ANTA02H3 Lecture Notes - Asceticism, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Protestant Work Ethic
Document Summary
Metaphors we live by (lakoff and johnson) An encompassing picture of reality based on a set of shared assumptions about how the world works. Multiple worldviews may coexist in a single culture, or a single worldview may dominate. How do we explain death in secular north american culture: natural vs. unnatural death, age vs. Illness: single murder, mass murder, suicide, genetics, unhealthy lifestyle. Sapir-whorf hypothesis: there is a systematic relationship between the categories of the language a person speaks and how that person understands the world and behaves in it. In other words, different language patterns yield different patterns of thought. Reality is not just reflected or described by language, but shapes what we reality is for us. Learning a language is about more than vocabulary; so, too, is culture. We use metaphors to use ideas from one domain of experience to make sense of other kinds of experiences.