Part 2: The Word of the Week
As usual, we had some spectacular words this week. Some of them appeal to my love of lauguage or culture, while others to my love of doughnuts. The decision was made much more difficult by the fact that so many of you submitted your words as "anonymous" and I therefore could not just pick fishfrog's word. I don't even know if fishfrog submitted a word! What is this world coming to? But, I digress....
The word I picked this week is supercool and one that we should all incorporate into our daily vocabularies.
This week's Word of the Week is:
Inculcate
*To impress (something) upon the mind of another by frequent instruction or repetition; instill
*To teach others by frequent instruction or repetition; indoctrinate
Between the 1880s and 1920s, American Indian children were ripped from their homes and taken to Off Reservation Boarding Schools. The goal of these schools was to systematically inculcate feelings of shame in the children regarding their own cultures, families, and language in the hope to assimulate these children into the American mainstream. It was thought that adults were beyond hope - too set in their ways, but with children we could - in the words of Richard Pratt, founder of the first school of this kind - "Kill the Indian, Save the man." These schools have far reaching affects on Indian cultures even today and account for much of why so many native langugages are exctinct or facing extinction.
5 comments:
Indeed I submitted three words, meme, meta, and concomitant, none of which you selected. I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed, but inculcate is a fantastic word.
Ah genocide, it's not just for we crazy Germans. Which actually reminds me that The New World, the fourth film by Terrence Malick, will be out soon and should rock. Heavily.
I totally guessed that Matt selected meta because I can just hear him saying it. It is a cool word. All of them are.
At first I thought this wasn't really genocide, more like culture-cide. But one of the definitions of genocide, from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (usually names that long are contorted attempts at an interesting acronym, but CPPCP doesn't do much for me) is "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." Thus it includes attempts at cultural extermination as well as physical extermination (the subject of most of the other concepts of genocide identified by the CPPCP.) So such actions today would arguably be a crime under international law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
A further interesting quote from the above link (part of the language adopted by the CPPCG:
"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups."
The word genocide wasn't *coined* until 1943, when the most notorious attempt at such was well under way.
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