Coding cultural riches: Investigating indigenous languages in Australia
"It's very fundamental to Aboriginal belief that language and land are connected, and it is appropriate to speak the language of the land on which you're residing. So it was quite natural that Murrinh-Patha would have become the primary language of the indigenous people living on the mission."
(Rachel Nordlinger)
Fig.2 "Coding cultural riches: Investigating indigenous languages in Australia: Linguist Dr Rachel Nordlinger discusses how Australian Aboriginal languages are researched and how particular indigenous tongues grow at the expense of others as communities migrate. Presented by Jennifer Cook.", Up Close, University of Melbourne.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
A comparable dichotomy between metaphor and metonymy
"Roman Jakobson found a comparable dichotomy between metaphor and metonymy in his seminal paper, 'Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,' published in his monograph, Fundamentals of Language (Mouton & Co--Gravenhage, 1956). Here Jakobson discussed two types of aphasia based on complementary disorders in comprehending language: (a) a similarity disorder whereby one primarily depends on syntactic context to draw words into use (pp. 63-64); and (b) a contiguity disorder whereby one's style becomes a telegraphic 'word heap' without much, if any, evidence of syntax (pp. 71-72). According to Jakobson, two faculties are thus involved in the use of language: (a) selection in the choice of words to express an idea (metaphoric); and (b) the combination of words, again to express an idea (metonymic). Elaborate sentences without a particularly impressive vocabulary (for example in the prose of Henry James) illustrates the similarity disorder, while big vocabulary in loosely constructed sentences (for example in the prose of James Joyce) illustrates the contiguity disorder. Joyce heaped together his words with apparent abandonment, while James strenuously belaboured his syntax to produce exactly the right effect--an effect he found difficult to articulate with words alone as opposed to their combination in intricate sentences. An inferior choice of words, Jakobson claimed, is at the sacrifice of metaphor, whereas an inferior combination of words is at the sacrifice of metonymy (p. 76)."
(Edward Jayne)
Jakobson, R. (1971). "Fundamentals of Language". The Hague/Paris: Mouton, Harvard University and Morris Halle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
1). Edward Jayne. "The Metaphor-Metonymy Binarism"
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
New Directions in Interdisciplinarity: Broad, Deep, and Critical
"Before interdisciplinarity in either the disciplinary producing or disciplinary-circumscribing senses could manifest itself, disciplinarity itself had to take on its peculiarly modern form. Any assessment of interdisciplinarity - multi - and trans-, noncritical and critical- will benefit from an appreciation of this background.
Prior to the modern period, learning exhibited a kind of unity that might be called predisciplinary. Aristotle, it is true, introduced distinctions between logic, physics, and ethics, but these were never of a kind to raise the possibility of cross-disciplinary formations such as 'physical ethics.' During the Middle Ages, the division of the artes liberales into grammar, rhetoric, dialectic (the trivium), arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the quadrivium) ensured that the education of 'free men' included all the knowledge and skills needed to exercise their social roles. Insofar as it existed, disciplinary specialization was present more in the 'servile arts' of artisans and tradesmen. Not even teachers of the liberal arts became specialists in their different branches, because the idea of, for example, possessing arithmetic without grammar would have been considered a deformation of the mind. In the monastery schools, the unfettered pursuit of knowledge was viewed skeptically, criticized as curiositas, and therefore subject to disciplinization in a premodern behavioral sense. Only at the end of the Middle Ages, as the infinite pursuit of disciplinary knowledge took on the character of a spiritual activity, would Renaissance men become necessary to cross boundaries and synthesize diverse areas of learning."
(Robert Frodeman and Carl Mitcham, 2007, p.508)
[1][2] Frodeman, R. and C. Mitcham (2007). "New Directions in Interdisciplinarity: Broad, Deep, and Critical." Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 27(6).
