Piller’s “Language and Culture” reading brings into conversation the relationship between language and culture, and extending it into the context of colonialism. Piller explains that there is a relative relationship between language and culture, not a direct one. For example, within the English language, there are hundreds of cultures– for the British, for the Irish, for Australians, Americans, and minority cultures within many of these countries. Although this is a relatively obvious point, I found it interesting to consider the ways that language morphs and changes based on the people using it. In many of my other classes, namely US Empire in Asia and the Pacific and Indigenous Homelands, English is mainly viewed as a colonizing language that minority groups must assimilate to using in order to operate in white America. Piller’s point almost suggests a reclamation of English as our own for those whose ancestors or themselves have been socially coerced into learning English, often at the cost of their native tongue.
I also thought Piller’s point in how language impacted colonialism was very interesting. She writes that language impacts how people view family networks, particularly in the terms used to describe a kinship network. Piller writes that Australian Aboriginal peoples use familial terms that do not inherently distinguish between immediate and extended family; additionally, Piller writes that for Aboriginals, kinship is tied very closely to the land, and accordingly so are the titles. She explains that for the colonizing Europeans, “they were incapable of conceiving of Aboriginal family relationships as valid, healthy and nurturing” because of the lack of distinguished relations in familial labels. (6) In my North American Indigenous Homelands class, we have discussed similarly how the large majority of European colonizers were so entrenched in the rigid Christian ideas surrounding family and governing networks that it prevented them from understanding those of the Indigenous. This often angers me to think about, as many Indigenous concepts of family and governance were far more egalitarian, particularly in terms of gender and wealth. I do not know much about the colonization and genocide of Australian Aboriginals, but I do know that they experienced very similar practices of colonial ethnic cleansing. I liked how Piller tied in the importance of culture and language in this example and would be curious to read more about her theories.
