Levi-Strauss - Bao

Levi-Strauss explains that "On all levels of social life, from family to the state, the house is therefore an institutional creation that permits compounding forces which, everywhere else, seem only destined to mutual exclusion because of their contradictory bends" (184). This reading brought up the unavoidable topic of language and kinship relations based upon kinship terms. Some of the examples Levi-Strauss gave were regarding the distinction between siblings versus cousins (or lack thereof in some cultures) and the use of the beau/belle in noble society as honorifics. I was able to draw a connection to my own languages - English, Mongolian, and Mandarin. I've always had trouble with the English terminology for familial relations, but not so much with the others (perhaps because I learned them first?). The Mongolian and Mandarin words for family members are very similar in that there are terms for both the maternal and paternal sides of the family, as well as sibling terms for cousins that can be preceded with a denotative maternal/paternal word if you need to specify. It has always been interesting to me that age is secondary when it comes to relations - I once met a 86 year old woman who requested that I call her "older sister" rather than "grandmother" because of distant family relations and the generational ranks. But what I find curious about language is that it has the power to impact the individual's relations to other family members, both immediate and extended. And we can see, though history, that family and "house" can have a huge social and political impact. Language really acts as one important type of medium through which we connect ourselves to people, having both the ability to strengthen or reduce ties to individuals. The question that I had after finishing this particular article was at what point does the relationship become too construed by political/social manipulation -- or, to put it differently, how does the "house" distinguish who is family and who isn't?