Language classes, Wednesday, Oct. 5

[game-of-you.livejournal.com]

Dream gives the same lecture to all of his classes today.


You have all been working very hard on the vocabulary and grammatical structures of the varied languages we are studying. I appreciate that.

Today, we are going to step beyond language itself into the way language affects culture. This concept is known as ethnolinguistics. For example, different cultures express spatial difference in different ways. In many societies, words for the cardinal directions East and West are derived from terms for sunrise/sunset. However, Eskimo speakers of Greenland, base their names for cardinal directions on geographical landmarks such as the river system and one's position on the coast. Similarly, the Yurok lack the idea of cardinal directions; they orient themselves with respect to their principal geographic feature, the Klamath river.

Some researchers feel that our language limits what we can percieve about the world. This is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. For your homework for next Monday, I would like each of you to write a short paper considering the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in relationship to the language you are studying. Read this handout for more information on the theory.

[OOC: Classes in comment threads. There will be a separate homework thread on Monday.]

Comments

Re: CLASSICS, 10/05

[janet_fraiser]

We can just ignore each other frostily if you'd rather. And yes, Sam will definitely be aware that it's Hathor they're dealing with by the time we get done with last night's scenes. Her ego wouldn't be satisfied if Sam didn't know that she was the one getting revenge on Janet.

Re: CLASSICS, 10/05

[carter-i-am.livejournal.com]

Oh, why go with ignoring each other now? *eg*

Re: CLASSICS, 10/05

[janet_fraiser]

OOC: Oh, good, it's so much more fun to snipe at each other. I'll do a new post elsewhere so we don't hijack the class thread. Like, say, here.