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Re: Re : Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

From:Paul Bennett <paul.bennett@...>
Date:Friday, October 22, 1999, 9:03
Christophe writes:
>>>>>>
Nik Taylor wrote:
> > > As for concepts like "freedom", I'm not sure that any language > > could lack it, and if one did, the speakers would certainly have a > > compound or an expression to render this. Newspeak seems to me an > > impossibility. > > Well, if Newspeakers did have any notion of freedom, they'd be > immediately arrested for crimethink, so there'd be no compound or > expression for freedom. :-) >
Then I think they'd run out of Newspeakers very rapidly, except if they have a cloning device :) . In fact I don't know. Maybe the concept of freedom is so deeply rooted in my personal culture that maybe I can't understand that people can lack it. And as for Newspeakers, I think they could think of freedom by simply negating their own condition (negation is completely regular in Newspeak if I remember correctly). For me "negative" concepts (expressed by negating another concept) can have as much force as "positive" ones. But it is IMHO. <<<<<< Wasn't the point that there was no newspeak word for "opression" to which a negative "#unopression" could be posited? The terms for "imprisoned" specifically related to "placed in a jail cell for a (specific) crime", IIRC, and that was the closest you could get, but there was not sufficient semantic crossover to make it meaningful outside that context. The phrase "big brother is ungood" was IIRC an oxymoron, thanks to this kind of semantic delineation. Of course, I haven't read it since that fateful year, anyway, so I'm probably way off. Paul ************************************************************* This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the sender. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been scanned for the presence of computer viruses. *************************************************************