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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Jackie-- Re: I've mentioned before, I think, the strong tendency of us humans to put things into patterns that we recognize.
Ha! another one of my favorite "quotes" is "Truly gifted thinkers find order, where others only see disorder" (and of course, is myself as the former, not the latter!)
but there is some validity to language effecting thought-
two areas come to mind. One is Time( which we have discussed here at AWAD)and Maps.
Norther europeans, and related groups see time as rigid, and specific. 2:00 PM means exactly that. some native americans, and many other cultures have very different views. 2:00 means "the afternoon" .
Japan, curiously is one of those places that actively adopted the european sense of time (to a point, that while they still follow the chinese zodiac, and think this is the year of the Ram, New Year's was January 1st, not the Chinese lunar New Year. and there trains run to very strict schedules, and being late (even by a minute or two)can be an extremely rude act. This was not always so in Japan. It was something they desided upon, and incorporated into their culture, (in the 1850's.) (still haven't unpacked dictionaries, or reference books... maijing dynesty-- spelled wrong...)
Hispanic, and hispanic influenced cultures (for one) don't treat time the same way. they use the same clocks, (both digital and analog)but culturally, and linguistically, time is more fluid.
when English speakers say tomorrow,they mean one day from now...but manana is not the same...it could be one day from now, or it could be some unspecified time in the future.
Maps too,(written expression of geographic space)also effect thinking....
at some point in the late 1700,new surveying tools,and more accurate ways of measuring, resulted in a new map of france being created. and the more accurate map shrunk the country. The king at the time(one of the Louis's)is said to have commented to the head of the surrey taskforce, "Your map has lost me more territory than any battle ever fought in the history of France" --(and map making in france was a very politically unpopular occupation for a long time afterwards)
American indians, knew their way about the land scape, and had reference points (some still exist in NYC, the 'Rocking Stone', a glacial erratic, that weights over 3 tons, but that can be set to rocking by a child, if you know where to push, now part of the Bronx Zoo) , but they never made maps.
maps are a way of defining land and once defined as a concrete thing,crossing threads, it can then be 'owned' in a way that is total foriegn to most of the american indians tribes ways of thinking....
the aboriginal people of austalia, too, navigated with out maps, and the polinasian navigated the south pacific, travelling thousands of miles, on what westerner's called "uncharted" waters. but obviously, if they where consistantly able to find small island, in a vast ocean, they had "charted" them in some way... they just didn't make maps, charts, visual displays that NEuropians used.
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I'm thinking at this moment about the movie Castaway. At first, he "lives and dies by the clock." Movie opens with him lecturing new Russian FedEx employees. Everything's rush, rush, rush. Now, now, now. Lost on the island, though, he charts the position of the sun's rays shining into a cave by the month. At the end of the flick, he's standing a crossroads in the middle of nowhere, USA, and takes a good, long while to ponder his choices. (Object lessons aside, I'm thankful that there are people at FedEx who are anal about keeping things at a brisk pace.)
Next subject.
The lack of accurate time-keeping was probably both a cause and effect of cultural properties. In the west (and none of these ideas are my own, but espoused by Landes in his "Wealth and Poverty of Nations"), having clocks actually improved efficiency. People worked dawn to dusk. In the summer they worked long hours, in the winter much less. With clocks, people could actually work (and produce) consistently throughout the year. In China, as a counter-example, the emporer moved people about. The emporer (through his agents) told laborers where to move (sometimes entire villages), when to be at work, when to go home. China didn't develop beyond very simple time-keeping mechanisms. In Europe, by contrast, the village clock was a prized possession.
I don't know who first said "Necessity is the mother of invention," but I think there must be a lot of truth to it. People, individually or collectively, develop what skills, what technology, and what ideas they require to survive, to thrive, to make their lives easier. The Chinese didn't develop an accurate clock because they didn't need one. In other cultures and other places, it could be that geography played a role. When it's 95% and hotter 3-5 hours in the middle of the day and there's no air-conditioning, it's probably not a good work strategy to labor frenetically (like the pre-castway, FedEx guy) - probably even a seriously bad survival stategy.
