Language Myth Research Articles

The Arbëresh Identity through the Myth of Language and Culture in the Poetic Creativity of Giuseppe Schirò Di Maggio

Giuseppe Schirò Di Maggio, one of the leading figures of the contemporary Arbëresh literature, is the most mature voice and the most productive poet of all nowadays Arbëresh poets. He is an author who uses the bilingual verse in Albanian and Italian languages with an extraordinary ability, settling in perfect harmony his poetries, which have artistic independence in each language and are original reproductions in both corresponding languages. In this regard, plays an important role even its culture, interlaced simultaneously with two traditions, the Italian and the Arbëresh, and certainly his proficiency in both Italian and Albanian languages. In this article we aim the identification of the themes and the main motives in the poetic creativity of the author, which refer to the most important aspects of the Arbëresh community, and also to the human universal aspects, avoiding themes and motives dealing with more detailed or less significant aspects. Eventually, we did no try to remain in a simple thematic presentation during the identification of the main themes that permeate the poetic creativity of Giuseppe Schirò Di Maggio. We tried to get into the history, into the mentality and into the culture of the Arbëresh community, because to determine the literature themes it does not mean to separate it from the history, but to give the deserved position to the history of the mentality, the customs, the ideology, and the manner of time and space perception. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2016.v5n2p131

PROPOSTAS E ESTRATÉGIAS PARA A VALORIZAÇÃO DO MULTILINGUISMO NA FORMAÇÃO ESCOLAR DE LÍNGUA MATERNA

In every society, the language is manifested through various oral genres, written and also multimodal, with a huge diversity related to the various conditions of production and circulation of statements. It is true that language is shaped according to the various uses citizens make of it in society. Thus, one cannot perpetuate the myth of a uniform language; on the contrary, the study of the varieties that constitute the multilingualism should be emphasized because it contains a multiculturalism and also the identity of the different communities. In this context, it is essential to reflect on the issue of linguistic discrimination, a major drawback in the process of building a more egalitarian society, diverse and democratic, and also on the true role of cultural norms for writing texts teaching in schools and, especially, of orality where multilingualism appears more clearly. From the observation of these language modes, we understand the importance of various forms of linguistic expression in the constitution of social multilingualism, a prerequisite for a society that seeks to enhance the multiple facets of its multiculturalism. --- http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/matraga.2016.20771

LES AXES DE LA CRÉATION ET LA NAISSANCE DE LʹIMAGINAIRE COMME LANGAGE MYTHIQUE

The axes of the creation and birth of the imaginary as a mythical language. Our research follows the relationships of the concepts that are taking into account creation on the double axis of verticality and horizontality. We highlight those symbolic elements which would later constitute the mythical language about the sacred space-temporality. Inside this space-temporality a rich spectrum of mythical images develops; images capable of explaining the relationships of the creation plans. Without a religious perception of the temporality, the conceptualization of the axis would remain a philosophical approach. Through our point of view, the two are born simultaneously. Thanks to them, creation can be imagined. The first “frozen” formula of the mystical human spirit can be thought, brought to a palpable reality, expressed in an oral and then a written form. Studied together, temporality (sacred or not) and space are permanently imagined together. For example, a loss of mundane temporality in the secret ecstasy that offers to the soul an ascending direction does not mean getting out of universal temporality, but of its mundane section. In the sacred space the soul relates to time. Even the gods are submitted by the sacred, Aeon sometimes being synonymous to destiny. The universal creator seems to evade every touch, but not consistently, only when he avoids the descent into its created worlds. In sacredness, time and space seem or become confused, both expressing the same reality, by the immediate swing from thinking to deed. The mythical imagery conceives the displacement in the primary space-temporality by the spoken word. So, for something to appear and live, the spoken word is required. Even the divine dream appears as a pre-word of a creator’s thought. The thought follows the spoken word, the spoken word follows the gestures which finally indicate the meanings of the creative act, controlling the rhythm of the creation days. These three will later be adapted through imitation in rite. We are now situated at the limit of the physical world, a real challenge for the mythical imagery. The general feature of the mythical expression on the creation of the material world is the state of the divinity’s exhaustion, most often conceptualized by sacrifice or divine fatigue. The world geography identifies with the anatomy of a self-gutted god. Practically, material creation is most likely the complete revelation of God’s body autopsy. As each body decomposes, everything in it is an illusion. An axial approach of the phenomenon exists in all religious systems. The created element’s origin is exterior, with or without a pre-existing matter, by a god’s sacrifice or only because it has to be that way. This is the starting point of the discussion on the symbolism of axiality as a reason for the constitution of the language of creation, capable of retelling the imaginary construction of myth in an oral and then written form.

