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Culture and Language

The Case of Cultural Dimensionsand Personal Pronoun Use

Swinburne University of Technology, ekashima{at}swin.edu.au

Yoshihisa Kashima

La Trobe University

The relationship between culture and language was examined across 39 languages spoken in 71 cultures. Correlations were computed across languages and cultures between the use of first- and second-person singular pronouns (e.g., "I" and "you") and global cultural dimensions such as Individualism, which were previously extracted in large-scale cross-cultural surveys. The personal pronouns were 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. Cultures with pronoun drop languages tended to be less Individualistic than those with nonpronoun drop languages. The number of personal pronouns correlated with some cultural dimensions that reflected different conceptions of the person. Personal deixis (person-indexing pronouns) may provide a window through which cultural practices can be investigated.

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 29, No. 3, 461-486 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/0022022198293005


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