The feudal stiffening

Over the years in school, a lot of changes were coming into her innate personality. Most of them were of a kind that no one would notice. For example, there was a sharp stiffening of her features. Before going to school she had an extremely agile and sprightly body movement. She used to spring up and down as she moved around.

There was a slow but quite noticeable change from this to a stiffened stance. This was due to the stiffening that feudal languages bring into a person’s feature, by means of powerful strings of hierarchy. Even though she did not understand the language, inside the virtual space of Malayalam, there is a stiffness in which bodily movements are restricted. In other words, different languages create different levels of viscosity in their virtual spaces.

In languages like English, it is very slight and bodily movements quite free. In feudal languages, it is thick, and bodily movements are quite slow and fettered by strings of hierarchy and of ‘respect’ and ‘disrespect’. This effect can be very easily seen by comparing some British Prime Minister like Tony Blair with some typical Indian Prime Minister.