Anglo-Saxon World

Anglo-Saxon World is a Modern Scholar lecture course by Professor Drout. He discusses the history of early England, the many events of the tumultuous centuries after the fall of Rome, and the literature produced during this time. I enjoyed learning about the history of the Anglo-Saxons alongside the literature.

The history basically starts with the invasion of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes of the British Isles after the Romans leave the islands. The invaders bring a rich language and culture that spreads throughout England. Christianity already has a presence on the isles in the Celtic areas, but the pope sends missionaries in the 7th Century and England becomes converted within a century. There comes to be a strong monastic tradition in the country that promotes literacy in Latin as well as Anglo-Saxon. In the late 800's King Alfred the Great promoted Anglo-Saxon literacy and translated many works from Latin himself.

Professor Drout gives a great explanation of the politcal and military history involved in the Danish invasion and the events that led up to the Norman invasion. With rule by the French House of Normandy, the language and culture changed, though Anglo-Saxon continued to be spoken for centuries after. The language evolved to become Middle English, yet old contracts were still written in the older language.

The professor describes the epic Beowulf, pointing out bits of historical relevance. In fact the poem becomes a bit of a touchstone and he refers to it in almost every lecture. The course is an informative read, and enjoyable for anyone interested in English language and history. A-

The Years of Talking Dangerously

Geoffrey Nunberg is a linguist who provides commentary for NPR and national newspapers like the New York Times. The Years of Talking Dangerously is a collection of his pieces on linguistics from the last few years.

Nunberg brings a much needed perspective to our use of words. He reviews several popular words and how their use has grown over the decades. Some of the recent "word of the year" candidates get discussed, such as crackberry or truthiness.

In the second section he talks about politics and language. He brings up issues such as the redefinition of torture, the throwing around of the word socialism, and how the name Joe became symbolic for the average American citizen. An interesting piece compares the words liberal and progressive, trying to define how they are different. His conclusion is that since liberal has become a weapon of conservatives, people have moved to progressive, since their usage really can't be pinned down any better. The coarsening of political, he argues, goes hand in hand with the attitude that anybody who can't take the rhetoric is whining.

A lot of media attention is paid to the Internet (such as whether to capitalize the word itself) and its affect on language. Nunberg comments on the exaggeration around technology's affect on language, going back to the days of the telegraph. It's always interesting to discover that the alarms heard today have been heard before in history. He also talks about how patriotism is used as a weapon. "The less it costs to proclaim yourself a patriot, the less your political adversaries have to do to be accused of being patriotic--it's enough that they question the wisdom of a policy or leave their lapel pins on their other suit." I think it's important to study how words are used, especially in any discussion or argument. It's even more important when words are used to shut down discussion.

I enjoyed the insights that Nunberg brings in his commentaries. The pieces are short and easy to read, while being insightful. Nunberg shows how we come to use certain words instead of others, or why we avoid certain words--like whether the people fleeing hurricane Katrina were refugees or something else. There's a lot of meaning behind our choice of words. B+

The Stuff of Thought

Steven Pinker's book The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature presents an investigation into how our use of language reveals how our mind works. Pinker brings a solid view of language as a social construct and function of our cognitive processes.

Pinker starts out by discussing the nature of verbs and how we use them. Verbs illustrate an underlying conceptual framework of how we view the world. Sometimes verbs can have multiple meanings, as in "Load the wagon" versus "Load the hay into the wagon". In this instance the wagon's state is being changed from unloaded to loaded whereas the hay is moving and not changing state. Likewise you can say "Pour the water into the glass" but not "Pour the glass with water". These similar kinds of verbs break down when you try to use them in similar situations, and this shows the fine grades of semantics involved in language.

He then contrasts the concepts of Extreme Nativism and Radical Pragmatics. Extreme Nativism is the theory that most definitions of words are innately understood, that we have a pre-existing set of concepts that we draw on in language. Radical Pragmatics is the nearly opposite theory that "a permanently existing conceptual structure underlying the meaning of a word is also as mythical as the Jack of Spades, because people can use a word to mean almost anything, depending on the context." He talks about Linguistic Determinism, which is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in the extreme, saying that humans cannot conceive of or communicate concepts that are not in their language. Pinker rejects all three theories as extreme and proposes a sort of compromise in conceptual semantics, "that word senses are mentally represented as expressions in a richer and more abstract language of thought."

Pinker then discusses how our words break down concepts into discrete pieces. This reveals our inner formation of the world into causes and events, causers and recipients. The most interesting section I found to be the chapter titled "The Metaphor Metaphor," where he talks about how much of language is metaphoric, even if the original images are no longer evoked. Metaphors build on each other, creating a rich web of meaning. He answers the question of why the idea of "moving up" a meeting can be ambiguous: because our concept of time is either of proceeding along a line or of a river moving past, so "moving up" can mean advancing in either direction, towards or away from us.

There is a whole chapter given to profanity and its source. Part of it is rooted deep in the amygdala, a primitive part of our brains. Some people who have lost their ability to express themselves with language can still curse, and the nervous tics from Tourette's syndrome can cause uncontrollable urges to curse. The reason curses are perceived as shocking is that they are forcing negative images on others. I must admit that this section was more enlightening (and entertaining) than I imagined it would be.

This book provided a good deal of insight into how our languages are structured around our cognitive processes. Languages have built into them logical frameworks that we use without thinking about it. Language is an innate ability of humans, but there is much discussion over how much is built-in and how much is generated from society. Pinker does a great job illuminating features of English and contrasting it with other languages. I was a little puzzled at his starting with the book with a discussion of verbs, but it turned out to be most enlightening. Pinker focuses his attention on places where language breaks down, where words become ambiguous and illuminate their underlying abstractions. A