LIR 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter Danessi and Rocci: Synecdoche, Metonymy, Franz Boas

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Language and Intercultural Relations
• Course: LIR 100
• Professor: Pelkey Jamin

Document Summary

Classificatory principle - languages serve people as classificatory devices, allowing them to organize their particular words cognitively. Franz boas - a founder of american anthropology. Whorfian hypothesis (wh) - posits that language structures predispose native speakers to attend to certain concepts as being necessary. Does not imply that interlocutors cannot understand each other. Problems occur when people are not aware of linguistic differences. Function of language was to allow people to classify experience and, thus, that it was an organizing grid through which people living in a particular society come to perceive and understand the immediate world around them. Categories of a language affect argumentation itself. Differences in grammar reveal differences in worldview. Linguistically encoded categories offer a default set of conceptual tools for making. Strong wh - the language we speak strictly decides how we reason and determines the kind of culture we create.