Sociology 3701: Outline--Week 4
II. Language and reality again
A. Differences in the basic structure of Ojibwe (80% verbs, with a huge proliferation of prefixes indicating relationships) vs English (60% nouns).... the line between living things and inanimate objects drawn very differently... the implications of an oral language versus a written one.... How does world and self differ for speakers of
Ojibewmowin? (Remember our earlier questions: how does world and self differ for "speakers" of ASL?)
A. The suppression of language and culture for American Indians
1. Boarding and mission schools in the upper midwest: Mount Pleasant, Michigan;
Odana, Wisconsin; Tower, Pipestone, and White Earth, Minnesota; Flandreau,
South Dakota... two or more generations... numbers peaked in the 1930s but still going strong into the 1950s... emphasis on discipline; punishment for using language; loss of family environment (and therefore of parenting skills)...
2. The banning of Ojibwe Spiritual Practices. Not reversed until the American
Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978
Parallel paths in Canada and Australia (Rabbit Proof Fence)... physical and sexual abuse widespread in these schools, creating epitome of what early sociologists/criminologists termed social disorganization.... high rates of suicide, alcoholism, violence, desertion... cultures and peoples that were dying... not that these schools were ill-intended, but a basic insight of sociology the law of unintended consequences...
I think of the Greek word, hubris... as if we were gods, that could take a hundred of more disparate peoples and cultures and remake them in our image...
B. Cultural/religious/linguistic revival: Notice how the three things go hand
in hand. What about the claim that restoring the language should be the single most important priority of Indian people's, more urgent than health or economy?
"I think we're going to make it... we have to." 2000 Census--1.5% American Indian and Alaska native.... major increase previous censuses...
C. Immigrant groups: example of the Norwegians
1. Major immigration began in the 1850s, with largest proportion to what
became Minnesota
2. Foreign language press. Between 1857, and 1914, some 115 Norwegian Language
newspapers and magazines started in Minnesota. Duluth's Skandinav published
from 1887 until 1965.
2. Norwegian Lutheran churches in Minnesota
a. no sermons in English until after 1900.
b. By 1915, 22%. Then during WWI, Minnesota established the Minnesota
Commission of Public Safety, which put enormous pressure on the foreign
language press, the Norwegian Lutheran schools, and the churches. By 1918,
number of churches with sermons in English had risen to almost 40%. Dropped
back to 35% in 1919, and by 1948, had declined to a mere 2.3%.
"I have nothing against the English language. I use it myself every
day. But if we don't teach our children Norwegian, what will they do when
they get to heaven." (A businessman quoted in Norwegians in Minnesota,
Gjerde and Qualey, p. 64)
3. Ole Rolvaag and the perpetuation of Norwegian Cuture in America (compare to conclusion of Park and Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and the United States)
4. Compare and contrast the social/cultural/spiritual situation of European
immigrant and the various American Indian nations
D. Symbols and language
1. Cassirer: Not animale rationale but animale symbolicum
2. "A person gets a new language and, as we say, gets a new
soul."
3. It is by means of symbols that the past is recorded--knowledge and wisdom
are not lost but are accumulated." Charon
4. Zerubavel: "The Social Lens"
The way we organize the world, where we draw lines (the edible and the inedible,
the sexually accessible and the nonaccessible, the insect and the airplane,
the natural and the supernatural, life and death, humankind and animals) is
a social, cultural product, and since logic is a product of our own language
and classification systems, it is culturally relative.
"The last couple of centuries, for example, saw substantial shifts
in the location of the lines we draw between the sexes, the 'races,' public
and private, family and community."
"In short, instead of well-defined islands unequivocally separated
from each other, the world normally presents itself in the form of blurred-edge
essences distinguished from one another only by insensible gradations."
"It is indeed a mind that organizes reality in accordance with a specific
logic, yet it is usually a group mind using an unmistakably social logic (and
therefore also producing an unmistakably social order). When we cut up the
world, we usually do it not as humans or as individuals but rather as members
of societies."
"The logic of classification is something we must learn. Being socialized
or acculturated entails not only knowing society's norms but also its distinctive
classificatory schemes."
Benjamin Whorf: "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native
languages. The categories... we isolate from the world of phenomena we do
not find there because they stare every observer in the face... The world
is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized
by our minds--and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds."