Five small diversions

We have puppies. Five roly poly black and white border collie pups. When I tire of researching Edward Sapir and his writings on language and anthropology I can sit and watch the puppies sleeping and feeding. The extent of their voice at the moment is mewling and soft little grffs. Most of their communication seems to be sensory: touch and smell, making a beeline for their mum whenever she comes within close proximity.

This is in total contrast to Sapir who grew up speaking and reading Yiddish (recording Yiddish folk songs), Hebrew (translating the Old Testament) and English. He then went on to study German, Latin, French, Greek and Spanish. At university he added Dutch, Gothic, Icelandic, Middle High German, Sanskrit, Avestan and Persian. Is it any wonder that after he discovered anthropology under the tutelage of Franz Boas that linguistics became his passion?

Sapir is well known for his fieldwork studying Canadian and American Indian languages. He came to believe language was not instinctive but was a product of culture. This could be another arm of the 'nature nurture' debate. The argument goes that if language is a cultural construct then cultures can have different ways of understanding . Here in Australia this is particularly significant when comparing the indigenous and settler understandings of relationship to country.  English defines nature separate to culture whereas according to Deborah Bird Rose, to the Aborigines, nature and culture are entwined and inseparable. In a very broad sense we settlers live on the land and do things to it and the Aborigines live in the land and country is a relationship. Our language patterns tend to frame the relationships in this way. This is what led me to Sapir in the first place.

Edward Sapir 

This image is from Edward Sapir: Linguist, Anthropologist, Humanist by Regna Darnell, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990.