Effects of Cultural Influences Upon Awareness of Cluttering: Latin American Countries

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There is no word for it

From: Judy Kuster
Date: 16 Apr 2010
Time: 17:54:53 -0500
Remote Name: 113.76.238.230

Comments

I was very interested in your paper, and several times, the comment that "there are languages that do not have a word for cluttering" (including Spanish) kept going through my mind. It reminded me of Wendell Johnson's idea that stuttering didn't exist in some cultures because he believed there was no word for it in those cultures. Later, I believe it was discovered that there was in fact a word for stuttering in those cultures. A written or verbal description is sometimes inadequate for people to understand what one is really talking about. If the existence of cluttering was determined through a written or even verbal description of symptoms only, could that be a problem of determining if there is a word for "cluttering" in some languages? Was cluttering demonstrated in the language of the country by having someone pseudoclutter (like Joseph Dewey does on his paper attached to this conference) or was it simply described?


Last changed: 05/06/10