Re: A question and introduction

Thomas R. Wier writes:
 > Quoting Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>:
 >
 > > "Thomas R. Wier" wrote:
 > > > Surely you would not claim that
 > > > sociocultural stratification constitutes a "philosophy" in this
 > > > sense.
 > >
 > > Well, perhaps not in that sense of "philosophy", but I'm not sure that's
 > > what was necessarily meant, or if it was, I apologize for my
 > > misunderstanding.  The original e-mail was referring to a central idea
 > > that permeates the language, so in that sense, I would say that that
 > > kind of stratification is an example.  The central idea here being that
 > > humanity is naturally divided up into a fairly rigid hierarchy, and that
 > > relationships within this hierarchy are of great importance in
 > > interpersonal relationships.
 >
 > But that's just the thing, though:  languages typically are not
 > organized around anything more specific than being capable of
 > describing everything that a given human culture feels the need
 > to describe. As such, it's not so much a philosophy as an
 > anthropological description.  That is, there isn't really an
 > "idea" behind the language, since "ideas" are more or less by
 > definition abstractions that humans impose on the environment
 > surrounding them, including the social environment.
 >
But so are words.