the brief context of my ideas, and then Ill be quiet

[Pat Warren]

Since I am now being attacked personally I'll share a few fundamental views
I have that will put the rest of what I've tried to say into context.

I brought this on myself. Normally I keep quiet. If the info about the
Hocank project had come from the community saying "look what we're doing"
(which they probably woudln't, since it's for themselves, not for
linguists' aproval), and if it had been said that the material will be
archived at the community too and not just in the netherlands, I would have
been very happy for them.

For the rest, I brought in more ideas than I wish I would have. I have
different basic assumptions than many people on this list, which makes
constructive critical discussion very difficult. Most people in the
dominant culture don't see themselves as agents of domination, but that's
what I see, myself included. It's no longer explicit as it was even
recently (you don't call "them" heathen anymore). And I don't see personal
choice such as practicing linguistics as being a personal choice alone. I
see it within the larger framework of a culture still committed to the
destruction or acculturation of pretty much every culture in the world.
When the errors of the past are made too obvious too ignore, I see dominant
cultural institutions adapting, but not making systemic change to a
non-dominating existence. I see the linguistics that is done of languages
other than your own as an act of
domination. It's not just an objective, worthy scientific pursuit, it's
part of the larger process of our culture to contain and eventually
eliminate diversity from the world.

And that's my problem. How can you make a statement like that and expect
constructive talk with people who think very differently? I forgot that
difficulty. To me it's basic. But to others...well there's certainly
diversity of opinion there. I see myself as an agent and subject of the
dominant culture in which I was raised and live. And so I know that I'm a
dangerous person to much of the world. I don't have the respect for the
rest of creation that I would like to. I work on myself and try to change
that, but I know it's there, and I see it in the people around me. But we
are not encouraged by our ideology, roles, or experiences to be aware of
how fundamentally different we are from most people who have lived
throughout history, though I don't pretend
there are perfect societies, just that most people haven't been at war with
life. I am not fully responsible for the precarious state of the world
around me, nor the violence of my culture towards the world and itself, but
I try to stay aware of it, and creatively subvert it. Oddly, I don't see
this as at all cynical. I'm critical, but I have much hope. But it requires
rethinking structures I see as dominant, and trying to find ways to reverse
the trend. And that's what I work on. My first step is in doing linguistics
is acquiring the languages I'm interested in. Next is finding theories that
empower the meanings and structures native to the language. There's plenty
out there, like Bill Croft's radical construction grammar and Anna
Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard's natural semantic metalanguage
lexicographical approach. Tools that respect the language on its own terms
of meaning like these two approaches can make a huge difference. This
versus the lexicographical tradition of leaning on english glossing, or
assuming essentialist universal grammatical categories.
Another essential concept is making sure that work done is available to the
community, economically, physically, etc. I don't think the rights to works
should be sold by linguists to publishers. This HAS changed somewhat
recently, and that's very good. The language must remain free of outisde
control.

I hope some of my differing views are a bit clearer. But it's so very hard,
I think, when people in a discussion have such opposing viewpoints. It's
hard to remember this sometimes. Last week I made someone extremely upset
when I suggested that nonhuman animals have essentially the same emotional
potenital as humans. But that's basic to me that all the nonhuman animals
I've known are feeling, intentional, autonomous beings - which means
they're people. But different assumptions, and it's hard to understand each
other.

Thanks for you time,
Pat