[lit-ideas] English Stereotypes (Was: Zoological Garden)

  • From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:32:13 EDT

Thanks to McCreery and R. Paul for their coments on prototypes in Lakoff  and 
Rosch.
 
When I was in Amsterdam, I read an ad to the local zoo that read (in  Dutch), 
as it showed an ostrich and some newly hatched chicks, "There's always  
something new at the zoo". Now the Dutch word for zoo was "deer garden".
 
Indeed, for the illiterate English -- who were so much into hunting, the  
_cervus cervus_ became their stereotype of an 'animal' (but not in the  
Netherlands, where the word is still used in its 'original' sense).
 
There are many more of these examples, that show how via _semantic  
narrowing_ or broadening, it's good old stereotypes (that I prefer to the  
'essentialist' prototypes of Rosch and Lakoff -- even if 'stereotype' is  
anachronistic.
 
An English hunter would come home with the game, and tell the wife, or she  
would tell him,
 
          "Now, that's a big  piece of a nice animal"
 
And 'animal' came to be associated with _cervus cervus_ that 'deer' (which  
meant 'animal') became 'cervus cervus', and, at a more literate stage, they had 
 to introduce the Latinate 'animalis' to mean _animal_
 
My point is that Lakoff and Rosch are just updating a phenomenon which  dates 
back to the prehistory illiterate times of the Angles.
 
Cheers,
 
JL



************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com

Other related posts:

  • » [lit-ideas] English Stereotypes (Was: Zoological Garden)