Life, the universe, and human language (a brief synopsis)

Abstract

The arbitrariness of linguistic categories is almost as much a given as the arbitrariness of individual linguistic signs—one has only to consider the language-specificity of such familiar constructs as the phoneme, gender or the notion of ‘subject’ to be reminded of this fact, which supplies the major premiss of the Sapir—Whorf hypothesis. Given such arbitrariness, do categories really constrain our thinking? And, where and how does arbitrariness arise? Language is not the only human institution which generates categories. Consideration of some other fields of human activity suggests first that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is absolutely true: for example, two stereotypes in modern popular culture, the mannequin and the buffoon, are clearly culture-specific constructs, but within that culture, they are role models. Second, the process of grammaticalization (which creates the equivalent of stereotypes in language) may be understood as a kind of ritualization. whereby constructs and categories are partially emancipated from their bondage to concrete reality.