Review of Evans (2014): The language myth: Why language is not an instinct

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Beyond caricatures: Commentary on Evans 2014

Beyond caricatures: Commentary on Evans 2014 Farrell Ackerman and Robert Malouf The language myth: Why language is not an instinct. By Vyvyan Evans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xi, 304. ISBN 9781107619753. $29.99. ‘In order to understand what another person is saying you must assume it is true, and try to imagine what it might be true of.’ —George Miller, quoted by Ross (1982:8) As will be familiar to a Language audience, many of the central questions of language study were identified by luminaries of language—Wilhelm von Humboldt, Hermann Paul, Ferdinand de Saussure, Mikołaj Kruszewski, William Dwight Whitney, Edward Sapir, Leonard Bloomfield, John R. Firth, Roman Jakobson, and Charles Hockett, among others—who preceded both mainstream generative grammar (MGG) and modern cognitive/functional approaches.1 These earlier generations of linguists were both awed and challenged by the intriguing properties of human languages. How can they be understood as biological, physiological, cognitive, and/or social objects? What is the relation between the synchronic and diachronic aspects of language, and how does this impact the definition of the linguistic objects to be explained? What is the nature of the different (sub)systems that make up language, and how are they learned so quickly, without explicit instruction? Are there unifying properties underlying the obvious diversity of languages? Can an understanding of other animal communication systems provide insight into human language? How does language development, both in communities and in individuals, relate to issues concerning phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of other traits and behaviors in different complex adaptive systems? Today, theoretical linguists largely agree that these and other big mysteries present challenges for the scientific study of human language. Divergences among modern approaches largely come down to the different bets they make about the best ways to address these questions. Disagreements concern different hypotheses about appropriate analytic assumptions, relevant methodologies of inquiry, effective theoretical constructs, the relevance of empirical crosslinguistic data to favorite theoretical assumptions and theory construction, and the relations between linguistic inquiry and research in other disciplines that explore the phylogeny and ontogeny of other natural complex phenomena. So, one could argue, it is not the fundamental questions that distinguish different approaches, but rather the variety of hypotheses marshaled to address them. In this context, theoretical linguistics should exhibit vigorous, substantive cross-theoretical debate about both [End Page 189] analyses of particular phenomena and the general assumptions and methodologies that guide competing analyses. If this was the state of discourse among the more commanding voices in the field, we doubt that Evans’s The language myth (TLM) would have been written. The book reflects the combat rather than the convergences (both acknowledged and not) concerning ideas and methodologies that have begun to characterize modern research in grammar. Many linguists are collaborating and synthesizing across research traditions and theories that have conventionally ignored one another or paid just enough attention to disparage each other, largely by misrepresentation and triumphal dismissal. The new pluralistic and interdisciplinary research is moving beyond the caricatures of familiar theoretical paradigms. TLM and the responses from MGG that it has generated, however, seem set on perpetuating the culture of caricature. This diminishes a focus on the necessarily multidisciplinary qualitative and quantitative study of language and, thereby, impoverishes efforts to popularize its real mysteries and results. We suspect that many readers will find the tone of TLM to be baitingly belligerent and occasionally obnoxious: for example, E employs sometimes recurring dismissive phrases (‘the language-as-instinct crowd’, ‘Chomsky and co.’, ‘self-dubbed evolutionary psychologists’, ‘swathes of fervent followers’, etc.) and makes irritating references to ‘supermodels’ in language examples throughout. He intends to deliver a drubbing and does so in a way that likely would leave a critical but naive reader wondering what is wrong with this unfamiliar field called linguistics. It is a jeremiad against perceived inequity, if not iniquity, in the house of language analysis.2 E places a vigorous focus on ‘debunking the myths’, as he understands them: While I, and a great many other professional linguists, now think the old view is wrong, nevertheless, the old view—Universal Grammar [(UG)]: the eponymous ‘language myth’—still lingers; despite being completely wrong, it is...

