Two unrelated points

This, from the blog of the littlest J'Ro (Jonny Rose) is worth a read: http://jonathanrose.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/a-divine-comedy-my-review-bbc2s-latest-religious-sitcom/#comments

If you watched Michael Wood's programme on Beowulf (and Bartlett on the Normans) you would have seen examples of how the Norman Conquest influenced the development of language. Bartlett points out that our words for even different stages of the same foodstuff represent the division between Anglo-Saxon and Norman. If it is cared for by a peasant, rolls around in its own faeces and eats swill, it's a 'pig' (from the Anglo-Saxon old English). If it is served up on a plate for a nobleman after killing and cooking, alongside a glass of wine and some vegetables, then it's 'pork' (from the Norman French). So far, so post-structuralist/modernist use of language in reinforcing ideationally-based social hierarchies (yes, I'm looking at you, my loose understanding of the theories of Michael Foucault). As Wood points out though, many of our words for key relativistic concepts come from the Anglo-Saxon: love, forgiveness, hate, God. It's just a thought (and as indicated above, my post-modernist-fu is not strong), but I like to run with that contrast at a later date if it's possible.