Franz Boas' Approach to Language
Roman Jakobson; Franz Boas
International Journal of American Linguistics
, Vol. 10, No. 4. (Oct., 1944), pp. 188-195.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0020-7071%28194410%2910%3A4%3C188%3AFBATL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4
International Journal of American Linguistics
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FRANZ BOAS' APPROACH
TO
LANGUAGE When trying to sum up the linguisticheritage of Franz Boas, there emerge in mymemory our long conversations on the sci-ence of language. Talks or rather delight-ful lessons, where the great master initiatedme into problems which absorbed him dur-ing the last years of his life. How he loved
this
science! In the autumn of 1942 a tele-phone call from Boas informs me that hehas been ill, but feels better today and asksme to visit him.-In the afternoon?-"No,at once, later it may be worse, and
I
wouldlike so much to have a linguistic talk." Andin order to justify such haste he added:
"It
was so hard to spend ten whole days with-out scientific work." There is somethingof Itarcus Aurelius in this sentence as wellas in Boas' whole life.Linguistics was often erroneously thoughtto play a subordinate role among his mani-fold activities.
It
is
true that he came tothe humanities from a quite different field;at first Boas specialized in physics and geog-raphy, and he always had to confess himselfa self-made-man in "the science dealing withthe mental phenomena," particularly
in
linguistics. The only linguist he met in hisstudent years was Steinthal, but Boas wasnot yet interested in language and after-wards he regretted never to have attendedthe lectures of that enquiring thinker. Self-instruction can become a danger, but inBoas' case it was his great power: he re-mained free of the various prejudices andantiquated survivals which weighed heavilyon linguistics and ethnology. He came fromnatural sciences with a demand for reliableand rigid method but he had no ambitionsto force naturalistic habits on the humani-ties. On the contrary, he asserted andespoused the autonomy of humanities andjust because he knew perfectly both domains-the natural and the social sciences, henever could confound them and carefullydistinguished "human language, one of themost important manifestations of mentallife," and cultural phenomena in general fromtheir "biological premises." He repeatedlyinsisted upon the impossibility of explaininga linguistic or some other cultural structureas due to the natural environment and heconfessed both his former exaggerated beliefin the importance of geographical determi-nants with which in his youth he had startedhis first expedition (1883-84), and "thethorough disillusionment in regard to theirsignificance as creative elements in culturallife," a resolute disillusionment which isalready reflected in his first piece ofetho-logical work-The Central Eskimo (writtenin 1885).It is worth mentioning, that just this tripto Baffinland definitely turned the interestof the scientist from geography to ethnology,and the leading place in his wide ethnologi-cal work belongs to linguistics. The
FIRST
Boas study on American Indians and hisfirst contribution to Science (1886) was de-voted to language. Curiously enough it isa "letter from Berlin"
:
his field research with"language of the Bella-Coola in British
Columbia"
took place in a Berlin exhibition,to ~vhichsome natives of this tribe merebrought. Since then, the languages ofBritish Columbia became a favorite field ofBoas' exploration. On one of these lan-guages, the Kwakiutl, he continually workedmore than a half century, and his
LAST
finished manuscript, which occupied thefinal years and days of his life, is a compre-hensive linguistic analysis of the Kwakiutl(Grammar; Dictionaries of Suffixes and'C'iTords
;
Texts with Translations). In thefield of Indian languages it is now the most
1
8s
NO.
4
FRANZ
BOAS'
APPROACH
TOLANGUAGE
189
exhaustive and in many respects exemplarydescription, which should be published assoon as possible.Language was considered by Boas notonly as a part of ethnological phenomena ingeneral, but even as "one of the most in-structive fields of inquiry
,"
and his motiva-tion is thoroughly remarkable: "The greatadvantage that linguistics offers in this re-spect," Boas tells in his magnificent intro-duction to the Handbook of AmericanIndian Languages(1911), "is the fact that,on the whole, the categories which areformed always remain unconscious and thatfor this reason the processes which lead totheir formation can be followed without themisleading and disturbing factors of second-ary explanations, which are so common inethnology.
.
.
."
This statement seems to us one of themost daring, most fertile and innovatoryideas ever uttered by Boas. As a matter offact, just the unconscious character oflinguistic phenomena has made and stillbrings so many difficulties to the theoreti-cians of language. Even for the great Ferd.de Saussure there was an insoluble antinomy.In his opinion every state in the life of alanguage is a "fortuitous state" inasmuch as"individuals are in a great degree un-conscious of the language laws." Boas pro-ceeded from exactly the same starting point:although "the fundamental ideas of lan-guage" are in constant use by a speech com-munity, normally they do not emerge intothe consciousness of its members. But thetraditional doctrine has become permanentlyinhibited by "the unconsciousness of lin-guistic processes," whereas Boas (and Sapiralso in this respect truly continues hisway)knew how to draw the due conclusions fromsuch premises: the individual consciousnessusually does not interfere in the grammaticalor phonemic pattern of language and conse-quently does not "give rise to secondaryreasoning and to re-interpretations." Theconscious individual re-interpretations offundamental ethnic habits are capable ofobscuring and complicating not only thereal history of their formation, but also theirformation itself.Meanwhile the formationof linguistic structures, as Boas emphasizes,can be followedand unfolds itself withoutthese "misleading and disturbing factors."Linguistic elementary units function, tvith-out the necessity of each unit itself enteringinto consciousness and becoming a separatesubject of unschooled thought. They canbe hardly isolated one from another. Andconsequently this relstive non-interferenceof the individual consciousness in languageexplains the rigid and imperative characterof its pattern-s whole where all parts holdfirmly together. The weaker the conscious-ness of the customary habits, the more theirdevices are stereotyped, standardized anduniform. Hence the clear-cut typology ofthe diverse linguistic structures and aboveall the universal unity of their fundamentalprinciples which repeatedly impressed Boas'mind: "relational functions" presenting nec-essary elements of every grammar and pho-nemics all over the world.Among the various ethnological phe-nomena the linguistic processes (or ratheroperations) exemplify most strikingly andplainly the logic of the unconscious. Forthis reason-Boas insists-"the very factof the unconsciousness of linguistic processeshelps us to gain a clearer understanding ofthe ethnological phenomena, a point the
im-
portance of mhich cannot be underrated."The place of language with regard to theother social systems and the role of lin-guistics for a thorough insight into the di-verse ethnological patterns had never beenstated so precisely. And modern linguisticswill still give some suggestive lessons to thesearchers in the various branches of socialanthropology.In accordance with these general viewsBoas endeavors "to subject the whole rangeof linguistic concepts to a searching analysis"and in his descriptive studies of variousIndian languages he tries to seize their"inner form" and to attain the most objec-
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