The Influence of Rice Agriculture on East Asian Culture and Language

Abstract

Studies have long confirmed the existence of psychological differences between people in the East and those in the West. They have found that East Asians are more interdependent and think in terms of the group; Westerners adopt more individualistic, analytical thinking. Recent studies of rice farming have shown that large-scale agriculture is largely responsible for the collectivist mindset of East Asians. Rice farming alone, however, was not sufficient to mould cooperative, holistic thinking. Rice farming influenced festivals, customs, proverbs and the overall structure of language, all of which would have led Asians to develop an interdependent cultural psychology. This article presents an analytical study that scrutinises Eastern customs and languages, comparing them to those of Western cultures. Generally, the following comparative analysis pertains mostly to widely spoken languages from populated and prospering sectors, such as the Chinese, Korean and Japanese in East Asia, and the English, Spanish and French in Western regions. It is argued that rice farming is correlated not only with festivals, but also with proverbs, particular ways of answering questions, weather-related expressions and overall language structures, including pronouns and articles. This study further posits that a culture of respecting elders may be attributable to rice agriculture.