What are social dichotomies? Identify and define four sets of social dichotomies that exist in the United States.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Social dichotomies

In a previous posting I have advanced a thesis. Institutionalized bilingualism is divisive and unfortunate, as seen in Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka. Provided that there is a single dominant language, multilingualism is much less corrosive. In the Roman Empire Latin fulfilled this role; in Switzerland German has this status de facto. This contrast is why I view the coming bilingual regime in this country with foreboding.

There are more general patterns of social dichotomy. Anthropologists have observed moieties in tribal societies. In a given village about half the people belong, say, to the eagle clan, the other half to the wolf clan.

Such social dichotomies are common the microworld of academia, where departments tend to split into two factions. A friend who taught in the music department of several major universities noted that in each instance the faculty tended to divide up into composers and musicologists, on the one hand, and executants (conductors, singers, instrumentalists), on the other. This might be termed a structural dichotomy. Elsewhere there is a split between the professors who favor emphasizing undergraduate education as opposed to those who stress development of graduate teaching and research. Sometimes the division reflects the politics of the outside world. A friend who did graduate work in Spanish at a major university said that the faculty tended to divide between the supporters of Gabriel García Márquez and Pablo Neruda, on the one hand, and advocates of J. L. Borges and Mario Vargas Llosa, on the other. The student could tell the instructor’s politics from the reading list. The first group favored the Left, the second the Right. For want of a better term, all the divisions noted in this paragraph may be termed natural ones, as they have some objective basis.