Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Word Associations
I wanted to address something we talked about last week. We were talking about how when a child is born and begins speaking, it refers to every male as father and every female as mother (found on page 33). And only later, as they grow do children distinguish between them. I feel that this idea is totally wrong. Children tend to bond to their parents even before they know the words mother and father. Once they learn this is Mom and this is Dad it tends to stay that way. I have never once experienced a kid address another person other than his or her parents as mother or father. This brings me to my next point found on page 35 at the very bottom. It talks about the association of words and their meanings. Without mentioning all the examples from the text, I feel it says that we associate words with things (or actions) and it stays that way. The book mentions that cloak and robe are the same as being-good and being-bad are the same. I have to disagree with this as well. I don’t feel that one word means the same for any two people. We all have our own experiences and that shapes what words mean to us. Thus it is impossible to ever have two words mean the same thing to more than one person. I just feel that this idea is totally wrong. I provide the example of ‘a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.” This is true, however it would cease to be a rose. So, if all of a sudden we chose to call roses daffodils, there would no longer be roses and thus daffodils would smell like daffodils. The point I’m trying to get at is that our word associations will stay the consistent. Mother will be who we call mom (the person we associate with mom not all females), Father will be our father (the person we associate with dad but not all males), and a rose will be a rose and a daffodil will be and smell like a daffodil. We learn these associations when we are young and it is difficult to change them. Just like an adult will associate memories with objects. If what I said makes any sense at all.
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I agree with your second point about the flowers but, with the mother-father identification as a child I disagree. When you are small a mother/father will care for you feed you and do things that you can't do for yourself. If the mother or father leaves while the child is still young you could put another adult in that place and they will still call that person with their respective term. However, I know that a little child would not go around calling everyone mom and dad but if you have similar qualities to that of there mother or father I think that they would mistakenly call someone mom or dad even if they were not mom or dad. Another point about the association, what about with adoptive children, would they still refer to their biological mom as mom and there adoptive as there first name or title?
ReplyDeleteWell I realize that adoption is a different story all together. What I was getting at is if a child is raised by two people (one male and one female for example) I feel that child will only refer to those two people as mom and dad. Now whether or not those two people are their biological parents or not is something entirely different. But a child bonds to his or her parents (biological or not) and it tends to stay that way unless a conscious change is made by the child to stop calling them mom and dad etc. I don't believe that bond can be broken by just any male or any female walking into the picture. If a two-year-old is being watched by an aunt for a week as the parents go on vacation, I honestly don't believe that kid will refer to the aunt as mom in a weeks time. In the example of adoption, over many months or years of telling the child you are to be called mom or dad, then yes, it will change.
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