Reference no: EM13517570

According to Emiko S. Kashima and Yoshihisa Kashima (1998), personal pronouns may provide a window through which cultural practices can be investigated. They examine the relationship between culture and language across 39 languages spoken in 71 cultures. More specifically, they compute correlations between the use of the first- and second-person singular pronouns (e.g., “I” and “you”) and G. Hofstede’s global cultural dimensions. The personal pronouns are analyzed in terms of the number of first- and second-person singular pronouns and whether the pronouns can be dropped when used as the subject of a sentence in speech. Can you guess some dimensions that characterize cultures with the pronoun drop and with a higher number of personal pronouns? To give you a hint, the article focuses on the use of the pronouns as they map onto the self-other relationship, a basic unit of social process. To give you another hint, the authors believe that speakers of a pronoun drop language face a constant choice between mentioning and not mentioning the subject of the sentence, which adds decisional stress to interaction. What difficulties can arise in interaction between speakers from cultures with different pronoun usage?