Rites of Passage across Cultures
There are similarities between the rites of passage (van Gennep) and the experiences of immigrants who leave one socially constructed reality in order to enter into a new one. These similarities are discussed and revised in order to describe the rites of passage across cultures.
The Invisible Door between Cultures
When one makes contact with other cultures on a daily basis, they pass through an invisible door that separates their own culture from their host culture. This article describes that process within the context of the US as a host culture for many of the indigenous groups who live on and work by reservations. They encounter major shifts in language and culture and are, in the process, influenced by their contact experiences.
The Need for an Ecological Cultural Community
The Innuit are a group of Eskimos living in Northern Canda who want to maintain the hunter and gatherer traditions of their past. However, even though they live thousands of miles away from the modernized cities of the world, the industrial polution of those countries have invaded their home territories. They are plaqued by acid rain, industrial smog, poluted rivers, and they can no longer hunt and eat the animals within their own habitat.
Cultural Wisdom, Communication Theory, and the Metaphor of Resonance
Metaphors are associated with print cultures. In metaphor, a source experience is used in order to create a target concept. This kind of analogical thinking is used among many indigenous groups that share their visual experiences through visual thinking.
Visual Metaphor, Cultural Knowledge, and the New Rhetoric
Visual metaphors constitute the new rhetoric of modern industrialized societies. Visual thinking uses images as source experiences to analogically create new concepts and ideas. This experience of using visual analogies has been a part of many of the indigenous cultures in the Americas. It is now part of the new orality among industrialized nations that use mass media in their socialization of the masses into a consumer culture.
Metafora visiva, conoscenza culturale e nuova retorica
This is an Italian translation by Maria Vitoria Serpini of the article on Visual Metaphor by Robert N. St. Clair.
Self-Publishing Indigenous Language Materials
The commercial nature of modern publishing has created numerous constraints on those indigenous groups who want to share their cultural heritage with their own tribal members and with others. They have used the print media to do this. This article discusses the difference between publishers and printers and argues that anyone can become a publisher. The problem lies in finding the cost of a printer. With the advent of the internet, many have chosen to use web pages as instruments for online publishing.
Honoring the Elders
In many cultures around the world, the older members of a community are honored for their wisdom. They are walking encyclopedias of local wisdom. They know the land; they speak the language, and they understand the changes that have taken place over time. The Teachers of Indigenous Languages are cognizant of this and they dedicate their conferences to their elders. They honor their elders.
The Teaching of Ancient Science, Technology and Tribal Mythology
Archeoastronomers were among the first to provide a deep understanding of the various creation myths found among the indigenous tribes of the Americas. What these myths described were the teachings of an ancient science. The technology used by these groups to mark the cardinality of the equinoxes and the solstices can still be found in many tribal sites and in much of the cultural art of these tribes. This articles describes the tribal mythology of the Lakota Sioux as ancient science.
Anatomy of Social Metaphor
It is assumed in this essay that culture is socially constructed and that many social metaphors eventually emerge into cultural expressions. The metaphor of the Great Chain of Being is evidence of that cultural process. It reflects the social construction of reality at a time when Europe was ruled by a theocratic political system. It took numerous epistemic ruptures to dislodge this cultural metaphor from its wordview.
Grammatical Metaphor of Time as Space
For those languages that have socially consructed time as a linear concept, time is modelled after space. The reason for this analogy is simply that there are more biological transducers for the organization of space as a cognitive concept whereas the cognitive parameters of time are difficult to ascertain within physiology of the human brain. Consequently, space was used as the analogical source for concept of time
The Sedimentation Theory of Cultural time and Space: The Present is Embedded in the Past
Although linear time may provide insight into how grammatical aspect markers function in language, it does not capture the phenomenon of cultural time. In order to do this, time and space must be envisioned from the perspective of sedimentaiton theory (a modification of Foucault's concept of laminated social space). What this modification entails is that the present is embedded in the past. Time and space co-occur as laminated capsules that are linked and casually connected. There are siimilarities between Minkowski's concept of spacetime and this model of time in cultural space.
The Concept of Paterfamilias, Rome and Societal Transformatons
Paterfamialias, Feudal Society, and Medieval Culture
Paterfamilias and the Industrial Revolution
The metaphor of home as a sacred site for the worship of ancestors can be found in the concept of paterfamilias. This essay began with the Hegelian quest to demonstrate how ideas motivate and move cultural change over historical time. Unfortunately, there was too much evidence to the contrary. Technology plays a major role in cultural change over time. Hence, this essay demonstrates how the concept of paterfamilias has undergone cultural change due to innovating technologies within a nation-state
Transmission of Values: The Information Age Crisis in Socialization
Rapid social change is a byproduct of the information age. When the patterns of socialization between parents and their children are significant this results in a "generation gap." This appears to be a recent process but the rationale for this change goes back to Middle Ages as discussed by Michel Foucault in Les mots et choses. He describes how a cognitive shift took place at that time in which the focus was not placed on what was "preent" but on what was "re-presented." Another shift has taken place within contemporary mass-mediated cultures. The masses are being socialized by the visual thinking of the media and these changes are taking place so rapidly that there is a crisis in the socialization process from one generation to the other.
