Last night, my local PBS station aired a 'Frontline' program, called "The Lost Year in Iraq," about the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq occupation. Among other things, it confirms that Americans who sought civilian jobs to help rebuild Iraq were asked questions such as whether or not they had…
Despite countless pieces of evidence to the contrary, we don’t like to think of language as an influence on our thoughts. We like to think of language as a passive tool at our disposal, one that does not err or influence our communication. But the brain does not work like a computer, nor does language processing work like a straightforward computer program. Language influences thought in an inextricable way.
That idea has come up many times in centuries past, from Bhartrihari to Boas to Kant. But the concept that language can shape thought, rather than the other way around, really took off in the 1950s upon the publication of the Whorf Hypothesis. Whorf’s hypothesis held that, though we think of language formation as a passive process, the language we use gives us the categories that assist us in making sense of the world. He wrote:
“[people believe that] talking, or the use of language, is supposed only to ‘express’ what is essentially already formulated nonlinguistically…[but] all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.”
— (Language, Thought and Reality pp. 212–214).
Whorf came to this conclusion studying Native American dialects in the 1930s. He noticed a glaring difference in the way European and Native American peoples conceptualized time; we consider time concrete, like a place or a thing. For instance, we can use time-oriented phrases such …
According to today's new poll, a hotly contested Missouri U.S. Senate Seat May 'Flip' from Republican to Democrat. Democrat Claire McCaskill's site reports today's poll results: In an election for United States Senator from Missouri today, 10/12/06, Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill leads Republican incumbent Jim Talent 51% to 42%, according to a…
The November mid-term election is exactly one month from today. Any guesses on what sort of October Surprise the Republicans have cooked up to help them win despite their dismal performance and lousy poll results? Will Osama bin Laden be killed or captured? Will gas prices hit a new low? Will the stock market…
Mark Foley is a political whore, like most of his elected peers in Washington, DC. Yes, this post is yet another plea for radical campaign finance reform.
Our country appears to be going down the tubes and for the most part it is not because of perverts like Mark Foley are trying to seduce young boys. The reason we are really in trouble is because hundreds of elected officials (Mark Foley among them) are perverting our Constitution by acquiescing in our corrupt (though technically legal) election system.
How often do you hear a politician discussing an issue in a way that makes intuitive sense to you and seems straightforward? Not very often, in my experience. Almost all political conversations emanating from DC are contorted by money. That is why very little political dialogue makes sense to those who are not closely monitoring the flow of contributions. The result is that we the citizens are getting is a steady stream of legislation geared toward helping big contributors (mostly big companies) at the expense of individual citizens.
Today, Salon.com featured an article about Mark Foley, a known sex pervert. Foley has also been busy perverting our electoral system (as have most other elected federal officials) by taking big money from corporate interests and working hard to reward those contributors. Since Foley himself happened to be in the news already, Salon.com made him today’s poster boy in an article demonstrating that political/financial quid pro quo is alive and well.
The Salon.com story …