Myths, magic, and poorly drawn battle lines: Commentary on Evans 2014

Myths, magic, and poorly drawn battle lines: Commentary on Evans 2014 Kamil Ud Deen Evans’s The language myth: Why language is not an instinct is a not-so-subtle attempt to counterweigh Steven Pinker’s (1994) The language instinct. For more than two decades now, opponents of Pinker’s view of language have lamented the fact that introductory students (and nonspecialists in general) do not have access to a well-written, accessible, yet opposing, view of how language works. Enter The language myth (TLM), which reads like a manifesto out of the School of Cognitive Linguistics. In that respect, the book is a welcome addition to the fray, since there is, after all, significant room for discussion on just about every major point within the nativist program (dubbed, by E, the ‘language-as-instinct hypothesis’). The basic premise of the book is that the language-as-instinct hypothesis consists of several related myths, which, when combined, provide the veneer of a believable theory. E deconstructs the overall hypothesis into six myths and attempts to debunk each of them individually. The manner in which this is organized and presented is both superbly readable and, unfortunately, fatally flawed. While it sounds like a good idea to present succinct ‘myths’, followed by a methodical take-down of each myth, this need for succinctness and ease of reading means that E is forced to [End Page 197] simplify some very complicated and controversial facts. Debates that span decades and that have consumed thousands of printed journal pages are summarized into mere sentences, often in a way that is most pernicious for the language-as-instinct camp. Ultimately, the descriptions of the ‘myths’ are such gross misrepresentations of the generativist field, such cartoonish caricatures of the mainstream of generativist thinking, that it makes the debunking of said myths rather hollow. Let us begin with a relatively minor example, followed by more serious objections below. The first myth addressed by E is that human language is fundamentally distinct from other forms of animal communication. E’s position is that animal communication forms a continuum, with human language the bookend on the complex side of the continuum. The way the argument is made is rather simple: Charles Hockett’s design features of language are presented, and then it is shown that various forms of animal communication share these features. E’s point is that for every feature of language, some form of animal communication exists that shares that particular design feature. For example, for the design feature ‘displacement’, E points to some evidence that chimps and other primates are able to refer to objects that are no longer in view, thus displaying this feature (55). E goes down the list of features in this way (oddly, omitting arbitrariness and discreteness), showing that some form of animal communication shares each individual design feature. But of course, as any instructor of an Introduction to Language course will tell you, Hockett’s point was that human language has all of these design features, and there are no other forms of animal communication that have all of the features. This is a very basic point, but one that underscores the idea that in this book, the portrait of the generativist approach is often not an accurate depiction, but rather a crude sketch, designed to be easily debunked. Consider next the chapter on language acquisition (‘Is language innate?’). The chapter begins with a summary of the reasoning behind the nativist approach, which, once again, is thoroughly simplified and inaccurate (in fact, of the roughly eighty references in this chapter, there are only three to empirical work from a generativist perspective—Crain & Nakayama 1987 and perhaps Bickerton 1981, 1984—with the remaining seventy-five or so references overwhelmingly to usage-based empirical research). As an example of how damaging this is, consider E’s presentation of the argument from the poverty of stimulus (101): ‘The input children receive is impoverished, in the sense that language exposure is partial, to say the least; and there is no negative evidence to warn them off incorrect grammatical patterns’. This, according to E, predicts that errors should abound, and E suggests word order as an example...

