Is it possible for a thing or an action or somesuch to be so ubiquitous in a culture that there is no need to talk about it whatsoever even though people are aware of its existence - in fact to the extent that people never refer to it as such? That whenever it in a way is under discussion, the discussion is phrased in a way where no actual direct reference is needed - not because the thing is taboo or anything, just because it is so goddamn ubiquitous that you never really need to state that it's somehow involved.
I imagine an alien observer could spot that kind of thing in Anglo-Saxon culture, but I also bet some sociolinguists might recognize that such phenomena might exist in cultures - there may be things we do not have words for that Australian Aborigines do, even if the phenomenon exists in both cultures - only, it'd be so much prevalent and ubiquitous here that we don't need to be able to refer to it.
[Edited for slight improvement / 10.3.2015]
I think this would have to be something intrinsic to human consciousness. Here's a new verb: *!7sq#--syncing up the cognitive output of your left and right hemispheres. For an alien with ganglia that act semi-independently of the brain, this kind of thing might require conscious effort.
ReplyDelete