Lecture 3: Constructing Reality

Question 1

Goals of the Sociocultural-Linguistic Anthropology Lectures

Answer 1

• discuss society, culture, and language as universal human traits with particular manifestations
• understand social construction: deconstruct society and culture
  
  • deconstruct: to analyze by reversing the construction; i.e. we go backwards and try to see how it was constructed

decolonialize the imagination—we’re looking at how language influences the way we imagine/construct the world

• colonialism refers to the power dynamic between the west and the non-west during the colonial period
• when we talk about race, we can’t take away the history behind it
• anthropologists were a part of the enterprise of colonialism; so anthropologists have a responsibility to talk about the differences between the west and non-west and deconstruct their cultures
• our imagination is constructed in a way that when we look around, we see races; we’re educated in such a way that a person who’s ½ black and ½ white is considered black
• it’s not about right our wrong, but about how we’re educated
• decolonializing our imagination means that when we imagine a Canadian, we don’t automatically think of a British Canadian

Question 2

Reality As A Construction

Answer 2

• our sense of reality has to do with something appearing in front of us and seeming real; “I’ll believe it when I see it”
• construction: formed by people in society, nurture not nature
• reality: a) what is verifiable or b) the world as it makes sense to us
• most of reality doesn’t come across to us without the filter of signs and language
• which means reality is socially constructed, since the filter is socially constructed
  
  • that means you can’t make up your own language or culture
• it may not always be the same as what really exists: the Real
  
  • the Real is something that exists whether or not we understand it

Question 3

Jargon vs. Ordinary Language

Answer 3

• in ordinary language, reality is what’s real
• in social science/humanities jargon, reality is how we understand the real
• for the most part, reality seems pretty real and we are well advised to live in it
  
  • not saying that reality isn’t real, it’s just not the Real; not living in reality would be something like a mental disorder

Question 4

Language Constructs Reality

Answer 4

• creates an understanding of distinct concepts and categories as if they were part of the objective world
• such understandings have bearing on our reality
  
  • e.g. race is real to us but it’s not part of the Real

e.g. colour in nature—no sharp boundaries between colours

• colour is a social construct
• “green” and “blue”—no distinction in old Chinese, old Japanese, Vietnamese, Sioux, and many other languages
• 青 Chinese qing or Japanese ao “blue or green”
• 青天 (qing tian) blue sky vs. 青菜 (qing cai) green vegetable
• the colour spectrum is continuous; it’s language that divides it into units
• different languages do it in different ways

Question 5

Perception and Interpretation, and the Whorf Hypothesis

Answer 5

perception and interpretation

• are people who don’t have different words for green and blue in their language worse at distinguishing the colour?
• the point is not that old-time Chinese could not see green and blue, but that they didn’t understand them as essentially different

the “Whorf Hypothesis”

• Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) was a chemical engineer, fire inspector, and linguist
• “each language decisively influences the way its speakers think”

particular and universal constructions of language

• how each language constructs our thoughts and imagination is particular
  
  • e.g. the word “nice” doesn’t really have a solid translation in other languages
• how language (rather than languages) constructs the thoughts and imagination of all humans is universal

Question 6

Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)

Answer 6

in Lacanian psychoanalysis, there are three stages of how the self develops:

• the stage of the real
• the imaginary (mirror) stage
• the symbolic stage (accomplished through “language”)

the real stage, ego not yet formed

• the ego is the sense of self, of being separate from others
• the real is undifferentiated, meaning the baby doesn’t know the difference between itself and its mom
• no signs are used or understood in the real
• uncategorized experience, e.g. the baby doesn’t see the mom, clock, table, etc. as being in separate categories

the imaginary (mirror) stage, the ego beings to form

• this could happen when a baby first sees itself in the mirror
• they don’t have to see a mirror, but the point is they see images/representations of themselves
• it corresponds to the icon; images rather than words (the most typical image sign is the icon)
• the baby sees its reflection, which is the icon
• the world is increasingly perceived using signs, but without words
• the ego image is supported by the authority of Mother/Father/Society
• roughly, this is the image vs. the words stage

the symbolic stage

• language appears (which is mostly symbols)
• language is learned from parents/society
• language is a complicated system; only we learn it to the same complexity that we know and use
• in this stage the world is differentiated into categories marked by signifiers (e.g. words)
• the ego is called “I”
• the idea that we can have a separate self is in itself constructed by society