Another look at the universal grammar hypothesis: Commentary on Evans 2014

Another look at the universal grammar hypothesis: Commentary on Evans 2014 Adele E. Goldberg It is important to recognize that The language myth (TLM) is not a research monograph, but is instead aimed at a popular audience, and therefore it should be judged in this light. Popular books necessarily oversimplify certain issues, on pain of not being very popular, yet TLM does satisfy its intended purpose: it demonstrates, in a clear and engaging way, that the existence of a universal grammar, involving structure or syntactic knowledge that is unique to language and not learned, is quite far from established fact (see also e.g. Ambridge et al. 2014, Christiansen & Chater 2008, Elman et al. 1996, Evans & Levinson 2009, Everett 2012, Goldberg 2013, 2016, Hurford 2012, Newmeyer 2016, Sampson 2005, Tomasello 1995). The position that TLM counters is no straw man, as the following easy-to-find quotes make clear (boldface added): Two facts about language learning are indisputable. First, only a human baby, but not her pet kitten, can learn a language. It is clear, then, that there must be some element in our biology that accounts for this unique ability. Chomsky’s Universal Grammar (UG), an innate form of knowledge specific to language, is a concrete theory of what this ability is. (Yang 2004:451) Generative linguistic theory stands on the hypothesis that grammar cannot be acquired solely on the basis of an analysis of the input, but depends, in addition, on innate structure within the learner to guide the process of acquisition. (Lidz et al. 2003:295) the most controversial claim of Noam Chomsky’s is that Language is also an instinct. Many parts of Language are built in, or innate. Much of Language is an ability hard-wired into our brains by our genes … . There are very good reasons to believe … that a human faculty for Language (perhaps in the form of a ‘Language organ’ in the brain) is innate. We call this facility Universal Grammar (or UG). (Carnie 2013:19) [End Page 200] Many of the familiar arguments in favor of a universal grammar are addressed and countered in TLM, and the book weaves together discussions drawn from research in linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and anthropology. Evans agrees that human language is distinct from animal communication in many ways, even while he draws certain parallels between them (Ch. 2). While it follows from this generally agreed-upon conclusion that humans’ general capacity for language is in some way unique to our species, it simply does not follow that any knowledge or structure that is specific to language need be ‘innate’ (cf. Adger 2015:77 and the first quote above). Instead, a combination of prerequisites for language may be required, prerequisites that need not themselves be specific to language and that may interact with one another and the environment in complicated ways (Ch. 4). This more subtle perspective concerning how phenotypes relate to genotypes has much evidence in its favor and is, in fact, uncontroversial within biology generally (see Blumberg 2005 for a popular overview). E addresses the issue of whether there exists evidence of provable (i.e. falsifiable) language universals in Ch. 3. He briefly surveys a range of work on absolute and implicational (i.e. ‘if a language has X, then it has Y’) universals, and covers topics ranging from phonology to syntax in clear and jargon-free prose. He concludes that falsifiable language universals are relatively rare and are typically explicable in terms of the functional pressures of communication as well as domain-general constraints (see also Newmeyer 2016). Ch. 4 focuses on language acquisition, emphasizing the role of statistics in the input, as well as the functions of constructions that are learned. This chapter also reviews some important evidence that human ‘cultural-intelligence’ serves as a key and uniquely human prerequisite for language (see also Ch. 8; and for relevant data, see Herrmann et al. 2007, Tomasello 2009). Ch. 5 discusses the neural underpinnings of language, emphasizing arguments against a modular linguistic system. Here it may be worth pointing out that even if there do exist areas in the typically developed adult brain that are devoted to language (as argued in Fedorenko et...

L’émergence des constructions clivées, pseudo-clivées et liées en français by Magali Rouquier

