.

This week I haven't been able to sleep much. Usually in the wee hours of the night (morning?)--and likely due to delirium--my mind races with conspiracy theories, What-Ifs, Holy Craps, and just plain Crap thoughts.

This thought falls into one of those categories...Likely the just plain Crap category, but it's interesting nonetheless.

There's so much discourse on American materialism, consumerism, and commercialism (m/c/c). There's similar discourse on British and growing Chinese m/c/c. But you don't hear much about French or Mexican m/c/c. After I Googled it, there are, in fact, entire books on consumption and culture. I flipped through the Google Book The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America [editors: Martin Daunton & Matthew Hilton] and found a passage on French and German consumerism. I even found bloggers comparing consumerism.

All this research (yes, there is more to which I have not linked) came from one late-night moment: Does a culture's language influence a predisposition to materialism? If the language has a gender-neutral pronoun--e.g.: "it"--does that give (or is it related to) an ability to objectify things by not giving them the human gender assignment of male or female?

For example: houses, cars, computers, shoes...these are all either male or female in Spanish [and French]. These cultures are not widely covered for their materialism. From my experience and studies, Hispanic cultures are centered around religion and family. Spanish dignifies objects with a male or female gender assignment...which somewhat links the objects to being human.

Chinese, English (American and British), and German all use the pronoun "it,"and all three languages have lots of research on their society's consumption. Maybe because these languages allow their respective speakers to objectify things--even things which HAVE genders, like pets and babies--maybe this lends a peek into how the speaker organizes his or her thoughts around the world; more specifically, maybe using the word it aids a culture in determining what can be bought or sold.

Maybe the pronoun it is a product of materialism. Maybe it set the stage for materialism. Maybe language and materialism are influenced by a third variable: culture (very likely); but that begs the question: Just because you live in America, and speak English, does that necessarily mean you are materialistic? Or just because you live in America, and are materialistic, does that necessarily mean you speak English? Maybe there IS a link between language and materialism. Maybe I'm nuts.

Quite far fetched, I know (well, not the my being nuts part. That's quite possible).
Egregious claim? Maybe so.

But Maybe not. :)