Download or read book Humboldt Worldview and Language written by James W. Underhill and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-23 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the loss of many of the world's languages, it is important to question what will be lost to humanity with their demise. It is frequently argued that a language engenders a 'worldview', but what do we mean by this term? Attributed to German politician and philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), the term has since been adopted by numerous linguists. Within specialist circles it has become associated with what is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which suggests that the nature of a language influences the thought of its speakers and that different language patterns yield different patterns of thought.Underhill's concise and rigorously researched book clarifies the main ideas and proposals of Humboldt's linguistic philosophy and demonstrates the way his ideas can be adopted and adapted by thinkers and linguists today. A detailed glossary of terms is provided in order to clarify key concepts and to translate the German terms used by Humboldt.
Download or read book Language Culture and Cognition from Descartes to Lewes written by Timo Kaitaro and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-02-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monograph tells a different story on the history of modern philosophy: the narrative is no longer centred on the question whether knowledge results from experience or reason, but whether experience and reason are in fact possible without language.
Download or read book Doing Humanities in Nineteenth Century Germany written by Efraim Podoksik and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-09 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Doing Humanities in Nineteenth-Century Germany, edited by Efraim Podoksik, is a collaborative project by leading scholars in German studies that examines the practices of theorising and researching in the humanities as pursued by German thinkers and scholars during the long nineteenth century, and the relevance of those practices for the humanities today. Each chapter focuses on a particular branch of the humanities, such as philosophy, history, classical philology, theology, or history of art. The volume both offers a broad overview of the history of German humanities and examines an array of particular cases that illustrate their inner dilemmas, ranging from Ranke’s engagement with the world of poetry to Max Weber’s appropriation of the notion of causality.
Download or read book Creating Worldviews written by James W. Underhill and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-08 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encouraging readers to reflect upon language and the role metaphor plays in patterning ideas and thought, this book first offers a critical introduction to metaphor theory as it has emerged over the past thirty years in the States. James W. Underhill then widens the scope of metaphor theory by investigating not only the worldview our language offers us, but also the worldviews which we adapt in our own ideological and personal interpretations of the world.This book explores new avenues in metaphor theory in the work of contemporary French, German and Czech scholars. Detailed case studies marry metaphor theory with discourse analysis in order to investigate the ways the Czech language was reshaped by communist discourse, and the way fascism emerged in the German language. The third case study turns metaphor theory on its head: instead of looking for metaphors in language, it describes the way language systems (French & English) are understood in terms of metaphorically-framed concepts evolving over t
Download or read book Through the Language Glass written by Guy Deutscher and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2010-08-31 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterpiece of linguistics scholarship, at once erudite and entertaining, confronts the thorny question of how—and whether—culture shapes language and language, culture Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping orderliness of German has made serious thinkers wary of the entire subject. But now, acclaimed linguist Guy Deutscher has dared to reopen the issue. Can culture influence language—and vice versa? Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? Could our experience of the world depend on whether our language has a word for "blue"? Challenging the consensus that the fundaments of language are hard-wired in our genes and thus universal, Deutscher argues that the answer to all these questions is—yes. In thrilling fashion, he takes us from Homer to Darwin, from Yale to the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water—a "she"—becomes a "he" once you dip a tea bag into her, demonstrating that language does in fact reflect culture in ways that are anything but trivial. Audacious, delightful, and field-changing, Through the Language Glass is a classic of intellectual discovery.
Download or read book Languages Cultures Worldviews written by Adam Głaz and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-07-12 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited book explores languages and cultures (or linguacultures) from a translation perspective, resting on the assumption that they find expression as linguacultural worldviews. Specifically, it investigates how these worldviews emerge, how they are constructed, shaped and modified in and through translation, understood both as a process and a product. The book’s content progresses from general to specific: from the notions of worldview and translation, through a consideration of how worldviews are shaped in and through language, to a discussion of worldviews in translation, both in macro-scale and in specific details of language structure and use. The contributors to the volume are linguists, linguistic anthropologists, practising translators, and/or translation studies scholars, and the book will be of interest to scholars and students in any of these fields.