It may be true that maplessness affected the way that Native Americans viewed land ownership, but did they need it? For hunter-gatherers why would anyone need land as an individual? (Bet hackles were raised when tribe X decided they wanted to hunt on tribe Y's side of the river though!) I'm not sure whether sedentary NAs farmed collectively or individually, but I wouldn't reckon they would actually need to start marking territory unless the commodity was scarce. At that time, for individual tribes, I can imagine they had plenty of room. OTOH, the colonists were coming from a culture where they already had a sense of land ownership - not an easy sense to be rid of once acquired.
Clearly maps are handy for marking territory and for finding one's way reliably. I'm not sure about polynesians navigating the oceans reliably without maps. Did they record the failed attempts? Writing things down, whether maps or words, is a very useful thing for a culture to have - regardless of whether they own things.
k
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Pooh-Bah
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a rose by any other name
Jackie, I have to agree with Anne. The rose would physiclly smell the same but I bet you wouldn't hear anybody singing about "My wild Irish skunk cabbage" nor would it be THE FLOWER to give to mothers, graduates and lovers.
At the risk of being a mugwump defined by my father as a political bird that likes to sit on the fence with his mug on one side and his wump on the other I think it is a mistake to say that either language shapes our world view or is shaped by it. Nothing in life is that simple. A change in our culture will cause a change in language which reinforces and advances the new trend. At one time the community good was primary and we talked about people. Now more and more the individual is paramount and we speak of a large group of persons. English speaking cultures tend to be much less formal and English is one of the few languages without specific formal and informal second person pronouns. We also lack gender specific articles. In Spanish "the" translates as el (masc.) and la (fem.) How can this not reinforce the traditional roles when the vast majority of household appliances are la cuchina (kitchen), la lavadora (washer), la batadora (mixer). The three main exceptions are the toaster, microwave and refridgerator. It will be interesting to see if the language changes when the roles finally do.
Incidentally I pointed this out to my Spanish teacher and she had never noticed it. The influence over us is so tied into our thought processes that we are not aware of it. And if we do become aware then does that influence lose power?
PS I have seen a Polenesian chart. It looked a bit like a dreamcatcher with the cords representing prevailing wave directions and shell beads the islands.
A bit long for 2 cents, I'll call it my 3 cents worth.
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old hand
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The English approach has obviously arisen from pragmatismIt would be just as well-founded to think that pragmatism has arisen from the structure of the English language  . Rather difficult to disentangle cause and effect, here. I think pragmatism is the the first layer of philosophy that grows when the conquerors have settled for good. Higher layers take some centuries longer. I don't see much essential difference in the role of word order between English and German: Some variations in word order are used to convey different meanings, emphasis etc., and others are simply wrong.
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Carpal Tunnel
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RE:. In Spanish "the" translates as el (masc.) and la (fem.) How can this not reinforce the traditional roles when the vast majority of household appliances are la cuchina (kitchen), la lavadora (washer), la batadora (mixer).
reading this, i thought about english (language) terms, and how they have effected me and my thinking...
civilized areas have woods and forests, but area that we wish to see as "undeveloped", and in need of our interference, are "jungles". the continent of europe, which DNA test now show to populated with people who are extremely genetically close, is in habitted by many different nationalities, but Africa, a continent that has many radically different groups (evident by physical appearences, and modern DNA results) has only "tribes".
The American Indians of NA, were "tribes", too.
and we have discussed in the past, english feminine ending, which are slowly going away --i.e., actor/actress, waiter/waitress, aviator/aviatrix, and so on.
I personally think the feminine ending should go... and i am curious, was there ever originally a seamster?(and as more sewing was done at home, by women, the masculine trade died out, leaving only taylors, and seamstress?
