationally complete in a way that destruction of literate-culture institutions is not. When the Library of Alexandria burned, much was lost; some manuscripts survived, in copies, in other libraries. When Carthage was destroyed, Carthaginian literature largely vanished, but some material was preserved in Latin translation and citation. When the Druids were destroyed, there was no parallel preservation, because there were no manuscripts to begin with. The non-writing that the Druids had chosen, for cognitive-disciplinary reasons, meant that suppression was, in a uniquely thorough way, final. — , The Rod and the Child, 1479 (#expands, via linked claim)

The Cypriots responded with silence. The Egyptian took this as assent, or at worst ambivalence, and landed. Cypriot soldiers attacked the commandos, killing fifteen of them. — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, 365 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The union’s two colonial languages crippled government communication; Unwritten oral traditions can be destroyed more totally than literate cultures — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 1479; Cultural meanings are unstable and shift with the social field (+25 more)

Related

• Unwritten oral traditions can be destroyed more totally than literate cultures (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Descriptive grammarians distort living language by dissecting it into artificial parts. #exemplifies (0.50) — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 443
• Unwritten oral traditions can be destroyed more totally than literate cultures #expands (0.45) — , The Rod and the Child, 1479
• Misreading the cultural meaning of silence can cause fatal international incidents #exemplifies (0.40) — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, 365
• Cultural meanings are unstable and shift with the social field #corroborates (0.35)