Utoceaiso In Guy Deutscher's You Are What You Speak

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In You are What You Speak, Guy Deutscher (2010), the author, explained how the languages influence people’s aspect, thoughts, and a society (p.215). In other words, people can make assumptions about a society from its language. Thus, people can make assumptions about the mysterious tribe found by anthropologists by examining its linguistic characteristics. For example, linguistic anthropologists can name the mysterious tribe “Utoceaiso” from their assumptions about the tribe. The first part of the name “uto” came from a “utopian” society. Utoceaiso can be considered as a utopian society. There are few reasons why people can consider Utoceaiso was a utopian society. The first reason is that there were several words for leaders, but all were …show more content…
Utoceaiso believed its future depends on children; thus it wanted wise children. The society carefully divided the stages of life between birth and puberty in seven stages to make sure in each stage children receive appropriate education. Since education during childhood was more important, there was only one term to describe life stage after puberty. Also, there are several words for children. Some of those words can be translated as “wise, small one,” “innocent leader,” and “little stargazer,” which shows what kind of characteristics the society expected from children. To make sure, it will have those wise children, Utoceaiso required every woman and man “to plant a wise one” for the civilization. “To plant a wise one” reflects the word sex in the civilization. The language obliged them to think that having a sex means to plant a wise one. Since the language obliged them to think that way, having a sex in the society was just a process to obtain intelligent children in the society. Children were belonged to the society and not to their biological parents. Since woman meant wife and mother and man meant husband and father, there was no form of family. Because everyone was each other’s wife and mother or husband and father, there was no form of family. Probably people had sex with various people to “plant a wise one,” and increase the possibility of “planting” a wise one. The unique family structure of Utoceaiso was created, because they needed wise children to obtain

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