[Tango-L] What is Tango? (Or Tango Categories) - Part 2

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

What is Tango?  (Or Tango Categories) - Part 2

A radial category structure.
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How we human being categorize and conceptualize becomes rather complex as soon as we take the question seriously –as we should. 
Lakoff and Mark Johnson, the latter who is Lakoff’s co-author of several books, tell us that there are four major principles that operate to organize the internal structure of a given category – to wit, the propositional structure; the image schematic structure; metonymy; and metaphorical mappings.
 
All these details are most important and interesting at some level, but let’s forge ahead to look at what seems a  simple literal concept --mother.  That should be easy, no?

Following Lakoff, traditional theory should be able to give us necessary and sufficient conditions for this straightforward universal  concept.  After all everybody has a mother.  As it turns out just to say a woman who has given birth to a child is a mother doesn’t cut it.
We all know mothers for whom this definition does not apply.
The category mother is structured radially (please note, radical is something else) with respect to a number of subcategories.

According to empirical research the category mother is made up of a number of models forming a cluster category. Again, let’s take a deep breath and charge ahead.  There is the birth model, the genetic model, the nurturance model, the marital model, the genealogical model.  These together make up the central subcategory.  In other words, it defines the prototypical mother who is a female who gives the genetic material, gives birth to the baby, nurtures it, is the wife of the father and is the closest female relative. It’s an idealization that in the real world often does not come to pass.

Without spelling it out we can easily construct where one or the other model applies but not the other.  For instance, the birth mother may not also be the nurturing mother, etc.  Modern technology, such as artificial insemination, etc. have complicated the picture even further. 

One or more of these models motivates extensions, foster-, step-, unwed-, surrogate-, working-, single mother, etc.  
Lakoff suggests that there is a strong inclination to suggest that one of these models, let’s say the birth model, is the most important one.
But, not even writers of dictionaries can agree which is the real mother. 

We may assume that the different types of mothers have strong views on the matter.

Then there are the metaphorical extensions -- mother of all battles, mother of all evil, etc.

Is tango similarly structured, that is, structured radially with respect to a number of subcategories?  Lets look and see.


Part 3 to Follow