Reviews 289 the book’s mission to rethink the history of French, appears to be creating different or larger frameworks for contextualizing the development of the French language. Lodge leads off with a discussion—and subsequent dismantling—of language myths that seem to dominate previous approaches. Buridant argues for studying the history of French within a larger group of all Romance languages, against which the unique linguistic innovations of French (for example, the two-pronged negation system or indefinite on) become more apparent. In two later chapters that may have been better situated earlier in the book, Lusignan guides the reader through some key works on the history of French leading up to the current historical sociolinguistic approach, and Cohen discusses the validity and consequences of the different systems that were used in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century France to classify its languages. Interspersed with these contributions are a few chapters that examine specific instances of variation. Two chapters discuss variation within the Anglo-Norman dialect spoken in England during the Middle Ages: Trotter considers whether an orthographic alternation (-aun- /-an-) in fourteenth-century legal documents points to regional variation within the language. Kristol argues that some of the seemingly erroneous phonetic transcriptions given in the early fifteenth-century Anglo-Norman pedagogical text Femina provide valuable insight into variations in pronunciation. In a later chapter, Ernst similarly analyzes the so-called mistakes found in personal correspondence among less educated groups—namely, nineteenth-century French and Italian soldiers or emigrants. The final chapter of the volume considers an increasing homogenization in French pronunciation across the Hexagon, in contrast with the clearly delineated accents of England’s major cities. The volume also includes two other chapters that do not seem to fit into these two main categories. A very short piece by Iliescu traces the development and grammaticalization of the definite article from Late Latin. A chapter by Bauer discusses the evolving diglossic relationship between French and Italian in the bilingual Aosta Valley. Overall, although it does not necessarily present a coherent picture of what it means to rethink the history of the French language, the book does include some thought-provoking insights and observations. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis A. Kate Miller Rouquier, Magali. L’émergence des constructions clivées, pseudo-clivées et liées en français. Paris: Garnier, 2014. ISBN 978-2-8124-3032-9. Pp. 205. 29 a. Copious examples and careful examinations of text structure and pragmatic properties characterize this tightly-focused monograph on three word order constructions in Old and Middle French. Specifically, the author seeks to trace the emergence and diachronic development of the c’est-cleft (C’est Pierre qui s’en occupe), the pseudocleft (Ce qui m’intéresse, c’est la diachronie), and what the author labels, for lack of an established term, a construction liée (C’est une belle fleur que la rose). These structures are interesting because they differ both syntactically and discourse-pragmatically from “canonical” subject-verb main declarative clauses. The opening chapter overviews earlier work on these constructions, combining description with theoretical critiques. The author also issues the standard but crucial caveat that, when analyzing historical data, native speaker intuitions are by definition no longer available. This difficulty in large part underlies the second chapter, where the author provides diagnostics for teasing apart true clefts from numerous sequences that superficially resemble clefts but cannot be properly analyzed as such. Although this chapter highlights the difficulties encountered in historical data, it testifies to the author’s rigor in selecting (and excluding) data for analysis and leaves the reader confident in the data collection methods. Chapter 3, devoted to the c’est-cleft, revisits debates on the nature of the subject pronoun ce and presents a carefully organized series of instantiations of the c’est-cleft in Old and Middle French. Although each subtype of cleft (for example, temporal adverbial clefts, prepositional clefts, causal clefts) is clearly illustrated with one or more examples, low overall token counts preclude anything beyond an elementary diachrony of the emergence of clefts in Old and Middle French. Chapter 4 reveals that pseudo-clefts, as instantiated in modern French, emerged only in the middle...

Two views on language ecology and ecolinguistics

It is shown that the definition of the subject area of Haugenian ecolinguistics is methodologically inconsistent because of the implicit biomorphic metaphor, the language myth, and indiscrimination between the two different approaches to language known as cognitive internalism and cognitive externalism. A more consistent definition of language ecology is given, based on the biology of cognition as a theory of the living; consequently, the subject area of ecolinguistics is defined differently, with a focus on the nature and function of language as a mode of organization of the living system (society) and its role in the development of the brain, mind, and (self-)consciousness.

Review of Evans (2014): The Language Myth: Why language is not an instinct..

Review of Evans (2014): The Language Myth: Why language is not an instinct..

Komunikacijski nivoi zaumnog pesničkog eksperimenta

This paper presents the communication analysis of the Russian Zaum poetic experiment vision. Russian Zaum poets experiment with utilitarian language, as well as scientific and theoretical discourse. They construct new meanings, rules and writing, producing hybrid cubo futurism, and archetypal and mythic language. This paper analyses the collapse and deconstruction of grammar, poetics and ways of writing utilitarian speech, as well as openness verse, interweaving narrative and non-narrative poetic structure. The Zaum poetic experiment shows intermedia complexity (opera “Victory over the Sun”), ambiguity (Hlebnikov) and fluidity whilst dealing with the utopian visions of a new world.

