Aloha,
On 1/15/2006 at 1:56 PM jacqueline simpson wrote:
>Naturally, I let the author's view prevail, and we
>agreed to call him a 'supernatural entity'. As it was
>only a single article, we could agree this compromise.
>But if I'd been editing, say, an Encyclopedia of
>European Folklore, it would have been a more
>troublesome problem.
I generally give a great deal of weigh to the descriptive terms
and classification schemas of those who use them in their
ordinary lives. If they insist that A is not a member of category
X, then I think that this point is worthy of note.
Although such differences often show up among speakers of
different languages-and are therefore obvious cultural differences--
I think that it may be especially telling when descriptive or
classificatory differences show up among speakers of a common
language. Here they probably reveal cultural differences that
many speakers would not expect.
In regard to technical description and specialist classification,
the proliferation of distinctive sub-categories or exceptional
instances is one of the purposes such terms and schemas serve
to elaborate.
As other posts in this thread have pointed out, the terms *etic* and
*emic* imply (and probably require) a certain worldview that,
while enabling verbal cleverness, remains muffled in certain
characteristics of languages and language analysis and cultural
circumstance.
Musing If I Cannot Articulate Particular Sounds, Am I Phoney-Emic? Rose,
Pitch
<<Those who rule the symbols rule us.>>
__Alfred Korzybski: Science and Sanity
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