Habitus and Communication Theory
There is a tendency among the sciences to promote theoretical knowledge over practical knowledge. Bourdieu was concerned with the role of practical knowledge within society. He developed this concept of Habitus and developed it into an important contribution to social theory. One is not born with Habitus. It is learned through repitition. It consists of actions that are internalized by the human body. He uses the game metaphor to explain this concept. At some point one knows how to play the social game. He has internalized the strategies needed to be successful in playing the game. The result is the acquisition of practical knowledge. What role, it should be asked, does the concept of Habitus play in communication theory? This is the focus of this essay.
Metaphor and the Second Generation of Cognitive Linguistics
The first generation of cognitive linguistic was dedicated to the metaphor of the brain as a computer. In this model, language functioned as the software and the brain represented the hardware. Also, language was considered to be the concatenation of symbols and the study of grammar dealt with symbol systems. In the second generation, the shift was from a total reliance on hypo-deductive thinking to analogical thinking. Language was not seen as the concatenation of symbols but the organization of conceptual forms. Metaphor played a major role in this new way of thinking because metaphors are often used to create conceptual forms.
Metaphor and Linguistic Creativity
There are two kinds of creativiy. One has to do with the rearrangement or the creation of new forms and the other has to do with the new creation of meaing. The former dominates in models of language. Transformations, for example, have to do with the rearrangement of forms. The creation of a system, on the other hand, has more to do with meaning than with form. The creation of new ideas is rare. Much of philosophical thought has to do with the creation of new meanings. The renaissance of metaphorical thought, which contributes greatly to creativity, has to do with a new theory of meaning. What is lacking in this new model is exactly what made the previous model of language so important for the creation of new forms, viz. transformational theory. Both are needed. One contributes to meaning theory and the other to a theory of form. A merger between the two will provide for a stronger theory of linguistic creativity.
Social Script Theory and the Realm of Practical Consciousness
The ontological domain of practical consciousness is a part of language theory and cultural artifacts. Once epistemological markers are externalized, they emerge as ontological markers. Social script theory investigates ontological patterns such as the restaurant schema which exists as a social practice within the realm of ontology. Restaurants themselves are ontological markers related to this schema.
The Social Construction of Culture
The concept of culture is based on sociological structures. People who belong to a social group thnk of what they are doing as social. For example, for the Japanese, the allocentric concept of self that they adhere to is a sociological construct. Similarly, the egocentric concept of self for someone is a member of the United States is also social. When one compares these two, what emerges is a cultural difference. The study of culture implies the beliefs and social practices of others. Inherent in this model is the concept of human diversity. Cultural differences have to do with differences between groups of people. Since the concept of the self is socially constructed, it is reasonable to argue that the concept of self across cultures is also socially constructed.
Reality-Loops
The traditional concept of the sign assumes that content and form co-exist in the same linguistic space. It is argued that this model needs to be revised because the space that is characteristically associated with content can be found in the realm of epistemology and the space associated with form belongs to the realm of ontology. Epistemological markers are externalized and in the process they emerge as ontological markers. Content has to do with epistemological markers and form has to do with ontological markers. The latter are internalized and interpreted in such a way that they belong to an epistemological system. The transition from meaning to form and back from form to meaning constitutes a reality-loop. These loops designate the social construction of reality.
La lengua y las fuerzas de cambio cultural
Existen muchas fuerzas que conducen al cambio cultural. Los siete tipos más importantes de cambio cultural quedan investigados en este trabajo y se trata la naturaleza de tales cambios. Las sociedades evolucionan. Con el tiempo ciertos tipos sociales aparecen como estructuras sociales distintas. Las culturas pueden además sufrir a lo largo del tiempo transformaciones económicas que crean culturas de naturaleza distinta. Las fuerzas coloniales crean importantes cambios culturales y, una vez que estos cambios han sucedido, el resultado es una cultura híbrida que encuentra gran dificultad para intentar retornar a su pasado. Ya se ha modificado para siempre a través de la lengua, la educación y la cultura. Desde el interior de una cultura pueden acontecer identidades forzadas, donde un grupo político redefina y controle la identidad cultural de los grupos minoritarios. El cambio generacional tiene lugar porque ningún grupo es capaz de socializarse en su totalidad y esto conduce a diferencias entre generaciones e, incluso, a saltos generacionales. La tecnología, además, juega un papel crucial en el cambio social. Esto es especialmente cierto en el caso de transiciones desde un tipo social a otro. Finalmente, sucesos de magnitud tales como los terremotos, los tsunamis, las inundaciones y las guerras pueden desorientar a los grupos sociales y esto conduce a cambios culturales importantes entre las diferentes clases sociales. El problema con el cambio social es que uno no puede regresar a los antiguos modelos establecidos de comportamiento. La única manera en la que estos se pueden salvaguardar es incorporando a estos en los más recientes contextos del presente. De forma curiosa, el pasado nunca muere; se transforma, se modifica o se revisa. Siempre existen vestigios del pasado en el presente.
