It’s hard to get back in blogging form after a few days off distraction, especially when there’s so much to blog about. I’ll start off, though, with a pointer to this article from the NYTimes (registration required) wherein it is written that the old hooey about “twenty-two different words for snow” really is hooey, and that there’s not mystical power inherent in language that unites cultures to their environment blah blah blah. (Note that I’m not saying that all languages are the same, or that languages and cultures don’t affect thought or expression.)
Since that myth has proven to be remarkably resistant to disconfirmation from linguists — especially among the preachers for whom it provides such tasty homiletical empty calories — maybe this note in the Times will at least put a crimp in theological language-mysticism.
So, what’s Robin Lakoff’s relation to George Lakoff?
Posted by AKMA at January 18, 2004 11:15 AM | TrackBackI believe that George Lakoff and Robin T. Lakoff were once married and no longer are. By the way, I highly recommend Geoff Pullum's Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, a collection of intelligent and very funny essays on linguistic topics.
Posted by: Catherine at January 18, 2004 02:27 PMI was guessing it was something such as that. Their contemporaneity, their geographically-symmetrical career paths, and their present co-occupancy of the Linguistics Dept. at Berkeley seemed to strong to be coincidence, and the silence about their possible relation suggested more than simple professionalism.
No need to know any more than that. . . .
Posted by: AKMA at January 18, 2004 03:54 PM