Brad, while Chomsky may be the most famous linguist outside its academic study, there are other valuable sources for the study of language and it's impact on learning and human evolution. Especially if anyone is interested in classical references or the lack thereof today, one might try the newer Ian Tattersall's Becoming Human, Evolution and Human Uniqueness, which is anthropological or the works of Murray Edelman, including Political Language (1977). The text below is from the back cover of Edelman's Constructing the Political Spectacle, (1988) one of the books on my bedside table yet to be read: "Thanks to the ready availability of political news today, informed citizens can protect and promote their own interests and the public interest more effectively. Or can they? Murray Edelman argues against the conventional interpretation of politics, one that takes for granted that we live in a world of facts and that people react rationally to the facts they know. In doing so, he explores in detail the ways in which the conspicuous aspects of the political scene are interpretations that systematically buttress established inequalities and strengthen already dominant political ideologies. Media news accounts evoke a spectacle that is a construction, not a set of facts. That spectacle is an interpretation, reflecting the diverse social situations of its audience and the language and symbols to which they are exposed. Social problems, leaders and enemies prominent on the political scene take on meanings that rationalize and perpetuate political roles, statuses and ideologies. The spectacle of politics is a fetish, a creation of its audience that then dominates the thought and action of its creators. Edelman examines the ways in which social problems, leaders, and enemies are constructed and the political functions they serve. Influenced by 20th century language theory, especially the work of Nelson Goodman, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, Edelman treats the contemporary political spectacle as a set of symbols and signifiers that continuously construct and reconstruct self-conceptions, the meanings of past events, expectations for the future, and the significance of prominent social groups. He recognizes language forms as a central influence in such construction and examines the specific ways in which that influence is exercised, showing how the recognition of the spectacle as a construct carries far-reaching implications for the revision of democratic theory and considers some of the antidotes to the mystification and fetishism at the heart of politics."
Now that I see the words symbols, mystification and fetishism, perhaps I should put this book on the top of my To Read Next stack. Harry Potter for grownups? Where are my glasses? Karen <snip> As for "linguistics", I neither know what that is (Chomsky?), nor feel it is worth my limited time and energy. There is something else which "maps the same object domain", but which I feel is of real human[e] as well as intellectual value: hermeneutics -- the study of the structure of the meaningfulness of symbols and how we interpret them. The name Hans-Georg Gadamer should be a "household word", not "Noam Chomsky" (except as regards the latter's political activities, perhaps). There is also an American discipline here, communication theory and the micro-sociology of daily life, as in Gregory Bateson, and Erving Goffman.
