Two Functions of Social Discourse: From Lope de Vega to Miguel de Cervantes

At the inevitable risk of oversimplification, I propose to approach as directly as possible a broad and complex question: how are we to view in an orderly way the many different social functions of language, both oral and written? I will begin with the premise that oral language, analyzed abstractly by structuralists as a "semiotic system," is more concretely the human race's characteristic and fundamental social institution; normally acquired within the primary context of the family, language makes it possible for families and schools and other social organizations to exist and to function, articulating themselves, perpetuating themselves and developing historically. Purely mechanical inventions, such as the wheel, seem not to depend on language; but human families, tribes, city-states, and nations both constitute and are constituted by their verbal discourse. And the invention of writing, the "technologizing of the word," as it has been aptly characterized by Walter J. Ong, went hand in hand with an economic, social, and cultural revolution

Diglossia in New Spain

I had better begin with a definition of diglossia, or at least with a description of how I propose to use the term. In 1959 Charles Ferguson, an American sociolinguist now at Stanford, published an important article (Word. vol. 15, pp. 325-40) applying the term diglossia to the peculiar linguistic situation that he found in modern Greece, in the Arabic world, in German Switzerland and in Haiti. In all of these linguistic communities, two clearly differentiated languages are used: one for what we may call high puristic culture, and another for low familiar culture. In these communities, the child learns a vernacular language at home, and then learns a quite different written language at school. The two languages. in Ferguson\u27s examples, are not mutually intelligible. The literate person normally reads and writes only the school language, but speaks both languages, one on formal occasions (new broadcasts, lectures, political speeches) and the other on informal occasions (family conversation, marketplace discussion, popular songs). Thus, for example, all Haitians speak Creole, but only the literate minority speaks (reads and writes) a more or less standard metropolitan French. Ferguson\u27s diglossia is most familiar to us in the early European Middle Ages, when many dialects (Romance, Germanic, Celtic) were spoken at home and in the streets, but only Latin was taught at school, for reading and writing in church, university and chancery. This written language was obviously the language of authority

The Case For A Victimology of Nonhuman Animal Harms

For the last twenty years 'victimology', the study of crime victims and victimisation has developed markedly. Like its 'parent' discipline of criminology, however, very little work has been done in this field around the notion of environmental victimisation. Like criminology itself, victimology has been almost exclusively anthropocentric in its outlook and indeed even more recent discussions of environmental victims - prompted by the development of green criminology - have failed to consider in any depth the victimisation of nonhuman animals. In this paper, we examine the shortfall in provision for and discussions of nonhuman animal victims with reference to Christie's (1986) notion of the 'ideal victim' and Boutellier's concept of the 'victimalization of morality'. We argue that as victimology has increasingly embraced concepts of victimisation based on 'social harms' rather than strict legalistic categorises, its rejection of nonhuman victims from the ambit of study is no longer conceptually or philosophically justified

A História da Alimentação: balizas historiográficas

Os M. pretenderam traçar um quadro da História da Alimentação, não como um novo ramo epistemológico da disciplina, mas como um campo em desenvolvimento de práticas e atividades especializadas, incluindo pesquisa, formação, publicações, associações, encontros acadêmicos, etc. Um breve relato das condições em que tal campo se assentou faz-se preceder de um panorama dos estudos de alimentação e temas correia tos, em geral, segundo cinco abardagens Ia biológica, a econômica, a social, a cultural e a filosófica!, assim como da identificação das contribuições mais relevantes da Antropologia, Arqueologia, Sociologia e Geografia. A fim de comentar a multiforme e volumosa bibliografia histórica, foi ela organizada segundo critérios morfológicos. A seguir, alguns tópicos importantes mereceram tratamento à parte: a fome, o alimento e o domínio religioso, as descobertas européias e a difusão mundial de alimentos, gosto e gastronomia. O artigo se encerra com um rápido balanço crítico da historiografia brasileira sobre o tema

Garcilaso y la invención de una escritura literaria

La larga y lenta decadencia y caída del Imperio Romano casi extinguió la cultura literaria del Occidente; pero la paradojica consecuencia histórica de esta "felix culpa", o afortunada caída, fue la eventual resurrección moderna de la cultura grecoromana en su forma moderna: primero cristiana y europea; luego,por fin, mundial. Auerbach, en su anterior libro más conocido, Mimesis, ya había demostrado la creatividad literaria de cierta fuerza dialéctica implícita en esta tradición, fuerza derivada del contraste entre el racionalismo pagano y aristocrático,de una parte, y, de la otra, la religiosidad teocrática y vulgar, realista, de la Biblia