>
> I think you're putting the horse before the cart, here, and most linguists
> would agree. What comes first -- the experience of fire or the word we
> create for it? I can experience and conceptualize many things for which I
> lack words. Culture ultimately shapes language, not the reverse (in my
Isn't it more dialectical, with influences both ways? So that the
absence of certain words/concepts in a culture (e.g., the absence of
a word to refer to females that does not define them purely in
relation to males) can make it much more difficult to see certain
possibilities (such as women's liberation).
>
> >Language is very powerful. I suggest that you read '1984' by >george orwell
>
> Yes, language is very powerful. I read Orwell many years ago -- you might
> want to take a look at Wittgenstein.
I read Wittgenstein a while ago, and I think he would agree that our
linguistic/conceptual structure shapes our reality, not vice versa.
So struggle over language IS political struggle. (Obviously language
is not the ONLY arena for political struggle.)
The trouble with using Orwell in your
> argument, is that by changing the language, Big Brother did not truly alter
> the fundamental beliefs, desires and pursuits of free thought among his
> oppressed subjects. They still disobeyed.
Yes, but the disobedience, or revolutionary impulse, is so much
more disorganized, ineffective, mischanneled, etc., when we have no
vocabulary for revolution. "Anarchy" is the first example that comes
to my mind. People in the US right now really cannot conceive of the
possibility of living without governmental repression (cops, prisons,
military), because the mass media have successfully gotten "anarchy"
to connote violence and chaos. Because of this linguistic
manipulation, we now live in a culture where opposition to street
crime simply MEANS building more prisons and hiring more cops. We
cannot see the possibility of policing our own neighborhoods.
There's no word for such a thing, and there are no examples of it,
and these two facts are dialectically linked.
Mary Daly has done a lot to further women's liberation by developing
new words, reclaiming appropriated concepts, etc., do you agree?
Brian
