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#155164 02/06/06 11:44 AM
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Do you think this word is redundant, since society and culture have similar meanings?

I used this word in an essay some time ago, and it has bothered me.
I googled and found that others have used it, although I couldn't find it in any dictionaries.

I used it so it would be the definiendum for "Of or pertaining to how one acts/thinks/feels in regards to their society (as in people around them) as well as to culture (as in customs/traditions/history/beliefs/etc.)."

Is this correct?

Also, should it be hyphenated or not?



(I know, I'm kind of anal-retentive with these kinds of things...)


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#155165 02/06/06 12:42 PM
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Hi, Mech, welcome to the mayhem. I found sociocultural and socio-cultural used pretty interchangeably, but I also found this:

"...There are two particularly noteworthy aspects to a Vygotskian approach to social interactions. First, it is fundamentally cultural. Caregivers are agents of culture (Trevarthen, 1988) who set an infant's nascent actions within an intimate setting that is deeply informed by the caregiver's cultural knowledge. Caregivers cannot help but view infants' expressions as meaningful within the human sphere of their own culture. Infants, in complement, are quintessential cultural apprentices who seek the guided participation of their elders (Rogoff, 1990).

"Second, the notion of a zone of proximal development reveals a pattern of developmental change in which a phase of adult support precedes a phase of independent infant accomplishment."

This is some strange language called eduspeak which purports to be English but which has absolutely null content. I was struck particularly by the last sentence, which may have some meaning to those whose minds have been warped by the process of getting a PhD in education, but no other English-speakers can interpret it.

So you can use it with or without the hyphen and it probably doesn't make a difference since it's all part of eduspeak, which has no meaning and therefore apparently no value.

Ah. One other thing--it isn't anal-retentive, it's anal:retentive. Anal:retentive has to have a colon.


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#155166 02/06/06 02:04 PM
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Quote:

Ah. One other thing--it isn't anal-retentive, it's anal:retentive. Anal:retentive has to have a colon.



#155167 02/06/06 04:23 PM
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Hehe. XD
Good one!

Wow, I had to read that at least thrice. And I thought I was overly redundant. That person is a genious. I have been known to write a bit like that and "fluff up" my content to fill up space. But this person takes it to another level.

Okay, I lied. It's not an essay. I want to make a t-shirt (with cafepress, tshirts.com, et al) that says "[insert sociocultural meme here]," but I wasn't sure if that made sense [to other people at least]. (I googled it and I got a lot of hard-to-understand anthropological articles).

Last edited by mechanesthesia; 02/06/06 04:30 PM.

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#155168 02/06/06 08:25 PM
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Based on TEd's quote I could gather that 'social' interactions are all permutations of age group betwixting and 'cultural' interactions are specifically those, like the function of a "Conservatory", that seek to pass down cultural *artifacts from generation to generation.

Maybe not.

#155169 02/10/06 11:49 PM
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Quote:

his is some strange language called eduspeak which purports to be English but which has absolutely null content.




Quote:


Chapter 2.VI.—How Pantagruel met with a Limousin, who too affectedly did counterfeit the French language.

Upon a certain day, I know not when, Pantagruel walking after supper with some of his fellow-students without that gate of the city through which we enter on the road to Paris, encountered with a young spruce-like scholar that was coming upon the same very way, and, after they had saluted one another, asked him thus, My friend, from whence comest thou now? The scholar answered him,

"From the alme, inclyte, and celebrate academy, which is vocitated Lutetia."

"What is the meaning of this?" said Pantagruel to one of his men.

"It means from Paris" he answered.

"Thou comest from Paris then," said Pantagruel; "and how do you spend your time there, you my masters the students of Paris?"

The scholar answered, "We transfretate the Sequan at the dilucul and crepuscul; we deambulate by the compites and quadrives of the urb; we despumate the Latial verbocination; and, like verisimilary amorabons, we captat the benevolence of the omnijugal, omniform and omnigenal feminine sex. Upon certain diecules we invisat the lupanares, and in a venerian ecstasy inculcate our veretres into the penitissime recesses of the pudends of these amicabilissim meretricules. Then do we cauponisate in the meritory taberns of the Pineapple, the Castle, the Magdalene, and the Mule, goodly vervecine spatules perforaminated with petrocile. And if by fortune there be rarity or penury of pecune in our marsupies, and that they be exhausted of ferruginean metal, for the shot we dimit our codices and oppignerat our vestments, whilst we prestolate the coming of the tabellaries from the Penates and patriotic Lares."

To which Pantagruel answered, "What devilish language is this? By the Lord, I think thou art some kind of heretick."

"My lord, no," said the scholar; "for libentissimally, as soon as it illucesceth any minutule slice of the day, I demigrate into one of these so well architected minsters, and there, irrorating myself with fair lustral water, I mumble off little parcels of some missic precation of our sacrificuls, and, submurmurating my horary precules, I elevate and absterge my anime from its nocturnal inquinations. I revere the Olympicols. I latrially venere the supernal Astripotent. I dilige and redame my proxims. I observe the decalogical precepts, and, according to the facultatule of my vires, I do not discede from them one late unguicule. Nevertheless, it is veriform, that because Mammona doth not supergurgitate anything in my loculs, that I am somewhat rare and lent to supererogate the elemosynes to those egents that hostially queritate their stipe."

"Prut, tut," said Pantagruel, "what doth this fool mean to say? I think he is upon the forging of some diabolical tongue, and that enchanter-like he would charm us." To whom one of his men said, "Without doubt, sir, this fellow would counterfeit the language of the Parisians, but he doth only flay the Latin, imagining by so doing that he doth highly Pindarize it in most eloquent terms, and strongly conceiteth himself to be therefore a great orator in the French, because he disdaineth the common manner of speaking."

To which Pantagruel said, "Is it true? The scholar answered, "My worshipful lord, my genie is not apt nate to that which this flagitious nebulon saith, to excoriate the cut(ic)ule of our vernacular Gallic, but vice-versally I gnave opere, and by veles and rames enite to locupletate it with the Latinicome redundance.

"By God," said Pantagruel, "I will teach you to speak. But first come hither, and tell me whence thou art."

To this the scholar answered, "The primeval origin of my aves and ataves was indigenary of the Lemovic regions, where requiesceth the corpor of the hagiotat St. Martial."

"I understand thee very well," said Pantagruel. "When all comes to all, thou art a Limousin, and thou wilt here by thy affected speech counterfeit the Parisians. Well now, come hither, I must show thee a new trick, and handsomely give thee the combfeat."

With this he took him by the throat, saying to him, "Thou flayest the Latin; by St. John, I will make thee flay the fox, for I will now flay thee alive."

Then began the poor Limousin to cry,

"Haw, gwid maaster! haw, Laord, my halp, and St. Marshaw! haw, I'm worried. Haw, my thropple, the bean of my cragg is bruck! Haw, for gauad's seck lawt my lean, mawster; waw, waw, waw."

Now, said Pantagruel, thou speakest naturally, and so let him go, for the poor Limousin had totally bewrayed and thoroughly conshit his breeches.

[...] Saith the philosopher and Aulus Gellius, that it becometh us to speak according to the common language; and that we should, as said Octavian Augustus, strive to shun all strange and unknown terms with as much heedfulness and circumspection as pilots of ships use to avoid the rocks and banks in the sea.

--Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel




#155170 02/12/06 05:58 PM
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I couldn't find it in any dictionaries - socio-cultural seems to be a recent import from French, since "socio(-)culturel" can be found in the "Petit Robert" (1984). It says there that it means: "concerning the culture of a social group". This does not seem all that meaningless to me.


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