Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Real and Fictional Animals -- Anthony's Question
In the excerpt at the end of section 1, Kaia Sand compares Ichishkiin and English saying "English fails to differentiate between the animals with heartbeats and the animals in legends." What are some of the implications for the English language (and English language cultures) that it does not directly differentiate between real and fictional animals?
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I wondered about this section and the actual etymology/language use behind it. I would argue that English often differentiates between these real and fictional animals but I am not sure on what level she meant Ichishkiin differentiates. It seemed to exoticise the language in a way that left me confused as to how I was supposed to come away from that section. The idea of what is real vs what is fictional and how we choose to name it is interesting in how we relate to space and how we remember major events in our history.
ReplyDeleteI think what she is saying here is more implicit in the coding of language than explicitly stated using the comparison. That is, Kaia Sand is making a statement about a type of people who see imagination and myth as so integral to their construction of the world that they must have a deeper code or language to access the nuances of fiction or myth. I'm not sure it's necessarily very important to point out that English doesn't include this specific differentiation- the statement is more implicitly asking us to question our values. If Ichishkiin values myth, what language nuances does English have that informs our values? For example: how many slang words could we use for "money" that other languages might not allow? I think Kaia Sand, in using this example, is asking us to think about how language shapes values in this way.
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