Locating Our Language - Economics (Part Two)

We have already seen that there is power in words and ultimately our language. I suspect we will find that our language is shaped by the culture we inhabit as well as that culture being molded by our language - a perfect symbiotic relationship.

S.I. Hayakawa, in his classic Language in Thought and Action at 11, observed "words - the way he uses them and the way he takes them when spoken by others - largely shapes his beliefs, his prejudices, his ideals, his aspirations." Hayakawa was commenting on a story about a TC Mitts and of course words.

The question turns to why do we speak in economic metaphors. Maybe we speak that way because the terms are easily understood by most people and because economic metaphors describe well how we see our world. The underlying assumption must be that we live in a world dominaed by economic concerns. That almost seems too simple a premise but in light of the current economic climate, the question of whether economics and financial matters are a significant life topic for most people seems to have the resounding yes for an answer.

Another classic in this area is Lackoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By. At 244 they suggest a "great deal of everyday conventional language is metaphorical" which come from, they argue, our embodied experiences - which means as Hayakawa says the way we use words and how we hear words spoken to us in our concrete daily lives as we interact with our world. In fact these thinkers argue that these metaphorical concepts (at 3) "govern our everyday functioning down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world and how we relate to other people." They are able to conclude, at 273, "we live our lives on the basis of inferences we derive via metaphor."

I suspect there would be little argument about a statement that the US is a capitalist culture. And as such a system, capitalism is hugely significant in shaping the surrounding culture. Remember Andy Warhol and his painting of the Campbell Soup cans? In his book, titled appropriately The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, at 229, he says "Buying is much more American than thinking.... Americans are not so interested in selling - in fact they'd rather throw out than sell, what they really like to do is buy."

Generally capitalism is sort of a motivator in the sense it encourages people - to work, to produce, to compete, to earn a profit, etc. All of these things have a good about them but as well capitalism promotes desire. The marketplace is a function of what people want - the demand part of that old familiar supply and demand equation. Now our desires are not always something we know all that much about. And of course we are not in control of the supply side of that equation - business is. In fact rather large businesses are in control of the supply side and large business has been more than happy to help us locate our desires. To help us along the way we have media and technology to open us up to what is available. Remember all of the old movies? One of my favorites was Rebel Without A Cause with James Dean. Notice the smoking - in fact notice how many of the actors smoked in their roles and back in the day we had Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man. Tobacco was big business here from the beginning and continues to this day. How to keep the capitalist drive going? Promotion of desire for the products available which leads to profits and so the cycle goes.

Seems to me that our use of economic metaphors fits well with what these people are saying about us. We speak in economic terms because that is the dominant concern for most people most of the time in our little part of the world, such that it shapes how we speak, how we see and how we relate to other people - remember Don Miller's "we invest in people" and all of Nour's claims about his techniques. It certainly seems to be quite plausible that money is deeply embedded in our hearts. Remember Jesus' words in Matthew, 12:24, "For the mouth speaks out of that which is in the heart" and again at 15:18, "But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart."