6 ms·

You have given good examples yourself. Before the acceptance of French into humanities, it was just a language evolving with its speakers. After that it was giv

You have given good examples yourself. Before the acceptance of French into humanities, it was just a language evolving with its speakers. After that it was given the status of "official", with official grammar to maintain purity. But who decided which vernacular was pure and which wasn't? The powers that be. The privileged noble who had time for it. While it resulted in better economic opportunities for everyone (while requiring no effort from those who already spoke the pure form), it also quashed the cultural diversity. English is another example. People in most of the world learn British English, simply because English was taught to them when British ruled them because they wanted to create a English speaking cheap workforce. Now that British are gone, their legacy remains. For example, Shakespeare is still mandatory to learn in India, and novels that are today confined to humanities in Britain, are most read in India - they don't read catcher in the rye, they read The Tempest and The Woman in White etc. You can see that firsthand - Indians use idioms that long ago fell out of use in Britain. "Please do the needful" anyone? "I was doing that only"? This is not just about Indians. Germans, as I have been told, learn UK English in school. But eventually all their clients are American, so they end up learning American vernacular and spellings. They can't be blamed, every default is American now. Coming to Eastern philosophy, consider this: the earth is round, people are equal so how come there is something called East or West. It is arbitrary! It is THE example of grouping and stereotypes[1]. There is a large branch of sociology and history dealing with this idea.[2] I will leave it at that since this is closer to my heart and thus I am prone to be biased. Plus, I am still reading more about it. The idea is not that Chinese philosophers would fit in my description or not, the idea is that the philosophers you call Chinese are just a sect of a philosophers in China. But when first non-Chinese went into China, their interest wasn't in philosophy but in the money Chinese had. Through that economical agent they measured everything that was there - the economically weak Chinese philosophers were neglected and forgotten into history and the official Chinese doctrine accepted as the one true 'Chinese'. "Because that is what makes them different." It is why when China dabbles into modernism we call them copycats and not just coming to equal terms. They HAVE to be different, right? I went overboard, I suppose. I am not a good writer nor a native English speaker. Indian, actually. Regarding music, I think it should belong to science and mathematics :) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroup 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism

JetSetWilly 13y ago
> Germans, as I have been told, learn UK English in school. But eventually all their clients are American, so they end up learning American vernacular and spellings. Eh? The UK is a very large trading partner of Germany. German exports to UK 2012:73 Billion euro German exports to US 2012:87 Billion euro German global exports: 1095 Billion So, please. Who's the imperialist and marginaliser now? The US accounts for just 7.9% of german exports, so "most of their clients" abroad - rubbish. It is deeply ironic that you're complaining about foreigners studying classics of British English, while contrasting with classics from American English as though that would be an obviously superior and more rational choice.
jtheory 13y ago
You were arguing that the humanities were a tool for cultural domination, though, that cultural domination was somehow among (or even the main) role of humanities studies. My examples don't show that the humanities have any role in exacerbating the reality of some cultures dominating others, though. How does it help cultural domination if American, Christian students learn that none of Jesus' ideas were actually original to him? Certainly, East/West is arbitrary, as is whether "North" is on top of the globe or on the bottom (an inverted globe is just as valid). You can study things like this in the humanities, whereas you'll never even think about them if you take a technical track. You even mention above that there are large branches of sociology and history dealing with this -- so are the humanities enforcing Orientalism, or actually combating it? Final point, though it's more minor - about this: > Before the acceptance of French into humanities, it was just a language evolving with its speakers. After that it was given the status of "official", with official grammar to maintain purity. But who decided which vernacular was pure and which wasn't? The powers that be. The privileged noble who had time for it. While it resulted in better economic opportunities for everyone (while requiring no effort from those who already spoke the pure form), it also quashed the cultural diversity. See the Académie française (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise) -- French has not been a language evolving naturally with its speakers since the 1630s. There certainly are external forces pushing the French to adopt more loanwords like "email" and so on, but what's cause would you point to for that? Surely not French literature and language programs in other countries...? If anything, me studying Camus and Voltaire introduces more French speakers who use classical French, rather than adopting to a naturally-evolving language (in spite of the Académie française...). Honestly, this is part of what I mean about learning to support a reasonable argument. It's not effective to construct examples to "support" a point you've already committed to. You'll do better taking a reasonably representative set of specific examples of a phenomenon, discarding your earlier assumptions, and look for the best explanation. That's your new starting point.

JetSetWilly 13y ago

> Germans, as I have been told, learn UK English in school. But eventually all their clients are American, so they end up learning American vernacular and spellings. Eh? The UK is a very large trading partner of Germany. German exports to UK 2012:73 Billion euro German exports to US 2012:87 Billion euro German global exports: 1095 Billion So, please. Who's the imperialist and marginaliser now? The US accounts for just 7.9% of german exports, so "most of their clients" abroad - rubbish. It is deeply ironic that you're complaining about foreigners studying classics of British English, while contrasting with classics from American English as though that would be an obviously superior and more rational choice.

jtheory 13y ago

You were arguing that the humanities were a tool for cultural domination, though, that cultural domination was somehow among (or even the main) role of humanities studies. My examples don't show that the humanities have any role in exacerbating the reality of some cultures dominating others, though. How does it help cultural domination if American, Christian students learn that none of Jesus' ideas were actually original to him? Certainly, East/West is arbitrary, as is whether "North" is on top of the globe or on the bottom (an inverted globe is just as valid). You can study things like this in the humanities, whereas you'll never even think about them if you take a technical track. You even mention above that there are large branches of sociology and history dealing with this -- so are the humanities enforcing Orientalism, or actually combating it? Final point, though it's more minor - about this: > Before the acceptance of French into humanities, it was just a language evolving with its speakers. After that it was given the status of "official", with official grammar to maintain purity. But who decided which vernacular was pure and which wasn't? The powers that be. The privileged noble who had time for it. While it resulted in better economic opportunities for everyone (while requiring no effort from those who already spoke the pure form), it also quashed the cultural diversity. See the Académie française (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise) -- French has not been a language evolving naturally with its speakers since the 1630s. There certainly are external forces pushing the French to adopt more loanwords like "email" and so on, but what's cause would you point to for that? Surely not French literature and language programs in other countries...? If anything, me studying Camus and Voltaire introduces more French speakers who use classical French, rather than adopting to a naturally-evolving language (in spite of the Académie française...). Honestly, this is part of what I mean about learning to support a reasonable argument. It's not effective to construct examples to "support" a point you've already committed to. You'll do better taking a reasonably representative set of specific examples of a phenomenon, discarding your earlier assumptions, and look for the best explanation. That's your new starting point.