How do we use our words?
First post here. Feel free to delete if it's inappropriate for this community.
Last night, I was reading a book and found these lines in the text: "Language is one of humanity's ways of making the world comprehensible. It is through our language we gain awareness of ourselves and our relations to the world around usEarlier the same day I had ( Read more... )
Last night, I was reading a book and found these lines in the text: "Language is one of humanity's ways of making the world comprehensible. It is through our language we gain awareness of ourselves and our relations to the world around usEarlier the same day I had ( Read more... )
On Names- I've been a member of an online community (message board) for....man, maybe 7 or 8 years now. The message board was originally centered around a common interest (a book series), and we all had usernames relative to that series. Within the last four years, the board moved to a new domain and we (less than a dozen) all changed usernames, to ones using our real names. Within the last year or so, we've all changed our avatars to pictures of ourselves. It is interesting how many layers there are to peel away at on the internet that you often take for granted in face-to-face encounters.
Languages- I'm not bilingual, so I can't comment on that, and I have similar associations with my second languages that you do with English.
Cursewords- I think the English-language trend of sexually-based curse words has really been spreading. I'm a graduate student in linguistic anthropology, and I work with an endangered Native American language, Plains Apache. The other day I was going over some 1950s interviews with speakers on curse words. Their initial reaction was that they didn't have any, but when pressed as to how they would insult someone, most of the responses involved calling the person an owl or predicting something bad would happen to the person's horse or that the person's horse would do something bad to them. I found it all pretty interesting.
Reply
It's interesting that one could say that I online become more "me" when I use a fake name and no face-to-face communication but talk about things I would not be able to discuss with many people irl, while I in reality am present, with real name and body, but not always able to communicate without problem or even talk about things that interest me at all. So while I personally feel that the internet puts more emphasis on my real identity, and makes it special, it is still less relevant to who I actually am.
I think all people with second languages do, to some extent. My younger sister is going through a phase where she actually prefers English to Swedish though, and I've been pondering why for some time now...
I always found cursewords intriguing, as it's really one of the most telling parts of a language when it comes to a culture. Owls seem to have a pretty bad reputation in cultures on both sides of the Atlantic; and I suppose that a horse may have been some kind of status symbol? If you happen to know exactly why these expressions are considered insults, I'd love to know.
(Also, a Native American language sounds really interesting to work with. :D)
Reply
Leave a comment