Islands Of Meaning Eviatar Zerubavel Analysis

The article ‘My Two Lives’ which that highlights the concept of ‘Language and Society’ published by the Newsweek, inspires this task. Language is both a system of communication between individuals and a social phenomenon. The area of language and society, sociolinguistics, is intended to show how such factors as class, gender, race, and more govern our use of language. In short, language constitutes humans and their identities. All people either utilize varieties of a language or use two or more languages to respond to a whole range of affective and interpersonal demands; language by depiction must be defined as multilingualism.

“Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind,” by Ethan Watters, is a compelling article that challenges the reader’s perception on culture and cognition. Instead of cognition affecting culture, our culture affects our cognition. It’s interesting to conceptualize, and it makes one have to introspect their culture, beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Why do we do behave the way that we do? Are our thoughts our own? How much of us is influenced by our environment? This effect of culture can be rooted in our childhoods. We are taught societal norms and how to view, categorize, and perceive the world through the lens of the environment surrounding us. A prime example of this comes from the games we played growing up.

Language has been an integral part of human existence since the dawn of time. Our innate ability to communicate has guided the progress of civilization since its modest beginnings and facilitates our understanding of what it means to be human. The only practical way to thoroughly express one’s identity is through language, whether it be verbal speech or written text. It is only through this medium that we are able to fulfill our roles as a social people, who use discourse to cultivate relationships both on a personal and communal level. Language defines the human notion of self by revealing culture and beliefs, making individuality context-specific, and providing identity markers.

Reification refers to the categorization of people based on those anxieties from fears around conceptions of self-worth and status. Anxiety, a basic component of humanity, is recognized by its feeling of dread rather than its causes. Reification of others is born out of reification of oneself (Weisband, “Social Groupings”). It reduces the freedom and choices available, and it assumes that one is too stagnated to change, especially in comparison to others. This denies that all human freedom is similar. In denying the situatedness of the human condition, people develop the desire to create the uncreatable, and thus they reify themselves to confront anxieties over their own situatedness. As the freedom they have is not what they want, this leads to self-reification, self-contempt, self-denial, and self-disgust (Weisband, “Reification”). It is the beginning of hatred. The reified “self” judges the self in discipline. Similarly, the logic of illogic starts with reification, which develops feelings of supremacism which lead to racism, then racialization, then, finally, spatialization (Weisband, “Rwanda and Nativism”). These reflect the different modes of cultural development that rationalize self-contempt, self-rejection, and denial of self-worth. It represents the beginning of doctrines that aim to explain stereotypes, prejudice, and other forms of hatred (Weisband, “Social Groupings”).

of social construction and trying to apply arbitrary definitions to the diversity of the human

Language, culture, and self are inseparable, as one cannot exist without the other. The structuration of one's consciousness stems from the language that one learns as a child, thus the formation of self is largely out of one’s control. As humans we live to experience, for our native language structures the world at which we inhabit and molds one's very modes of conscious awareness. Simply put, “who we become is not a matter of our own volition” (Encyclopedia of Identity 384), how we perceive and evaluate the world at large is entirely out of our control. Our development consciously is driven by the world we are brought into, ergo the language and culture we are raised with ultimately determines who we become.

Ian Hacking’s “Making Up People”, discusses categories that classify and differentiate people from others. Hacking uses the term “dynamic nominalism” to describe the production of groups and categories created by humans, where humans are “making up people”. He argues that the concept of dynamic nominalism is that by giving a name to a category or group, the people in this group or category will adopt characteristics to fit this new label. In this essay, I will explore Hacking’s term, dynamic nominalism and defend his view by discussing gender and stereotypes.

Social construction has proven to affect everybody’s life and creates stereotypes in society. Race and class have been the most outstanding social constructs in our society. According to sociologists, “human development is socially situated and knowledge is constructed through interaction with others” (McKinley, 2015). People were not born to distinguish others but it is the society who pass these ideas from generation to generation.