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Seven Liberal Arts: The Trivium & The Quadrivium
"Originally the liberal arts were seven in number. They were divided into the three-fold Trivium of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, and the four-fold Quadrivium of Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. These words mean, respectively, a three-way and a four-way crossroads, implying that these paths of knowledge are fundamentally interconnected -- and, by extension, that all other paths can be found to intersect here, as well. The T[rivium]. was the basis of elementary education (whence we probably get the word 'trivial'): Grammar taught the craft of reading and writing; Logic, of careful reasoning; and Rhetoric, of effective communication. The Q[uadrivium]. was the basis of advanced education: Arithmetic taught the science of number; Geometry, of form; Music, of sound (and of 'harmony' in the most general sense of the word -- 'number in motion', as it was often put); Astronomy, of time (of 'form in motion'). Moreover, from the very beginning, whether openly acknowledged or carefully alluded to, each of the Quadrivial sciences was accompanied by its complementary metaphysical art. Each dealt not only with the outer structures, but also with the inner meanings of its discipline. Thus, Arithmetic included Arithmology, the understanding that numbers were not merely quantities, but also qualities (that 'two', for instance, is also 'duality, polarity'); Geometry included what is nowadays called Geomancy, the understanding (in, for example, the design of temples or cathedrals, or in the graphic arts) that the spirit and the emotions can be affected in particular ways by particular forms; Astronomy included Astrology, the divination of the meanings of cycles of time; and Music included not only the study of 'practical theory', of nomenclature and technique (e.g. 'this is a minor third', 'this is the Mixolydian mode'), but also the study of 'speculative theory', of the meanings and influences of tones and intervals and scales.
Traditionally the seven liberal arts have been positioned in opposition to the 'servile arts'. In this sense while the liberal arts generally refer to knowledge 'appropriate for free men' (social and political elites) the servile arts have been associated with specialised tradesman skills and knowledge e.g. engineering and design."
(Steven C. Rasmussen 28 March 1996)
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The Constellations ProjectSHARE
Lakoff And Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor
"To account for the specific properties of both linguistic and visual media, an innovative approach combining linguistic and art-historical perspectives was chosen. Principles of the theory of conceptual metaphor developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999; Lakoff, 1987, 1990, 1993; Johnson 1987, 1992, Sweetser 1987, 1990) were applied to images of grammar, collected in the iconographic tradition founded by Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky (1955; 1979). Lakoff and Johnson (1980) state that "our ordinary conceptual system, in terms we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature" (p. 3) and define the essence of metaphor as "understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another" (p. 5). They further posit that "meaning and value are grounded in the nature of our bodies and brains, and in our physical, social, and cultural environments" (Johnson 1992:346) and place the bodily, or sensorial perception in the centre of their theory claiming that embodied image-schemas conceptualize our experience at a non-propositional level (Johnson 1992:349). This study is based on the assumption that these image-schemas underlie both linguistic and pictorial expressions, and that our perceptual system and image-based reasoning is grounded not only in direct experience, but also conditioned by indirect experience mediated through cultural artifacts such as printed words and pictures.[1]
Johnson, Mark (1987): The Body in the Mind. The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, Chicago.
Johnson, Mark (1992): ?Philosophical implications of cognitive semantics.?, in: Cognitive Linguistics, 3, 345-366.
Lakoff, George (1987): Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. What Categories reveal about the Mind, Chicago.
Lakoff, George (1990): ?The Invariance Hypothesis: ?Is abstract Reason based on Image-Schema???, in: Cognitive Linguistics, 1-1, 39-74.
Lakoff, George (1993): ?The contemporary theory of metaphor?, in: Ortony, Andrew (ed.), Metaphor and Thought. 2nd. ed., Cambridge, 202-251.
Lakoff, George/Johnson, Mark (1980): Metaphors we live by, Chicago.
Lakoff, George/Johnson, Mark (1999): Philosophy in the Flesh. The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought, New York.
Panofsky, Erwin (1955): Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York.
Panofsky, Erwin (1979): ?Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst?, in: Kaemmerling, Ekkehard (ed.): Bildende Kunst als Zeichensystem. Ikonographie und Ikonologie. Theorien-Entwicklung-Probleme, K?ln, 185-206.
Sweetser, Eve (1987): ?Metaphorical Models of Thought and Speech: a comparison of historical directions and metaphorical mappings in the two domains?, in: Aske, Jon/Beery, Natasha/Michaelis, Laura/Filip, Hana (edd.): Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, 446-459.
Sweetser, Eve (1990): From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure, Cambridge."
(Irene Mittelberg)
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The Constellations ProjectSHARE