Richard J. Watts: Language Myths and the History of English

Richard J. Watts: Language Myths and the History of English

The Language Myth: Why Language is Not an Instinct Edited by VyvyanEvans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) [Pp. 304.] ISBN 978-1-107-61975-3. £45.00 (hbk). £18.00 (pbk)

International Journal of Language & Communication DisordersVolume 50, Issue 5 p. 719-719 Book Review The Language Myth: Why Language is Not an Instinct Edited by Evans Vyvyan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) [Pp. 304.] ISBN 978-1-107-61975-3. £45.00 (hbk). £18.00 (pbk) James Law, James Law [email protected] Department of Speech and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UKSearch for more papers by this authorNick Riches, Nick Riches Department of Speech and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UKSearch for more papers by this author James Law, James Law [email protected] Department of Speech and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UKSearch for more papers by this authorNick Riches, Nick Riches Department of Speech and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UKSearch for more papers by this author First published: 20 March 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12168Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume50, Issue5September‐October 2015Pages 719-719 This article also appears in:James Law Tribute Virtual Issue RelatedInformation

The dangling participle – a language myth?

Usage problems are a prickly affair. Not only are speakers' attitudes towards them divided and do they tend to fluctuate, but also the problematic statuses of alleged problems are debatable. Hence, studying usage problems sometimes feels like manoeuvring through a minefield. Stepping into the disputed terrain of language use requires a solid understanding of what the subject matter is, as well as what people think about these so-called usage problems.

Crazy Brave: A Memoir by Joy Harjo (review)

Reviewed by: Crazy Brave: A Memoir by Joy Harjo Belinda Acosta (bio) Joy Harjo. Crazy Brave: A Memoir. W. W. Norton. Reading one of this nation’s most critically acclaimed and award-winning poets, we should not be surprised at how much is accomplished in Joy Harjo’s slender volume Crazy Brave: A Memoir (164 pages). A Native American of the Mvskoke (Creek) Nation, Harjo has written in her newest work more than a conventional memoir. It’s a multifaceted creation story. At one moment, it’s a dry-eyed autobiography of a young Native American girl coping with her harsh reality; in the next, it’s a spiritual journey; in another, a slice of political history; and finally, it’s a testament to the saving grace of the arts. In between, Harjo contemplates what she’s lived with: introspection, empathy, and when necessary, mercy. Divided into four sections, each opens with a tribute to one of the four directions (as is common in Native American traditions). In this context, the practice also orients readers to the period of her life that she will be covering: East is the direction of beginnings. It is sunrise. When beloved Sun rises, it is an entrance, a door to fresh knowledge. Breathe the light in. Call upon the assistance you need for the day. Give thanks. . . . East is also the direction of Oklahoma, where I was born, the direction of the Creek Nation. In this enchanting first section, Harjo captures the reality of childhood with unsentimental clarity, yet this inviting opening may also be the most challenging. Commingling the language of myth, history, and memory, Harjo takes readers back and forth through time, from her prebirth when she “heard the soul that was to be my mother call out in a heartbreak ballad” and on to her birth and childhood. Working her narrative like a bellows, she expands on the particulars of her life with moments from her familial and native people’s history to create a text that is both personal yet anchored in the larger world—the physical and the spiritual. Everything is connected, Harjo reminds her readers. Each life touches another, no matter the span of time separating them. “North is the direction where the difficult teachers live” is how Harjo begins the next section. Guided by the mothers in her life—her mother, grandmother, and other matrilineal elders—Harjo directly benefited as well as suffered from their past deeds. Poor choices in men, grinding poverty, and self-doubt are recounted [End Page 160] at the same time that she celebrates her mothers’ unique gifts, gifts that Harjo as a young girl is unconsciously but purposefully cultivating in herself. Drawn to Earth by her mother’s singing, music did and still plays a huge role in her life (her readings often include her playing sax). Painting, dance, theater, and finally poetry would later make their mark as she struggled to understand her world and her place in it. In each section of the book, we come to appreciate just why Harjo is admired for her use of mythic language influenced by her Native American worldview and the orality of her culture. (“Written text is, for me, fixed orality,” she said in Soul Talk, Song Language, Conversations with Joy Harjo, 2011.) At turns magical and sublime, Harjo nonetheless maintains a writer’s allegiance to unadorned truth telling. Make no mistake, Harjo’s early life was difficult. She did have an alcoholic father. She did have a menacing stepfather. She did get pregnant as a teenager. She did leave home too soon. She did give birth without the benefit of a personal, caring friend or relative in a facility where, in addition to being treated as if she were sure to be an incompetent mother, sterilization was matter-of-factly suggested as birth control. The beauty of Harjo’s prose—thoughtful, lofty, yet hard and lovely as polished stones—sweetens these bitter moments. In the end, Harjo’s memoir offers a study of how the arts not only influenced her life, they saved it. “It was the spirit of poetry who reached out and found me as I stood there at the...

