orwell, sapir/whorf, and you

"in these passages whorf sets forth a double principle: the principle of linguistic determination, namely, that the way one thinks is determined by the language one speaks, and the principle of linguistic relativity, that differences among languages must therefore be reflected in the differences in the worldviews of their speakers." from "language, culture, and society: an introduction to linguistic anthropology" by zdenek salzmann ____________________________________________________________________________ "the purpose of newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. it was intended that when newspeak had been adopted once and for all and oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought, that is a thought diverging from the principles of ingsoc, should be literally unthinkable...newspaek was designed not to extend, but to diminish the range of thought..." from "appendix: the principles of newspeak" from "1984" by george orwell. ____________________________________________________________________________ eric blair was a writer, and as such it is understandable that he was obsessed by language...you can see it in his essays like "the lion and the unicorn" or "cigarettes or books"...but it really comes out when he writes about the unfortunate uses language is put to when it it twisted and distorted by politicians ( read whores ) to whatever unsavory antics they were up to...have a look at " the prevention of literature" or "politics and the english language" and you'll see what i mean...newspeak was thoroughly rooted in linguistic determinism ( see pinker or chomsky for a rebuttal of linguistic determinism...or e.o. wilson of you want whole-hog socio-biology)and although whorf was dead by the time orwell wrote 1984 he still was a contemporary and it's possible that george had read some of his writings...if he did it scared the crap out of him almost as much as james burnham did,a nd being the lover of language that he was george just had to turn its mutilation ( and so a strong sapir/whorf ) into a horror story with a touch of stalinist style cant and a propensity for sudden outbreaks of "non-person" that evoked a "memory hole" as stalin's cronies disappeared from old photos one by one...sapir/whorf is a favorite of politicians ( although the ignorant fucks probably would know what the sapir/whorf hypothesis was if it bit them on the ass )...they want to believe that we can't communicate with one another...share stories, hopes, disappointments...address common problems in an equitable way...recognize limits and act responsibly...have a culture...my plan is to disappoint them.

culture

my great grandparents family names are cooper, edwards, hall, mccolly, schlagda, beno, primic, and czomplak...eastern and western europe have come home to roost in me and mine ( my kids have the added flavor of names like sowa and yacko added to their gene pool)today would be my carpatho-rusyn granny's one hundred and twenty first birthday ( this is anna czomplak we're talking about ) this year is also the centennial of her arrival here from what was the austro-hungarian empire when she immigrated...she was an atypical granny on wilson street and i have come to the conclusion that it was because she brought a culture with her to indiana ( not that the old folks on the other side of the family did not have something of a nineteenth century air to them...the bulk of my grandparent's generation were born in the later nineteenth century [granny was twenty-one in 1912] and they had a much more relaxed view of time as i recall...they really did time things with a calendar...i miss that sometimes )she came form a small village called nizhne chabine ( which means "near chabine"..a podunk wide spot in the road...cousins tell me that nizhne chabine exists no more...chabine has subsumed the nearness and it part of the town now)and parts of the village came along...easter eggs for instance...for weeks before orthodox ( "real" in her eyes...just like our christmas, easter was a false festival..off by several weeks form the true date)easter shed gather peels form yellow onions in a paper bag and on an auspicious day she's put them in a pot of water with some salt and vinegar and boil them up for dye (she sneered at our paas)...she'd heat some bee's wax up in a pie tin on the stove and with a straight pin stuck in an old crow cork she'd make designs on raw eggs with the wax...then she'd dip ( not hard boil) the eggs in the dye...the resultant designs all had some significance in her hagiography...but she'd end up using the eggs anyway...what culture i possess i gained form granny in the years she lived with us...i like the folks form the old country i knew...mostly gentle people who seemed a bit lost at times in an endearing way...their kids turned their back on the "old country" for the most part ( although my mom still speaks carpatho-rusyn )...perhaps that was part of the loss...happy birthday granny.

perception

"...nearly all academic studies, models, and prognoses regarding the phenomena and consequences of climate change have been in the natural sciences. in the social and cultural sciences, it is exactly as if such things as social breakdown, resource conflict, mass migration, safety threats, widespread fears, radicalization and militarized or violence-governed economies did not belong to their sphere of competence." "in reality there are billions of subjects from different cultural backgrounds, endowed with highly diverse economic opportunities and political resources, who act within a number of complex life communities. no socially identifiable 'we' links together a landless chinese farm laborer and the chairman of a multinational energy corporation; they inhabit completely different social worlds, each with its particular demands, and, above all, its particular rationality...the use of 'we' assumes a collective perception of reality that does not exist, even in relation to global problems such as climate change." harald welzer. "climate wars:why people will be killed in the 21st century." ____________________________________________________________________________ old harald has a point about the dearth of understanding of how different we are and how cultural world view will dictate the general thrust, if not the specifics of perception of what is a problem and how to deal with it...and i don't see a lot of academic work on the subject in social sciences ( yes i have looked...i am a university student with some resources at hand and access to people smarter than me...or, at least, better educated and with a somewhat different viewpoint ) beyond what thomas homer-dixon has done at the university of toronto on resource conflict...and until someone digs down and does the work ( and then there's the problem of getting people to pay attention to the findings ) to find some sort of universals that will generate some sort of consensus on what we face as a species we will continue to get deeply conservative assessments of the problem and the attendant deferrals of responsibility that are currently a staple in government and corporate thought on the matter...nascar and the national corn growers' association will continue to trumpet the benefits ( without the negative impacts like food prices or eroie ) of ethanol, american ingenuity, and horsepower and jared diamond, or worse yet al gore, will be telling us that we should address the issue by driving less and taking cold showers as of that will make any sort of difference when china brings another coal-fired generating plant on line every week...there doesn't seem to be a 'we'...just an 'us' and 'them'...we'd better get off our dead asses and find a way to bridge the gap...time to plant trees and learn to eat in season.