The whole field of psycho-linguistics is built on the thesis you've just described. If words are ideas at the elemental level, then they reflect a society's basic toolkit for forming its aggregate opinion, i.e., its culture. We've all heard that the Eskimos have 27 different words for "snow," and that the Chinese pictogram for "opportunity" is the same as that for "challenge." What do each of those examples indicate about the society that bore them? Do you suppose a society whose word for "woman" is the same as its word for "demon" would be gynocentric? What about a society that had no word for "war." Or "death." Or "money."
We could ask Noam Chomsky. He's spent the last 20 years trying to teach dogs and monkeys to talk. Since he's got such support among the Left, I can only assume that his latter endeavor met with some degree of success.
We could ask Noam Chomsky. He's spent the last 20 years trying to teach dogs and monkeys to talk. Since he's got such support among the Left, I can only assume that his latter endeavor met with some degree of success.ROFL!!
Every now and then you crack me up. That was a good one, indeed. BTW, I read somewhere recently that all those different words for snow among the Eskimos has been discredited; unfortunately, I can't remember where I read/heard it. Your point is still valid, however, even without that example. There simply isn't any way we can be anything more than we think, and how we think is represented by how we speak; therefore, we can be either uplifted or constrained by our language. Three guesses on which way the deconstructionists want to take us (up or down)...