ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces psychoanalytic perspectives into the discourse on linguistic relativity. Focusing on lexicon, it examines how words shift meaning in acts of displacement and condensation that perform the defense mechanisms of repression, sublimation, inversion, and denial. It shows how certain terms in American English (e.g., tipping, exceptionalism, liberal, red, and English) signify differently than do their equivalents in other anglophone countries. A linguistic relativizing of the phenomenon is strongly resisted, because it would problematize the configuration of national identity. The semantic shifts act to restrict meaning and cognition, which become culturally fixed and resistant to intercultural understanding. Dreamwork mechanisms effect the congealing of language and cognition.
