What does vocabulary tell us about a culture? -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 10:18:13 03/11/08 Tue
Author: Betsy Peters
Subject: What does vocabulary tell us about a culture?

On page 64 of "I See Satan fall like lightening", Girard writes, "The French language does not have a proper term to designate this sudden and convulsive violence--this pure crowd phenomena." So Girard opts to use the American term "lynching" to describe what conflictual mimesis looks like at the conversion point of crisis. If, Girard has demonstrated over and over again, all cultures in some form participate in this spontaneous community violence against the one, do all of them have a vocabulary term for the violence as we do here in the U.S.? I wonder if the lack of a word in the French vocabulary should serve as a warning flag or an indication of the lack of the action in said culture. At the same time, because Girard argues that the community normally participates in crowd scapegoat violence unwittingly, perhaps some cultures never develop a word for the mechanism because they do not even realize that they are particiapting in it. What does this mean for the American understanding of violence if we do have a term for the mechanism of mob violence? Does this mean that we have identified the mechanism?

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Replies:

Re: What does vocabulary tell us about a culture? -- CS Holden, 13:29:30 03/12/08 Wed
Re: What does vocabulary tell us about a culture? -- Erin Risch, 21:03:05 03/13/08 Thu
- Re: What does vocabulary tell us about a culture? -- Jonathan Dunn, 10:48:49 03/16/08 Sun