[xmca] Language, meaning and culture.

[Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com>]

	Is our intellectual activity driven by a quest for answers to  
specific questions, or is it more like a game or sport we engage in  
for the sake of participating in society? What questions do we  
ask?    I wanted to know why people behave destructively, as they do.  
I allowed that question to exist for many years until the answer  
became clear. It related to culture.
	When we use words, we are making a statement about whatever things  
we name. By referring to things vocally, we are, virtually, informing  
ourselves of the affect/meaning of those things. The sounds we utter  
correlate to emotive states, which we experience subliminally.  
Consequently, we associate those emotive-feeling states with the  
things to which the sounds refer.
	Linguists have been looking for relationships between the sounds of  
words and the things to which they refer, and have been, for the most  
part, frustrated by that search. Vocal sounds relate primarily to  
emotive-feeling states, and only secondarily to the things to which  
our words refer. Are we able to discover to what emotive states each  
of our vocal sounds refer?
	If we would change our human behavior, which is often misidentified  
as "human nature",  we must address the cultural values, the  
unquestioned givens by which we perceive our world. These givens,  
these values, our culture, is a result of our language.
	I would like to share more of this with youall if you want to know  
more.
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