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  • Silverstein - Discerning 'Cultural' Concepts - Whorf On Linguistically Mediated (Mis) Recognition

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    Silverstein - Discerning 'Cultural' Concepts - Whorf on Linguistically Mediated (Mis)Recognition

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    126 views34 pages

    Silverstein - Discerning 'Cultural' Concepts - Whorf On Linguistically Mediated (Mis) Recognition

    Uploaded by

    adamzero

    Copyright:

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    of 34
    Disceming ‘Cultural’ Concepts: Whorf on Linguistically Mediated (Mis)ecognition ‘Michael Silverstein ‘The University of Chicago {Culture isthe name of «class of things and ‘may properly be said to be an attribute of the ‘extemal world as well asa concept. Leslie A. White, Etlmological Essays, p.137 orig, 1959] ‘We frequently encounter the term cultural concepts, maybe even in our very own professional or lay usage as we come to awareness of how we are using language and as we think about what the many expressions we commonly use actually might denote, But how many of us have stopped to think about what a “cultural” concept might be, as ‘opposed to merely a ‘concept"? To a realist psychological discourse, including White's is a property of an individual mind, But in most anthropological ‘or equivalent social-scientific discourse, where infact do such ‘cultural’ concept live, so to speak? Are such “cultural” concepts evidence ofthe fact that there are properties of “mind” that are, in areal sense, an emergent of social life informed by sociocentrie norms, i.e @ consequence of the existence of humans “in society?" Or isthe social scientific ‘usage of the term ‘cultural concept’ just another way of talking about what i, aftr all, really just a normative verbal usage, an expression-type that presumptively labels something else? And why do anthropologists in particular ~ as a species ofthe genus, ly inclined to relativism more generally ~ believe that concepts can and pethaps do actually differ from social-historical formation to social-historical formation? Indeed, why do anthropologists think of such ‘cultural’ concepts as being inherently bound up wit jose very sociohistorical formations, making ‘cultural’ concepts ‘essentially dependent onthe fat thatthe individual's mind both emerges and exists in the context of group-relative socal practices? In aditessng these questions, my paper i a commemorative celebration ofthe genius of Benjamin Lee Whorf, the hundredth anniversary of whose birth everyone interested in the classic anthropological problem of relativism ought to have celebrated in 1997. My discussion attempts to illuminate Wher!’ key innovative idea, developed in the last four years of his ever-so-briet st 44 years ld), as he stroggled to articulate why he doubted that the tenets of individval-centered behaviorisin and scientstic positivism are adequate to explore the Lackean issue of whether and how ‘human language mediates even the sensorially-based “reality” represented in cognition. In this final period of his lif, his thought exceeded even that excellent corpus of strace work he had earlier developed in the intellect traditions of Boas and Sapir {in anthropolog inguistics, and of Bloomfield in linguistics. For he had himself brilliantly articulated their kind of structual-functional typological relativism centered on the problem of the grammatical category, demonstrating how the categories definable in Particular language-structues by linguists distributional analytic techniques were the proper locus of cross-language comparison and generalization — what Kenneth Pike, of 3 the University of Michigan, would later (1954:8-28) term the “eric” structural-functional particulars against the universalistc “etic” space of possibilities for strmctured systems of coding categories. ‘Whois Grarmmatical-Categrial Compartsm Exempliied (Observe in his connection Who's famous chart 1940] 1956:213) comparing and calibrating the distinctive, language particular categoria strctures of “Standard ‘Average European” English grammar with hose of he Ut-Aztecan language Hop inthe “etic” area of anchoring a verbal description of an event to a presumed (presupposed) cpistemic context of observation and communication, In such a comparison, “tense'-language, that ple complete sentences English obligato ireetly-coded suffixal) categorization that differentiates a reported event as, respectively, ‘prior fo" or ‘simultaneous-with” a reference-event, in the default case the event of communication itself; we call this ‘pat’ vs, “non-pas” (also, inaccurately, “ present”) tense, Bvery finite clause in English bears a single operative tense-indicator; it ‘sa ubiquitous category expressed by an obvious word-level, or mosphological, marking ‘on a verb-word like the suffix -ed or in an exceptional case by stem-internal vowel cchange and comparable, as in cun/ran, though itis not always found on the operative

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