Word: linguistically
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...larger scale, though, the persistent growth of euphemism in a language represents a danger to thought and action, since its fundamental intent is to deceive. As Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf has pointed out, the structure of a given language determines, in part, how the society that speaks it views reality. If "substandard housing" makes rotting slums appear more livable or inevitable to some people, then their view of American cities has been distorted and their ability to assess the significance of poverty has been reduced. Perhaps the most chilling example of euphemism's destructive power took place in Hitler...
Alienation has been the intellectual's occupational disease throughout history, the assumption being that he must be a critic of society and established values. Says M.I.T. Linguist Noam Chomsky: "It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies." Unfortunately, human affairs often yield a multiplicity of truths, a fact that some intellectuals find hard to tolerate. In her book, Vietnam, Mary McCarthy made a strong case for U.S. withdrawal, but she rejected any obligation to suggest how it might be achieved. The fate of the Vietnamese whose lives depend on U.S. protection-well, such human...
...Linguist Stewart's eyes, this modest and unplanned experiment is one more proof of a challenging and controversial thesis put forward by a small and informal coterie of investigators who call themselves "the Cultural Mafia." Afro-American culture, they contend, is not a poor imitation of its white American counterpart but a fully developed life-style of its own. By their reasoning, the origin of the little girl's reading trouble is really simple: compared with her customary ghetto speech, standard English is virtually a foreign language...
Hidden Code. Can it be that the proverb-literally, "before the word"-provides a clue to the common denominator of all human thought? This possibility has been raised by George B. Milner, 50, a linguist at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Many anthropologists and linguists have long suspected that the human mind obeys a hidden code-just as the computer follows instructions programmed into it before it begins to "think." In an article for Britain's New Society magazine, Milner contends that the proverb may stand breathtakingly near to the source...
From the start, Charney decided that the way to talk about psychology was to let specialists do the talking. Articles ranged from "The Psychopharmacological Revolution" to "Civilization and Its Malcontents," which argued that the neurotic is deficient in his socialization, not excessive, as Freud believed. M.I.T. Linguist Noam Chomsky has dealt with "Language and the Mind," and others have presented conclusions of research projects in areas ranging from "Fantasy Differences in Men and Women" to "Political Attitudes in Children." The current issue takes on the question of "Does the Law Work for You?" with contributors grappling with the problems...