Theoretical Perspectives of Linguistic Differences
American society used to be desc
This is an excerpt from the paper...
American society used to be described as a melting pot, with the implication being that people from many different ethnic and socio-cultural backgrounds would change into Americans, lose their original identity, and melt into the mainstream of American society. This was presented as the ideal, and yet there are signs today that this is no longer being sought as the ideal and that ethnic and cultural differences are instead being revived, maintained, and celebrated. This has caused some to worry that the mainstream will end up being the minority, at least in some areas if not nationwide, and that we are all losing something precious in terms of the ties that bound us together as a people. This concern makes studies of social variation and human behavior all the more important. Linguistic differences are only one of the distinctions separating one group from another, and linguistic differences will be considered here in terms of the Social Darwinian perspective and the Cultural Relativist perspective.The Social Darwinian perspective as argued by Ernst Haeckel adapted the Darwinian view to German requirements in the late nineteenth century. Social Darwinism took an almost mystical and religious belief in the forces of nature, such as that of natural selection as the fundamental law of life, and combined it with a literal transfer of the laws of biology to the social and political arena. The standard Darwinian ideas of stru
. . .
her groups in a society often have need of special vocabularies to be able to communicate effectively about their special interests. Beyond this, special vocabularies may serve as hiding devices; those who use such vocabularies are set off as a group from those who do not, and this helps to create a strong sense of group identity (Havilland, 1993, 101).
There was a question for a time in the 1930s and 1940s about whether language could determine culture. The research was based on the fact that some cultures lumped blue and green together with one name, raising the question of whether the thing named had an existence independent of the name or whether we have different cultural symbolism only because our language has different names for these two colors. According to the Whorfian hypothesis, language is not merely an encoding process for voicing our needs but is rather a shaping force which provides habitual grooves of expression that predispose people to see the world in a certain way and so guides our thinking and behavior. The opposite view is that language reflects reality, mirrors cultural reality, and changes as cultural reality changes. Research has shown that the development of language may combine these sources in so
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
According Whorfian, Social Darwinism, Social Darwinian, Data Havilland, Introduction American, Summary Conclusion, Walter Goldschmidt, Ernst Haeckel, cultural relativist, havilland 1993, January-February Biological, cultural relativism, social darwinian, natural selection, relativist view, darwinian perspective, social darwinian perspective, Havilland WA, american society, cultural relativist view, society cultural relativist, sexist language, social darwinism, cultural reality changes,
Approximate Word count = 1518
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
