Cultural Appropriation take
I hate that you cant really talk about appropriation in public spaces without getting shouted at.
Cultural Appropriation is a value neutral term. It's just something that happens when two cultures are in contact with each other. The problem is when a culture appropriates something in a way that exploits that culture, or is disrespectful towards it. American culture in particular has a bad habit of making things it appropriates super bland and inaccurate. But 🤷
Cultural Appropriation take
Debussy appropriated lots of ideas from Indian and Southeast Asian music, and he was one of the best and most innovative Western composers of the late 19th and early 20th century. Saying he was appropriating their musical ideas isn't an insult, it's just a true statement -- he got a lot of ideas from music at a world culture fair, which then inspired him to go see those cultures firsrhand, which directly led to a lot of his innovative western-form-breaking music.
Cultural Appropriation take
@jacethechicken Appropriate basically means 'stealing'. So, the phrase isn't neutral. It implies that the 'culture' has been taken and used without permission of those who created it.
The word itself is synonymous with usurp or hijack.
I don't think it's fair to say the term is value neutral.
Cultural Appropriation take
@Surasanji I disagree. Appropriate doesn't mean steal, it means appropriate -- words don't just mean exactly the same thing as other words, words don't even always mean the same thing as themselves -- but it's closer to being synonymous with incorporate. It's not as if one can't respectfully incorporate ideas from another culture into their own. The problem isn't the mere act of appropriation, the problem is doing so disrespectfully or exploitatively.
Cultural Appropriation take
@Surasanji I think it's patently absurd to imply that cultures cannot incorporate ideas from another culture in a morally okay way. It happens all the time, just as a consequence of cultures interacting. American culture is just not very good at doing so respectfully or non-exploitatively, so the word leaves a bad taste in our mouths.
Cultural Appropriation take
@jacethechicken I agree with you, but that isn't appropriation. That's cultural drift and cultural diffusion. The gradual inflow and outflow of cultural ideas, the change of what is and is not expected, or the sharing and adoption of cultural things.
I realize it might be a semantic difference, but appropriation and cultural drift and diffusion are different things.
Cultural Appropriation take
@jacethechicken Sort of, but not really. The neutral terms you're looking for are Cultural Drift and Cultural Diffusion.
The Non-Neutral, the one that indicates a negative cultural interaction is 'Cultural Appropriation'.
My point is Cultural Appropriation is not Neutral. It is a negative thing whereas Cultural diffusion and Cultural Drift are the neutral forms of what you're talking about.
At least, that's how I understand it.
Cultural Appropriation take
@Surasanji again, nobody (including dictionaries) gets to prescribe meaning to words. The only purpose of words is to convey ideas -- and we're talking about the same ideas, just using different terms, which is very common in human languages. Words can mean multiple things, and ideas can be conveyed with different words.
Arguing about what a word ""means"" is pretty pointless from a linguistics point of view, words mean exactly the idea we're using them to describe 🤷
Cultural Appropriation take
@jacethechicken That's not really true. English doesn't have a language college, but languages like French do. A body which specifically decides what words mean what and what is officially part of that language.
I think we're meaning the same thing, though, just disagree on the language involved. :)
Cultural Appropriation take
@Surasanji and L'Academie Francaise is pretty consistently derided by the linguistics field as a whole, as well as most native French speakers (who continue to say E-Mail regardless of what L'Academie says) -- and is the butt of about 41% of linguistics jokes c:
Cultural Appropriation take
@Surasanji so we're using different words to talk about the same thing 🤷
that happens all the time, language is very imprecise and people use different words to convey the same meaning