Yes, my Japanese teacher was very insistent about it, and IIRC would even take points off for talking about someones mental state with out the proper qualifiers.
This is good to know, and makes me wonder whether there’s a way to encourage this kind of thinking in other populations. My only thought so far has been “get yourself involved with the production of the most widely-used primary school language textbooks in your area.”
It’s not necessarily an advantageous habit. If a person tells you they like ice cream, and you’ve seen them eating ice cream regularly with every sign of enjoyment, you have as much evidence that they like ice cream as you have about countless other things that nobody bothers hanging qualifiers on even in Japanese. The sciences are full of things we can’t experience directly but can still establish with high confidence.
Rather than teaching people to privilege other people’s mental states as an unknowable quality, I think it makes more sense to encourage people to be aware of their degrees of certainty.
Rather than teaching people to privilege other people’s mental states as an unknowable quality, I think it makes more sense to encourage people to be aware of their degrees of certainty.
Increased awareness of degrees of certainty is more or less what I was thinking of encouraging. It hadn’t occurred to me to look for a deeper motive and try to address it directly. This was helpful, thank you.
You can look at this way of thinking as a social convention. Japanese people often care about signaling respect with language. Someone who direct speaks about the mental state of another can be seen as presumtious.
High status people in any social circle can influence it’s social customs. If people get put down for guessing other other’s mental states wrong without using qualifiers they are likely to use qualifiers the next time.
If you actually want to do this, E-Prime is an interesting. E-Prime calls for tabooing to be.
I meet a few people in NLP circles that valued to communicate in E-Prime.
Interesting; is this true?
Yes, my Japanese teacher was very insistent about it, and IIRC would even take points off for talking about someones mental state with out the proper qualifiers.
I think you’re missing a word here :P
Fixed.
This is good to know, and makes me wonder whether there’s a way to encourage this kind of thinking in other populations. My only thought so far has been “get yourself involved with the production of the most widely-used primary school language textbooks in your area.”
Thoughts?
It’s not necessarily an advantageous habit. If a person tells you they like ice cream, and you’ve seen them eating ice cream regularly with every sign of enjoyment, you have as much evidence that they like ice cream as you have about countless other things that nobody bothers hanging qualifiers on even in Japanese. The sciences are full of things we can’t experience directly but can still establish with high confidence.
Rather than teaching people to privilege other people’s mental states as an unknowable quality, I think it makes more sense to encourage people to be aware of their degrees of certainty.
Increased awareness of degrees of certainty is more or less what I was thinking of encouraging. It hadn’t occurred to me to look for a deeper motive and try to address it directly. This was helpful, thank you.
You can look at this way of thinking as a social convention. Japanese people often care about signaling respect with language. Someone who direct speaks about the mental state of another can be seen as presumtious.
High status people in any social circle can influence it’s social customs. If people get put down for guessing other other’s mental states wrong without using qualifiers they are likely to use qualifiers the next time.
If you actually want to do this, E-Prime is an interesting. E-Prime calls for tabooing to be.
I meet a few people in NLP circles that valued to communicate in E-Prime.