Ethnic Fluidity in Ephesians

This essay examines Ephesians in light of current research in ethnic studies. The methodological advance of such an approach is twofold: first, it moves the exegesis of the domestic codes to the wider frame of the letter; and, second, it goes beyond the limited hermeneutical framework of the ‘origins’ of the reconciliation language to the more productive examination of its function in the text. The concept of ‘one new humanity’ provides evidence for the author's ethnic reasoning, which participated in ancient cultural affirmations of the essential fluidity and changeability of all ethnicity. The author of Ephesians domesticates the mythical language of baptism by making it fit the conventional morality of a household economy, thus presenting the letter's most important ecclesiological concept, that of ‘the body of Christ’, as a unity that is more moral than mythic.

Review of Watts (2012): Language Myths and the History of English

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Studying attitudes to English usage

Attitudes to English Usageis the title of a book published in 1970 by W. H. Mittins, Mary Salu, Mary Edminson and Sheila Coyne from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne that reported on an enquiry held among some 450 informants concerning the acceptability of 55 usage items. These items had been selected because they were at the time ‘subject to variation in practice and dispute in theory’ (Mittins et al., 1970: 4), and they include sentences likeHe refused to even think about it,It looked like it will rainandEveryone has their off-days. In each case the offensive feature had been highlighted so that informants would know what they had to comment on:to even think(a split infinitive), the use oflikeforas if, and oftheirwith a singular antecedent (everyone). For fifty sentences the informants had to indicate acceptability in informal speech, informal writing, formal speech and formal writing, and for the remaining five only for informal and formal writing, since usage of these items was believed to be restricted to writing (1970: 4). The sentences were subsequently ranged from highest general acceptability (did not doaswell as) to lowest (veryunique), and correlations were calculated with the occupation of the informants (students, teachers, lecturers, examiners and non-educationists), while the items were also classified as colloquial (pretty reliable), etymological (data is), grammatical (did it quicker) and lexical/semantic (inferred/implied), or as language myths, ‘where the censorious tend to invoke a prescription of dubious authority’ (dangling participles) (1970: 15). The main part of the book dealt with the individual constructions, analysing the reasons for their status as debated usage items and providing further historical context in the process.

The arts of memory

For linguists, anthropologists and archaeologists, the emblematic image always and everywhere preceded the appearance of the sign. This myth of a figurative language composed by icons—that form the opposite figure of writing—has deeply influenced Western tradition. In this article, I show that the logic of Native American Indian mnemonics (pictographs, khipus) cannot be understood from the ethnocentric question of the comparison with writing, but requires a truly comparative anthropology. Rather than trying to know if Native American techniques of memory are true scripts or mere mnemonics, we can explore the formal aspect both have in common, compare the mental processes they call for. We can ask if both systems belong to the same conceptual universe, to a mental language—to use Giambattista Vico’s phrase—that would characterize the Native American arts of memory. In this perspective, techniques of memory stop being hybrids or imprecise, and we will better understand their nature and functions as mental artifacts.

The Final Apocalypse of Phallocentrism: Irigarayan Openings to the Matrix of Male Desire and Correction of the Non-male Subject in the Book of Revelation

Mythical stories are, according to Luce Irigaray, one source where the matrix of repression, desire and correction of the female body is made visible. The Book of Revelation is one of the parts of the Bible told in a typical mythical language framework. It is also one of the most infamous biblical books because of its misogynist approach and repeated use of female stereotypes such as the whore and the pure bride. The purpose of this article is not to deny the validity of this feminist critique, but to open up the meaning of the story of Revelation from an Irigarayan perspective as also to include possibilities of a counter-story where phallocentrism is challenged and finally altered into a new era where women, as well as other previously objectified categories, are aware of themselves as subjects in their own right.