If we keep on going out further, however, sooner or later we come to areas of conceptual space where single-word lexical items almost never suffice, and where each language has a quite different way of covering those zones. For instance, English has the phrase “it’s nothing to write home about” (meaning “what happened isn’t particularly thrilling or memorable”, and if someone were to ask (quite reasonably), “How does French cover that zone?”, the answer would be that it’s not by reference to hypothetical postcards or letters that were never written or sent to one’s family, but in a radically different fashion. The French get this same idea across by recourse to the colorful (although rather nebulous) phrase “ça ne casse pas trois pattes à un canard” (“it doesn’t break three legs of a duck”). In some sense, the French phrase and the English phrase mean just the same thing, but they nonetheless convey the meaning in very different ways, since the concrete images that might be conjured up in the minds of speakers or listeners involve extremely different scenarios.
These differences between idiomatic expressions can be of any size. For instance, the closest French counterpart of the idiom “to be flat on one’s back” (meaning “to be very sick”) is “être cloué au lit” (“to be nailed to one’s bed”), which conveys a similar but much more painful scenario. So we get discrepancies between different languages’ ways of filling up a conceptual space not only in the sense that the blobs in the same part of space are shaped differently, but also in the way in which idiomatic phrases get across their messages.
Eventually, if we move out far enough, genuine holes will start to turn up — patches in conceptual space that one language covers very neatly with a single blob, but that the other simply doesn’t cover with any standard word or phrase, no matter how voluminous is its repository of lexical items. A typical example was given in the Prologue, where we mentioned the lack in Mandarin of a generic verb meaning “to play” applicable to any musical instrument.
Thus, given any idiomatic phrase in English (and there are untold thousands of them), it makes reasonable sense to ask, “How does one say this in French?”, because fairly often there is a nearly-perfect counterpart phrase, but sometimes the answer is not what one wants to hear; indeed, sometimes the blunt truth is: “There is no standard way to say that in French.” Sometimes the answer is, in effect, “In the zone of conceptual space that is pinpointed and highlighted by that phrase in English, there is unfortunately a gaping hole in the French lexicon.” Of course the French language can always describe the idea, but in these kinds of cases it cannot do so by means of a standard lexical item known to all or most native speakers. We hasten to point out that exactly the same phenomenon of unexpected lacunœ is encountered also by French speakers seeking to say things in English.
And the farther out one moves from the center of the shared conceptual space, the more often one will encounter these kinds of regions that, although easily and naturally accessible in one language, are simply uncovered by another language. Eventually, each language, as it approaches its own outer reaches, offers only spotty coverage, growing ever spottier as one gets further out. If at this point you are envisioning something like a nebula or galaxy whose core is densely packed with stars but whose fringes are populated more sparsely, and which eventually tails off totally, yielding to the utter blackness of the cosmos, then you have in mind exactly the image that we wish to convey.
Eventually, then, every language simply gives out, and from a certain point onwards the conceptual space is simply empty, uninhabited. What does this imply? It implies that if someone wants to talk about things in that remote zone of conceptual space, they can’t just quote one standard building block, but instead must take a number of standard building blocks and string them together, thereby constructing a pathway that leads to the desired zone. In short, they must concoct new phrases or sentences. And if no single phrase or sentence will suffice, then a paragraph may be required. And if no single paragraph will suffice, then an article or a story may be required. In this fashion, arbitrarily remote spots in the black depths of conceptual space will be reachable by any language.
The Genius of Each Language
Here we are not primarily concerned with extremely remote, nearly empty areas of conceptual space. Instead, we wish to focus on little local pockets of conceptual space that are covered by one language’s lexicon while being uncovered by another’s. Are there any implications when some language hands to all of its speakers a ready recipe for picking out a small spot somewhere in conceptual space, while another language does not do so at all?
Let’s take an example. American English has the picturesque idiom, “That’s the tail wagging the dog!” Adult speakers of American English know what this means, which is to say, they readily recognize situations to which it applies and they can use it themselves in such cases, and they can also easily understand what is meant if someone else applies it to some situation.
In order to convey the meaning of this idiom, a speaker of American English cannot simply translate it word for word in the hopes that a French speaker will just “get it”, suddenly becoming enlightened. That strategy won’t work. One might try to get the concept across by giving an abstract description of the idea behind this idiom, and although doing so could be a good first step, it might be more helpful to provide a few quintessential examples of tail-wagging-the-dog situations, either by retrieving them from memory or by inventing new ones on the spot. Thus our imaginary American could recall or invent the story of seven-year-old Priscilla, a spoiled girl whose parents were eagerly planning a short vacation to New Orleans and were planning to take her along, but she didn’t want to go at all, so she threw such a violent temper tantrum that her folks totally dropped their plans and submissively stayed home. Hearing about this, friends of the family tsk-tsked and said, “That little enfant terrible has her parents wrapped around her little finger. Talk about the tail wagging the dog!”