The Framework of Cultural Space
Cultural space is sedimented. It involves layers of cultural events and actions of the present embedded into the framework of the past. It is through the past that one interprets the present. The past never dies. It is revised, reinterpreted, reinvented, or redefined. The past never remains in a pure state. It is always accommodated into the newer configurations of the present and it accommodates these new configurations. This model of sedimented time provides a mechanism to study and articulate the nature of change over time. That change takes place within a cultural space. Not only is the presented embedded in the past; the future is embedded in the present.
ESQUEMAS FISIOLÓGICOS, CREACIÓN COGNITIVA Y EL TEATRO DE LA MENTE ENCARNADA
Los científicos de la Lingüística Cognitiva enfatizan el hecho de que los modelos cognitivos del lenguage son creados por seres humanos y que estos seres humanos son mentes que han tomado cuerpo; es decir, se han encarnado. ¿Porqué es esto importante? Es importante porque la manera en que pensamos está conectada con la manera como hemos evolucionado en tanto que seres humanos. Los significados, se ha argumentado, toman forma por medio de imágenes-esquema (los seres humanos piensan con imágenes visuales), y dichas imágenes-esquema junto con conceptos originados por el conocimiento metafórico y metonímico permiten la creación de un modelo cognitivo idealizado (un modelo ideal). Es por medio de este modelo como los seres humanos crean proposiciones semánticas y escenarios sociales, el teatro de la mente. Las imágenes-esquema están creadas dentro de redes neuronales, y, a su vez, están ligadas a conceptos y experiencias. Estas redes han sido explicadas por Gerald Edelman en "Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of Mind". En su teoría de "Selección de Grupos Neuronales", explica cómo evolucionaron las significaciones de la mente en el tiempo para encarnar las experiencias vividas en el arduo camino de forjarse humano. Algunos de los conceptos relacionados con la selección de grupos neuronales provienen del sistema nervioso autónomo, mientras que otros provienen del sistema del neocórtex (la sustancia gris). El primero está relacionado con un nivel básico de conciencia, con el ‘estar consciente’ del presente, ‘estar en el mundo’; el segundo tiene que ver con la habilidad que los seres humanos tienen de superar el pasado, proyectarse al futuro mediante imágenes mentales, e incluso, la habilidad de representarse visualmente el germen de nuevas palabras en la mente (en modo subjuntivo, condicional, hipotético, etc). Es a partir de este estado más alto de consciencia que los humanos crean gramáticas cognitivas; y es con estas gramáticas con lo que son capaces de crear imágenes estructuradas, escenas y escenarios, así como crear palabras en potencia. Dichas gramáticas cognitivas y sus dinámicas de creación las hemos denominado teatro de la mente.
Marvin Harris and Cultural Materialism
Marvin Harris was an excellent writer and a proponent of the study of cultural materialism. He modified the model of Marx and proposed a more realistic model of the infrastructure is related to the superstructure. This article is concerned with the the ontological markers that constitute the realm of cultural materialism. Humans externalize their epistemic markers and reify them as cultural artifacts. These ontological forms constitute the study of material cutlure. The nine regions of North America by Joel Garreau provides an interesting aspect of material culture. It adds a new dimension to the study of the economic model propsed by Harris.
The Concept of the Cultural Sign: A Theoretical Revision
The concept of the sign developed in two versions over the last century. Both of these are predicated on the assumption that there is a relationship between content and form. This concept has formed the basis for most models of communication theory, semiotic theory, and social theory in the form of symbolic interactionism. What the concept of the sign fails to do, however, is to reveal the underlying assumptions underlying these relationships of content and form. It is far more complex and the unraveling of this complexity is the basis for this essay. It is argued that instead of treating form and content as belonging to the same semiotic space, they need to be separated into two different philosophical domains, epistemology and ontology. There are two connections between these two. One of them creates ontological forms (structural epistemology) and the other interprets them within the context of an epistemological system (structural hermeneutics). In addition, it is argued that within this philosophy of structural communication, linguistic codes are never neutral. They are value-laden. IAICS conference, Guangzhou, PRC. 2010. pdf.
Can Traditional Semiuotics accont for Translation Theory?
Translation can only take place from one community to another when their horizons can be fused. If the disparity is too great, then one horizon is distorted in order to fit into that of the target language and culture. In substantiating this claim, several concepts are discussed. First, translation theory is predicated on the assumption that signs are translated from one community to another through language. This involves the use of signs, but traditional semiotics has conflated meaning and form into a sign function that make translation more difficult. Hence, the concept of traditional semiotics needs to be rehabilitated. Second, a model of language is presented that separates signs into epistemological and ontological realms. This implies a Cartesian model of translation in which thoughts and ideas are separated from their objects. This emphasis on consciousness is balanced with a rehabilitated model of consciousness proposed by Gadamer. This means that translation not only involves consciousness but also epistemological distance. Third, a practical philosophy of hermeneutics is employed in the translation of the traditional culture of Hawai’i. Translation assumes that horizons are fused, but when disparate cultures are brought together, this is not the usual outcome.