Language as a conceptual system

Continued – Unfortunately I could not continue with my blog because of a problem which seems curiously not to be culture but gender specific:  stalking.

The Legal Encyclopaedia defines ‘stalking’ as follows: Criminal activity consisting of the repeated following and harassing of another person. Stalking is a distinctive form of criminal activity composed of a series of actions that taken individually might constitute legal behaviour. For example, sending flowers, writing love notes, and waiting for someone outside her place of work are actions that, on their own, are not criminal. When these actions are coupled with an intent to instil fear or injury, however, they may constitute a pattern of behaviour that is illegal. Though anti-stalking laws are gender neutral, most stalkers are men and most victims are women. http://www.answers.com/stalking&r=67 

A colleague is involved in domestic violence related work and she asked me whether there is a word for ‘stalking’ in Turkish.  There does not seem be such a word in Turkish.

Ironically the 2005 edition of the Turkish-English-Turkish Redhouse dictionary defines ‘stalk’ as:

Stalk i.  (bitkiye ait) sap

Stalk f.  1. sezdirmeden (ava) yakla?mak.  2. uzun ad?mlarla yürümek.  4. uzun bacakl? su ku?u gibi yürümek. 

Especially the last item makes it look like a joke:  walking like a water bird with long legs! 

There are laws against stalking in the United Kingdom.  Go to http://secure.nss.org.uk/3933/home.html for more information. Here is their advice if you are a victim:  Keep a record of every suspicious event that occurs or every unsolicited article that you may receive. In particular note the date, time, when, where and what occurred, or what was received. To enable this record to be used as evidence at any later Court hearing, you must ensure that it is recorded contemporaneously. i.e. write it down immediately while it is still fresh in your mind. Always keep every note you make. Contact the police and notify them of what has been received, then take your own steps to preserve the evidence.

There may not be a word in the Turkish language that corresponds to ‘stalking’ as defined above. Leaving the practical issues regarding the law, victims, stalkers, police and support organisations aside for the moment, there is an interesting question regarding the influence of language on thought:  does language determine thinking completely or even partially?  If there is not a word for a concept in a language, is it possible to argue that the behaviour concerned may constitute a punishable offence?