Re: [xmca] Language, meaning and culture.

[Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>]

Joseph, welcome to xmca.

I am no linguist Joseph, but I gathered from reading 
Saussure that linguists in his day (100 years ago) did "look 
for relationships between sounds and things" because he 
argued against that idea. But surely, no linguist has looked 
at it that way in recent times. Who do you have in mind? And 
surely the idea of sounds relating to emotive states is more 
relevant to the animal kingdom than culture. Or am I 
misunderstanding you?

Andy

Joseph Gilbert wrote:
>     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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> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
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Andy Blunden (Erythrós Press and Media) 
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