The value of carrots

In recent weeks my students have been learning about the concept of linguistic value (from Ferdinand de Saussure). The differences in value between terms in different languages can have very humorous effects, as I have found on numerous occasions.

I’m currently in the Netherlands on a family visit. Last night we had dinner with my husband’s old school friends, and one of them was telling me (in English) about some dental treatment he had had recently, including some ‘carrot treatment’.

Carrot treatment?

Image from here.

The English word ‘carrot’ is translated by the Dutch word ‘wortel'. But ‘wortel' also means ‘root’ more generally. I found that out a while ago when I was reading a news report or something that mentioned trees being ‘ontworteld’ in a storm. Recognising ‘wortel’ from ‘carrot’ (the first of its meanings that I learnt), I thought ‘upcarroted’? But my husband explained that ‘wortel’ means both ‘root’ generally and ‘carrot’ specifically. The trees were actually ‘uprooted’, then.

So it turned out my husband’s friend had had root canal therapy. In Dutch, as in English, the word for ‘root’ also refers to the roots of teeth, not just plants. It is also used in mathematics (square root, etc) and to refer to the background of something ('my roots are in Scotland'), as in English .

I drew a diagram representing the difference in ‘value’ between the terms in the two languages.

The large rectangle represents semantic space. In Dutch, ‘wortel’ takes up the same semantic space that in English is occupied by two terms, ‘root’ and ‘carrot’. Thus the term ‘wortel’ doesn’t have the same value in Dutch as either ‘root’ or ‘carrot’ in English, although we can say they occupy some of the same semantic space.

Different values, stylistically speaking

The other night I did something I hadn’t done before – I watched an episode of ‘So you think you can dance Australia’. I know nothing about dance and can’t really do it myself, but, I bet like other non-dancers who watch it, I sort of catch the dancing vibe and feel like doing little jigs in the living room after getting caught up in it. It’s quite refreshing how generally encouraging the judges are (although still encouraging an unhealthy self-absorption), compared to other programs that run on a similar model.

There was a guy on there who was older than most of the other contestants – 31 I think – who had been out of the dancing scene for a while. He was criticised for using moves that were outdated. The moves that he imagined would be appropriate to use in a dancing audition and give him a chance of getting through to the next round were not valued as highly by the judges. His repertoire of dance moves was fairly restricted so these particular moves held a different value for him than for the judges, who had been continually exposed to new moves and combinations of moves in all kinds of different dance genres. The moves he used in his audition were identified by the judges as moves you learn as part of training in a particular genre and then move beyond as you continue to train and learn more complex moves. They were expecting dancing at a level of sophistication and development that he didn’t produce because he didn’t understand what the judges would value in a routine.

A similar lesson is going to be one of the central concepts I’ll be teaching my students this semester in the ‘effective written communication’ course. Most of us use a range of styles and genres and language in the course of our lives, and each of these styles may be valued in its appropriate context. Academic writing is a particular kind of written communication that is unlike everyday communication in a number of ways. One of the most important ways is the value it holds in the academic context. In order to ‘impress the judges’ in an academic context, you need to know what patterns of language use are highly valued in the context and how to use them appropriately. Like dancing, it takes reflection, training from those who have mastered it, and practice.