Download or read book The Passage to Cosmos written by Laura Dassow Walls and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explorer, scientist, writer, and humanist, Alexander von Humboldt was the most famous intellectual of the age that began with Napoleon and ended with Darwin. With Cosmos, the book that crowned his career, Humboldt offered to the world his vision of humans and nature as integrated halves of a single whole. In it, Humboldt espoused the idea that, while the universe of nature exists apart from human purpose, its beauty and order, the very idea of the whole it composes, are human achievements: cosmos comes into being in the dance of world and mind, subject and object, science and poetry. Humboldt’s science laid the foundations for ecology and inspired the theories of his most important scientific disciple, Charles Darwin. In the United States, his ideas shaped the work of Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, and Whitman. They helped spark the American environmental movement through followers like John Muir and George Perkins Marsh. And they even bolstered efforts to free the slaves and honor the rights of Indians. Laura Dassow Walls here traces Humboldt’s ideas for Cosmos to his 1799 journey to the Americas, where he first experienced the diversity of nature and of the world’s peoples—and envisioned a new cosmopolitanism that would link ideas, disciplines, and nations into a global web of knowledge and cultures. In reclaiming Humboldt’s transcultural and transdisciplinary project, Walls situates America in a lively and contested field of ideas, actions, and interests, and reaches beyond to a new worldview that integrates the natural and social sciences, the arts, and the humanities. To the end of his life, Humboldt called himself “half an American,” but ironically his legacy has largely faded in the United States. The Passage to Cosmos will reintroduce this seminal thinker to a new audience and return America to its rightful place in the story of his life, work, and enduring legacy.
Download or read book Ethnolinguistics and Cultural Concepts written by James W. Underhill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-17 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Ethnolinguistics' is the study of how language relates to culture and ethnicity. This book offers an original approach to ethnolinguistics, discussing how abstract concepts such as truth, love, hate and war are expressed across cultures and ethnicities. James W. Underhill seeks to situate these key cultural concepts within four languages (English, French, Czech and German). Not only do these concepts differ from language to language, but they go on changing over time. The book explores issues such as how far meaning is politically and culturally influenced, how far language shapes the thought of ethnic groups and how far their thought shapes language, and the role of individuals in the consolidation of cultural concepts. It offers a clear and thought-provoking account of how concepts are understood and will be welcomed by those working in the fields of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, semantics and pragmatics.
Download or read book The Language Hoax written by John H. McWhorter and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japanese has a term that covers both green and blue. Russian has separate terms for dark and light blue. Does this mean that Russians perceive these colors differently from Japanese people? Does language control and limit the way we think? This short, opinionated book addresses the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which argues that the language we speak shapes the way we perceive the world. Linguist John McWhorter argues that while this idea is mesmerizing, it is plainly wrong. It is language that reflects culture and worldview, not the other way around. The fact that a language has only one word for eat, drink, and smoke doesn't mean its speakers don't process the difference between food and beverage, and those who use the same word for blue and green perceive those two colors just as vividly as others do. McWhorter shows not only how the idea of language as a lens fails but also why we want so badly to believe it: we're eager to celebrate diversity by acknowledging the intelligence of peoples who may not think like we do. Though well-intentioned, our belief in this idea poses an obstacle to a better understanding of human nature and even trivializes the people we seek to celebrate. The reality -- that all humans think alike -- provides another, better way for us to acknowledge the intelligence of all peoples.
Download or read book The Language Animal written by Charles Taylor and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-14 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We have been given a powerful and often uplifting vision of what it is to be truly human.” —John Cottingham, The Tablet In seminal works ranging from Sources of the Self to A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has shown how we create possible ways of being, both as individuals and as a society. In his new book setting forth decades of thought, he demonstrates that language is at the center of this generative process. For centuries, philosophers have been divided on the nature of language. Those in the rational empiricist tradition—Hobbes, Locke, Condillac, and their heirs—assert that language is a tool that human beings developed to encode and communicate information. In The Language Animal, Taylor explains that this view neglects the crucial role language plays in shaping the very thought it purports to express. Language does not merely describe; it constitutes meaning and fundamentally shapes human experience. The human linguistic capacity is not something we innately possess. We first learn language from others, and, inducted into the shared practice of speech, our individual selves emerge out of the conversation. Taylor expands the thinking of the German Romantics Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt into a theory of linguistic holism. Language is intellectual, but it is also enacted in artistic portrayals, gestures, tones of voice, metaphors, and the shifts of emphasis and attitude that accompany speech. Human language recognizes no boundary between mind and body. In illuminating the full capacity of “the language animal,” Taylor sheds light on the very question of what it is to be a human being.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics written by Rajend Mesthrie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-06 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive overview available, this Handbook is an essential guide to sociolinguistics today. Reflecting the breadth of research in the field, it surveys a range of topics and approaches in the study of language variation and use in society. As well as linguistic perspectives, the handbook includes insights from anthropology, social psychology, the study of discourse and power, conversation analysis, theories of style and styling, language contact and applied sociolinguistics. Language practices seem to have reached new levels since the communications revolution of the late twentieth century. At the same time face-to-face communication is still the main force of language identity, even if social and peer networks of the traditional face-to-face nature are facing stiff competition of the Facebook-to-Facebook sort. The most authoritative guide to the state of the field, this handbook shows that sociolinguistics provides us with the best tools for understanding our unfolding evolution as social beings.
