Language

"White man speak with forked tongue: White man speak dicotomy, His language expresses the values of the split world, valuing the positive and devaluing the negative in each division: subject/object, self/other, mind/body, dominant/submissive, active/passive, Man/Nature, man/woman, and so on. The father tongue is spoken from above. It goes one way. no answer is expected, or heard."

This is an except from Ursula LeGuin's Dancing at the Edge of the World, p. 149 1986.

What is the source of dualism in Western ideas?

Is it necessary to see and define things is opposites? How does this aid or hinder our ability to see? Does this way of seeing and speaking limit the way in which we understand the diversity of the physical and social world around us?

Send me your thoughts on these questions.

email me at: bmori@oboe.calpoly.edu

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