British novelist William Golding once stated, “Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.” As human beings, we feel the constant urge to express and communicate, in hopes of making sense of the world around us. However, language is limiting, restrictive, and confining. It attempts to place infinitely complex experiences into a finite number of words. The significance and essence of human experience is lost through our words, because language simply cannot express our thoughts and emotions in their truest forms. But, who would we be without language? Lacking the ability to communicate would take away from our understanding of the world and people around us. This understanding of our place in society, is what forms our identity, because it sets us apart from others. How could we know good, if there was no such thing as bad? The meaning of the word “good,” would be rendered useless without the existence of “bad.” Similarly, our identity depends on not only who we are as individuals, but who we are in relation to others. As a result, language is deeply embedded in our sense of identity, because it provides us with the knowledge that gives us the ability to compare ourselves to the world around us. With this thought in mind, to what extent does language influence our identity?

In Chapter 28 “A Writing Lesson” from Tristes Tropiques, Claude Lévi-Strauss discusses the importance of language. The Nambikwara tribe in Brazil is fascinating. Nevertheless, the Nambikwara tribe is a major symbol representing contact between natives and outsiders. Even though this type of situation has been seen many times throughout history, it will never cease to be critical in understanding the way we evolve, interact, and identify as humans. Throughout the novel, The Buddha in the Attic, Japanese women struggle to connect with new people and surroundings in America as all they have ever known was their native land, Japan. Claude Lévi-Strauss's experience in “A Writing Lesson” might be used in reading Julie Otsuka's novel as both return to the root of communication and display how linguistic barriers are so limiting.

The effects of marginalization can be seen in Gloria Anzaldua’s essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” She is an American writer who expresses her feelings about social and cultural struggles that Americans with a deep Mexican heritage like her face when being raised in the United States. Anzaldua believes that everyone in the minority ethnic group is expected to be submissive and impressionable therefore, she conforms and identifies herself as four different things depending on the situation. She sees herself as Spanish when referring to her linguistic group. She sees herself as an Indian when referring to her genes. She sees herself as Spanish-American when talking with other Spanish-speaking people. Finally, she sees herself as Mexican-American when talking to Americans. This unclear way of perceiving herself

Many individuals have theorized about the connection between self and society and some concluded that language is the link, which embodies our feelings, sensations, and impulses to experience our conduct in relationships to others. However, language alone does not necessarily provide a mutual understanding among the individuals without shared values and meanings. In “Hunger for Memory: Education of Richard Rodriguez”, Rodriquez argues that language takes two forms: private and public. What Richard labels as private is the language of the home, whereas public language is the discourse of public society. Growing up, Richard’s private language was not like the public language, which set Richard apart from his parents. Therefore, Richard explores his acculturated self-identity by analyzing his educational experiences of opposing bilingual education and being "labeled a minority student" through the lens of private and public languages.

For generations society has been separating and categorizing mankind into stereotypes. Everyone and anyone on earth has been placed within a prospective category. If not by race, then appearance, income, or by social standing. Although sometimes mankind takes these separations to an extreme, like trying to dispose of a thousands of people, just because of their religion and beliefs. These separations and categorizations can wreak havoc on the human mind. Some even hallucinating in order to cope with the stress of

Every day we encounter people from similar or different cultures. These people are either classified into two different groups. Although being a part of the scarce group may seem evident in regards to appearance, depending on the categories people can alternate from one group to the other. Kanter’s explanation of X’s and O’s made me reflect on my past experiences as an X and an O. Kanter describes an X as part of the common group. Meanwhile, an O is less common. Consequently, the experiences of X’s and O’s differentiates.

In other words, it is when people use the image to show their approach and attitudes towards life in their community and in the world. Or as Lakoff and Johnson said in their book concerning this subject: "a culture may be thought of as providing, among other things, a pool of available metaphors for making sense of reality”. The cultural approach of metaphors is what made Mandelblit analyze the translation of metaphors from a cognitive perspective, which focuses on the cultural beliefs and values of the source language and of the target language, especially when it is the case between two very different languages. Arabic and English are languages that are very distinct and on several levels; especially on the linguistic and cultural level. However, even if both languages are different, the differences in economic, political and environmental factors among numerous societies may be completely important, human societies are connected by a similar biological history. The reality in which humans live is certainly not the same, but it is on the whole and large alike, as Chitoran