Re: CHAT: The EU expands (was Re: THEORY/CHAT: Talmy,

From:    Javier BF <uaxuctum@...>
> >Western Europe is in fact unusual in being the only
> >region in the world in which a significant percentage of the population
> >identifies supraregionally rather than on the national or tribal level.
> >The US, China, Japan, Korea and Russia (among many other nation-states)
> >all have strong identities as ethnic units, and thus simply cannot
> >understand Europeans' attitudes in this respect.
>
> What "ethnic" identity does the US have? The US is a conglomerate
> of people whose ethnic origins are dispersed all around the world.
> What unites the US as a 'nation' is its political credo; in fact,
> the US is the only nation in the world whose identity is essentially
> based on a political ideology, and thus where some citizens are
> really subject to a credible accusation of anti-Americanism if
> they dare disagree with the ideology which is loudly preached as
> the essence and virtue of the country itself.
Not so, though you could have in more truth said that one hundred years
ago or more. The problem is that you assume the "ethnos" is something
physical or objective, but it is a social construct.  People all
over the world can and do have overlapping and multiple identities.
In the United States the vast majority of people (80-90%) identify
to some degree both with the land of their ancestors, and with their
current home.  Take Texas:  most Texans identify as Texans, but not
strongly inhabitants of a city, as Southerners, and as Americans, and
maybe also cosmopolites on top, and parallel to all those where their
ancestors came from. Chicagoans OTOH I have found have almost no
sense of being part of Illinois, but identify rather strongly both
as Americans and with whatever community their ancestors came from,
reinforced by the fact that they often live with people of the same
background. To further complicate this, as time goes on, the influence
of regional or local identity has lessened greatly. In toto, to say that
political ideology is the only factor is to vastly oversimplify, and to
confess not actually knowing the thoughts and feelings of many Americans
in any detail.

My point about Europeans is that since the second World War, a
significant  percentage of Europeans (to pull a figure out of the air,
it seems like 30-40%) have not strongly identified as Frenchmen, or Germans,
or what have you in a political sense (though they do so in other ways,
e.g., in how and what one eats).  This sets Western European countries
apart in that such people are much less likely to care about or have
strong feelings about national political symbols than elsewhere.  Note that
this even separates these Europeans from many in Arab countries, for
though Arab countries are politically divided, it is very common for
Arabs to consider themselves one people, "the Arab nation", and this
has been the source of many political programs of the 20th century
in the Middle East.

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637