In order to convey the idea that tail-wagging-the-dog situations are not limited to those in which spoiled children have temper tantrums and foil their parents’ vacation plans, our American could then recount the story of the grand new city hall that was being designed to beautify the central square of Waggington. After the first sketches had been submitted by the architect, the town council complained that there was no provision for parking. The idea was sent back to the architect, who responded with a new plan that included a parking area, but when this was submitted to the town council, it was again rejected because, they claimed, this time, that there wasn’t enough parking. After a couple more iterations of this, with the building growing smaller each time and the parking lot coming to dominate the entire design, one outraged citizen wrote a letter to the local paper that said, “So the need to park a bunch of cars is dictating the appearance of our new city hall? Well, if that ain’t the tail waggin’ the dog!”
As a brief third example, let’s mention the story of a runner who had to stop running each day when his kneecap started to hurt. Thus his kneecap dictated to him how many miles he would run. Another excellent case of the tail wagging the dog!
After a few such stories, the gist of tail-wagging-the-dog-ness would hopefully have been gotten across pretty effectively; from there on out, the French speaker would hopefully be able to use the American idiom appropriately, although at the outset there might be some need for fine-tuning to clarify where the idiom is eminently applicable and where it is less so, though of course the borderlines are blurry, so that native speakers won’t always agree. The French speaker might even start, at about this stage of the game, to feel a frustrating sense of French’s “vacuum” in this part of conceptual space, not unlike the slight sense of vacuum created by the lack of a familiar phrase corresponding to English’s “sour grapes”.
Here, we would like to even up the score by giving English speakers the chance to experience the just-described feeling of vacuum, and to do so we will cite a typical French idiomatic phrase, often attribute
d to the philosopher Denis Diderot, that has no good English counterpart (and of course this one isn’t unique; there are hundreds of others) — namely, “avoir l’esprit d’escalier”. What does this mean? Well, translated literally (in the manner of Jean-Loup Chiflet’s books), it means “to have the spirit of staircase”, but as an idiom it basically means “to come up with the ideal retort to an annoying remark right after one has left the party and is heading down the stairs”. In other words, to put it a bit more pithily, “to have staircase wit”. Although it is a frustrating thing to find the perfect parry only when it no longer counts, it is also a fairly widespread phenomenon in life, and so you would think that the famously rich English language would offer its speakers a stock expression that gets efficiently at this notion, but no. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
This contrast between language A, which has a blob where language B has none, is what we mean by the phrase “the genius of language A”; it is the special ability of language A to get at certain concepts that no other language gets at as easily — and complementarily, it is also the set of weaknesses that language A has in expressing certain things that, in some other languages, are as easy as falling off a log. Perhaps a language’s unique set of frailties doesn’t merit the positive-sounding word “genius”. The phrase “lexical coverage” might be a bit more accurate, but in its staid neutrality it fails to suggest the special flavor of the idiosyncratic subtleties and the evolutionary potential of each different language.
Out near its fringes, each language has its own unique set of little blobs that fill up certain small zones of conceptual space that are covered by no other language. When Language A features a blob that elegantly fits into an area that was previously uninhabited, then speakers of Language B may want to follow suit and fill in the same zone, either by coming up with a brand-new phrase or by literally borrowing Language A’s appealing phrase (oftentimes, however, unintentionally changing the boundaries of applicability of the phrase, so that in Language B it no longer means exactly what it did in Language A).
Thus we English speakers occasionally have déjà vu experiences that give us a frisson, we try to avoid faux pas (they make us feel so gauche), we indulge in hors d’œuvres, soupe du jour, apple pie à la mode, and even sorbet, and once in a while we wear décolletés (as long as they’re not too risqué), we sometimes take in avant-garde films, read an article about coups d’état caused by fin-de-siècle decadence while en route to a secret rendezvous whose raison d’être is to engage in a tête-à-tête, enjoy ogling a femme fatale who’s petite but very chic and all decked out in haute couture duds, we always seek the mot juste par excellence, have an idée fixe of one day having carte blanche to hobnob with the crème de la crème, and of course if we are nouveaux riches, we seek out objets d’art (not likely to be made of papier mâché) to decorate our pied-à-terre while indulging ourselves in dernier cri technology. Ooh la la!
The French, meanwhile, leave their break (station wagon) in the parking (the parking lot), in order to go play foot and flipper (soccer and pinball), listen to jazz and rock on their hi-fi, place their rosbif and pop-corn in their caddie (shopping cart), and later that day they go to their dressing (clothes closet) in order to find a smoking, a pull, and a pair of baskets (a tuxedo, a sweater, and tennis shoes) to wear to a rallye (a high-society surprise-party), and last but not least, they read magazines about le marketing in order to be smart and they use shampooing in order to have a look that is very sexy in order to get a job very cool.
