Women in Technology

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• Metaphors and Categorization
  2003-08-07 22:25:52  dm1 [View]
  
  
  Interesting point, and I don't see too much influence of technology in this respect. My initial hypothesis is that technology has a temporary effect on fashions in vocabulary. If you look at Lakoff and Johnson's "Metaphors We Live By", you'll find that almost everything they bring out has been in human language for millenia. Finally, this is fairly normal: each human language has two opposite tendencies. Each is constantly changing in reaction to changes in the external environment, and each has a conservative tendency at the level of structure to allow its users to continue to communicate. Compare IT: assembler code hasn't changed over the technological change of the last 15 years; and in telecoms, where change has been superficially most radical, developers are still programming in C.
  
  Don't forget either that there might be a Whorfian effect of language structures having an effect on perception and as a result, preventing people from finding new solutions.
  

• Metaphors and Categorization
  2003-08-07 09:34:59  Mitch Tulloch | [View]
  
  
  That sounds interesting thanks, I'll see if I can get a copy at the university library. Obviously there's nothing new under the sun :)