16.2745, Diss: Semantics: Patent: 'Are These Truths ...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2745. Fri Sep 23 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2745, Diss: Semantics: Patent: 'Are These Truths ...'

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1)
Date: 22-Sep-2005
From: Jason Patent < patent at post.harvard.edu >
Subject: Are These Truths Self-Evident? Language, Culture and Human Rights in the U.S. and China 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 17:35:50
From: Jason Patent < patent at post.harvard.edu >
Subject: Are These Truths Self-Evident? Language, Culture and Human Rights in the U.S. and China 
 


Institution: University of California, Berkeley 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2003 

Author: Jason Patent

Dissertation Title: Are These Truths Self-Evident? Language, Culture and Human
Rights in the U.S. and China 

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics

Subject Language(s): Chinese, Mandarin (cmn)
                     English (eng)


Dissertation Director(s):
David Collier
George Lakoff
Kaiping Peng
Eve E. Sweetser

Dissertation Abstract:

American advocates of international human rights often assume that the
notion of human rights is somehow 'universal,' or understood in the same
way across all linguistic and cultural communities.  Critics of this view
often resort to universalism's logical opposite, radical relativism, which
holds that no concepts are stable across cultures.  Strong universalist and
relativist claims tend to be a priori.

What is missing is empirical investigation.  Cognitive linguistics offers
useful tools for such an investigation.  In this study, human rights is
treated as a complex cultural category which can only be understood through
underlying cultural models of what a human is:  cultural expectations of
how humans do and should behave, especially with respect to societal
institutions such as the family and the state.  The category human rights
is compared to its closest Chinese counterpart, rénquán, in a similar way:
 by unpacking the underlying Chinese cultural models.

What emerge are two complex systems of cultural models that serve as the
basis for the differences and similarities between human rights and
rénquán.  Awareness of these differences points the way not only toward a
deeper understanding of how these two cultural categories are related, but
also to some deeply important aspects of American and Chinese culture. 
This can facilitate better cross-cultural communication about any number of
issues. 




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