As is clear, some of these words have retained their original meanings, while others have somewhat drifted from their moorings. Indeed, we should keep in mind that these terms have been imported precisely in order to fill a gap in the receiving language. The new word fills the lacuna, even if the shape that it takes on may not exactly match the shape covered by the original blob in the source language. For instance, when speaking of “a hamburger”, English speakers do not necessarily envision the ground beef as being found inside a bun (though of course it is a strong possibility), whereas for French speakers, the bun is an integral and necessary part of the concept (indeed, the bun even has to be circular!). What was missing in the French language was a phrase to denote ground beef between slices of bread, rather than a phrase to denote that kind of meat alone, since the expression “steak haché” (which already had an English flavor to it) was already available.
Moreover, unless a borrowed word or phrase has been so deeply integrated that its origin has been totally forgotten, it will generally exude a tone that conjures up something of the other culture, or at least a stereotyped vision of the other culture, and in itself that already means that a bit of drift has taken place. For instance, in English, the term “pied-à-terre” has a somewhat fancy or rich connotation to it, while in French that need not be part of the image at all.
Amusingly, some borrowings are the result of a series of cross-Channel bounces, where, for instance, old French becomes English and then bounces back home to become new French, or vice versa. An example is provided by the French word “budget”, which of course is a wholesale import from English, but the last laugh is on the anglophones, for it was they who, many centuries ago, acquired the word “budget” by importing (and distorting) the French word “bougette”, meaning a small purse worn on one’s belt. Another example with a similar story is the French word “étiquette” (meaning “label”) which, in crossing the Channel, lost its first syllable and thus became “ticket”, after which, decked out in its new guise and sporting a new meaning, it returned home, where it became a close cousin and occasional rival of the word “billet”. Interestingly enough, there are dozens of such ricochet stories.
The upshot of such cross-cultural, interlingual borrowing processes is to enlarge both “galaxies” in conceptual space, adding blobs at various spots on their fringes, pushing them ever further outwards.
The Sapir–Whorf Effect
There are cases where one language pleasingly fills in some small zone, yet for some reason others do not follow suit. In such cases, it can be argued, speakers of that language benefit from the extra concept thus provided for free by their language. Let’s take an example from American culture. There is an ancient disreputable business practice related to the timeless con game played with three shells on a table, in which an unsuspecting customer is lured by an attractive offer but then is told that that particular item is unfortunately out of stock or slightly outmoded, or that for some reason they are not eligible to buy it; then, in its place, another item, far more expensive, is aggressively pushed on the customer.
Variations on this theme are legion. For instance, a family seeking to buy a car is shown a model that they gush over. The wily dealer, quickly picking up on their strong interest, initially tells them that their down payment will be just $2,000. Delighted, the family eagerly says they want to buy, but then, when it comes to signing the contract, they are told that for some technical reason that they don’t fully understand, the amount will “unfortunately” have to be “just a little bit higher” — and sooner than they can count to three, it has slid from $2,000 all the way up to $6,000.
People who rent cars will also be familiar with very tempting offers that give the impression that one can rent a car for a nominal sum, but when one shows up at the agency, one invariably discovers that the conditions for such a rate are very restrictive, and so in the end one winds up paying at least twice the rate quoted in the ad.
Such disreputable techniques, which often work like a charm, bear the evocative name, as our readers surely know, of “bait-and-switch”. The category is broader than might be supposed. For instance, here is a case that in some ways is the flip side of the coin, yet it too counts as an excellent member. During a financial slump, an elegant old house has been on the market for some months with no takers, but one day, buyer A shows up and offers $1,000,000 for it. Shortly thereafter, by coincidence, Buyer B arrives and ups the ante to $1,050,000. The seller
is ready to let B have it for the higher offer, but then along comes buyer C, who raises the stakes all the way to $1,200,000. On hearing this, both A and B immediately drop out of the bidding and out of sight, angry to have been displaced after weeks of negotiation. And now, buyer C, having gotten rid of the competition, is much freer to maneuver than before. After having some inspections made, C suddenly declares, “Oh, what a shame — I can’t stick to my previous offer, because the inspectors found some serious problems; nonetheless, I’m willing to offer $900,000.” At this point, the seller has lost much precious time and is growing desperate, so the house winds up going to buyer C, but for far less than it is actually worth. This is a classic bait-and-switch maneuver, despite the fact that this time the actor doing the bait-and-switch was not the seller but a buyer.
The fact that this term exists in English and is daily used by thousands of people means that the idea in great generality (for instance, including the “flipped” case we just gave) is readily accessible and immediately understandable. At first, the existence of this term may not seem of much consequence, since anyone can understand the idea if told a couple of stories of this sort, but in fact the term’s existence can help the concept to spread quickly and it also lends a sense of legitimacy to the concept (approaching a sense of total objectivity), since so many people know it. For instance, the existence of the concept and its standard name may well catalyze the writing of laws that seek to squelch the many-headed hydra of this phenomenon. By contrast, a culture in which there is no standard name for this disreputable technique will be less likely to enact laws that prevent it, because the notion is not “in the air”; it’s not a recognized regularity in the world that most people are explicitly aware of, even in its more common forms, let alone in its more exotic variants.
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