Can Hierarchical Languages Affect Airline Safety?
Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, has written a new book asserting that hierarchical languages can indeed greatly affect airline safety. This and other interesting topics are covered in his new book Outliers. I caught an interview with Malcom on CNN, in which he made this assertion. He explained that English is an example of a non-hierarchical language, whereas Korean is an example of a hierarchical language. The way I understood it, in a hierarchical language, one example might be that instead of having one word for “you,” there might be several, depending upon whether the person being spoken to was a boss or a maid, a man or a woman, a parent or a child.