Download or read book The Bilingual Mind written by Aneta Pavlenko and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-06 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If language influences the way we think, does it mean that bilinguals think differently in their respective languages? Interweaving cutting edge research, case studies and personal experience, this book will take you on a quest to unlock the mysteries of the bilingual mind.
Download or read book Christian Worldview written by Philip Graham Ryken and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everything we do, say, and think reflects our fundamental worldview. Whether we realize it or not, basic beliefs about God, man, good and evil, history, and the future inevitably shape how we view and interact with the world. In this accessible student's guide, Phil Ryken, author and current president of Wheaton College, explains the distinguishing marks of a distinctly Christian worldview—exploring the existence of God, the nature of creation, the role of grace, and God's plan for the future. Written for both Christians and non-Christians, this handy resource will help believers develop a cohesive worldview while offering unbelievers a succinct introduction to the foundational tenets of the Christian faith.
Download or read book The Limits of State Action written by Wilhelm von Humboldt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-11 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text is important both as one of the most interesting contributions to the liberalism of the German Enlightenment, and as the most significant source for the ideas which John Stuart Mill popularized in his essay On Liberty. Humboldt's concern is to define the criteria by which the permissible limits of the state's activities may be determined. His basic principle, like that of Mill, is that the only justification for government interference is the prevention of harm to others. He discusses in detail the role and limits of the state's responsibility for the welfare, security and morals of its citizens. Humboldt's special achievement in this work is to enlarge our sense of what a liberal political theory might be by his particularly sensitive grasp of the complexity of our attitudes to and our need of other people. Dr Burrow has based his translation on Coulthard's version of 1854. In an important introduction, he provides a most perceptive as well as scholarly guide to Humboldt's political thought.
Download or read book Language Culture and Knowledge in Context written by Brian Nolan and published by Equinox Publishing (UK). This book was released on 2022 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What exactly is meant by the term 'knowledge'? What are the different kinds of knowledge? How might this be shared in a dialogue between two interlocutors, within a shared common ground, in the realization of successful speech acts? This volume investigates the nature of language, culture, knowledge, and context, and their interrelationships. Each of these is defined - in terms of their relationship to language in particular, and to identify their respective properties. Cultural and other knowledge is also found within the linguistic landscape and the artifacts within our environment. The book explores the ways that language is central to expressions of knowledge and culture. It draws a comprehensive and representative picture of the dimensions of meaning, emerging from the interrelationship between these domains of language, culture, knowledge, and context.
Download or read book Advances in Cultural Linguistics written by Farzad Sharifian and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking collection represents the broad scope of cutting-edge research in Cultural Linguistics, a burgeoning field of interdisciplinary inquiry into the relationships between language and cultural cognition. The materials surveyed in its chapters demonstrate how cultural conceptualisations encoded in language relate to all aspects of human life - from emotion and embodiment to kinship, religion, marriage and politics, even the understanding of life and death. Cultural Linguistics draws on cognitive science, complexity science and distributed cognition, among other disciplines, to strengthen its theoretical and analytical base. The tools it has developed have worked toward insightful investigations into the cultural grounding of language in numerous applied domains, including World Englishes, cross-cultural/intercultural pragmatics, intercultural communication, Teaching English as an International Language (TEIL), and political discourse analysis.
Download or read book The Handbook of Applied Linguistics written by Alan Davies and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 888 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Applied Linguistics is a collection of newly commissioned articles that provide a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the field of Applied Linguistics. Provides a comprehensive and current picture of the field of Applied Linguistics. Contains 32 newly commissioned articles that examine both the applications of linguistics to language data and the use of real world language to ameliorate social problems. Valuable resource for students and researchers in applied linguistics, language teaching, and second language acquisition. Presents applied linguistics as an independent discipline that unifies practical experience and theoretical understanding of language development and language in use.
