Re: A question and introduction

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.

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier          "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

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