A "gap" by any other name... - 0 views
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Micah Leinbach on 06 Apr 11This article talks about how the metaphors, language, and terminology we use to describe phenomena (in this case poverty) actually impact how we act and perceive policies and reality. It calls back to ideas about knowledge being communicated via social constructions that give us one view, but may be just as accurate as a description that gives a different view or description of the same phenomena. The same language issue (particularly issues of "natural" being "good") finds its way into environmentalism. Of course, it is neither fun nor (at face value) practical to always be wary of the semantic and syntactic details of our language (coming to LC, I remember being frustrated and resistant to the insistence of some of my professors that I use "gender neutral language" in essays, rather than using "he" or "she" to refer to conceptual individuals or "mankind" to the human race) , but perhaps it matters a little more than we think. Ultimately it is hard to know exactly how our language influences the way we think and act, and the language-shaping-thinking versus thinking-shaping-language debate is alive and well. Regardless, when in a field that practices a lot of advocacy work and various forms of story telling (even the stories we tell about the history of environmentalism or certain environmental conflicts) it is something to at least consider.