(tayloring is a very specific kind of sewing, a seamstress is one who can sew simple straight seams, as might be found on skirts, or hems, or linens.)
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Carpal Tunnel
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of troy, I attended a rather lengthy workshop on African cultural groups. The speakers, professors from several universities and specialists in African studies, drove home the point again and again that the word 'tribes' was highly offensive to the peoples of Africa and to black or African-Americans alike. We were instructed to refer to the peoples as 'nations'--such as the Yuruba nation. You realize, I'd guess knowing your broad reading, that these nations are independent of the political boundaries that are meaningless with regards to African nationalities.
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Interestingly, Native Americans refer to their own membership as either tribes or nations. Do these groups in Africa form autonomous governments, making them making them nations or they simply culturally similar?
And on the jungles vs woods thing, I've known a fair number of people who have spent a lot of time in both and say that there is a difference. Though they never said it in exactly those terms, the words clearly seem pretty apt to these people. I've spent a bit of time in the woods myself and it aint a bit like what these fellas describe a jungle to be like.
This really sounds like some post hoc fallacy to me. We have woods, because we have woods. We have forests because we have forests. We actually DO have (if my geography serves me) a few jungles in tropical regions in U.S. territory - and they're very commonly refered to as such - in Hawaii, in Peurto Rico, possibly in other U.S. possessions.
k
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Carpal Tunnel
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And on the jungles vs woods thing.. there is a difference.
well, yeah! jungles got big snakes and stuff!
-ron o.
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well, yeah! jungles got big snakes and stuff!
Well, sneer what you like, but I'm just not sure. I've never seen a snake in the wild in the U.S. that was more than maybe 6 or 7 feet long. I'm sure there are bigger ones, though, maybe 8 or 9 foot behemoths. But 12 feet? 15? I've heared of em, but I've got suspicions.
Besides which, I realize HI has snakes, but I don't think they're native to their jungles and yet we still call 'em jungles. Look, I don't toss my tea in the ocean and say "look at the icebergs." There's a difference in magnitude between staring down at a tiny cube and looking straight on at the bane of the Titanic - and that difference exists someplace else other than the admittedly small range between my two ears. We distinguish between things when we notice differences sufficient to warrant distinction, and YES, many times when they aren't. I know there are people who can look into the television snow and see alien abductors.
I don't doubt that words are used to justify imperialism, colonialism, every nasty thing that everyone always wanted to believe about western governements, religions, people, true or contrived. (I don't even doubt there are people who are convinced they should be deeply offended by the of these terms - no doubt at all.) I just don't think this is a good example.
k
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Carpal Tunnel
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re:We actually DO have (if my geography serves me) a few jungles in tropical regions in U.S. territory - and they're very commonly refered to as such - in Hawaii, in Peurto Rico, possibly in other U.S. possessions.
are they? or are they called tropical rain forests? (and over on the pacific north west (fiberbabe been around lately?) we have temperate rain forests...
Jungles.. are wild, unmanged, uncharted(to european eyes)messy areas..(and we still use jungle in the messy sense...the was a jungle of wires behind the computer, connecting it to a printer, a phone, a scanner, with several power cords as well...
jungle tend to mean a place with unknown risks, and unknown life forms.
forests, can be wild(american, with lots of under brush, and wild growth), or managed, (european style), hard wood, pine,redwood, tropical, or rain-- but forest implies a wooded area, that is know,(ie, civilized in some way!)
not that forest can't be dangerous, with as they say in Oz,"with lions and tigers and bears"--which are known dangers...
Woods are some times used for extremely large forests...(The back woods (of kentucky, or other part of southern US, or the Piney woods--for the once vast stands in georgia and alabama area, or the north woods(new england and how US'ers define canadian woods.), or even the great redwoods of north west. woods are wilder areas than forests.. but jungles are areas that are "unknown"-- but of course they weren't unknown to the indiginous people who lived in them, only to the europeans who came to exploit them!
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