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Australian/American language and memes
Scott Holmes (sholmes@PACIFICNET.NET)
Sat, 5 Oct 1996 20:39:27 -0700
Review (www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR), struck me as pertaining to the recent
discussion of identifying "American memes".
"You know when people are always looking around for what defines our
Australian identity, or defines us as a community, or a nation or
whatever it is, it seems to me to reside less in particular characteristics
than in the fact that we share that language with one another and have
changed that language in ways that fit us, but fit us socially rather than
fit the land. That seems to me to make the way language exists here
something both more precious, because it is the source of our cohesion as
a people, but also something that we are self-conscious about in a way
that a speaker of the language in England may not have to be."
This is from an interview with David Malouf, a leading Australian novelist.
As with Australia America is a land to which our language was brought rather
than a land from which our language arose. And, individuals from both
countries are easily recognized throughout the world by their useage of that
common language.
Is it Our language that makes Us Americans, is it how we use the language?
Do either of these ideas relate to the idea of memes?
Just some idle speculation after spending the day talking to lawyers about
databases.
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Scott Holmes <sholmes@pacificnet.net> Informix Applications
4GL -- SQL -- New Era
http://www.pacificnet.net/~sholmes
---- There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, ----
---- Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. ----
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