Translation

You might come here Sunday on a whim.

yu mait kəm hɪr sənde an e wɪm.

Say your life broke down. The last good kiss

se yɔr laif brok dawn. ðə læst gʊd kɪs

you had was years ago. You walk these streets

yu hæd wəz yɪrz ago. yu wak ðiz strits

laid out by the insane, past hotels

led aut bay ðə ɪnsen, pæst hotɛlz

that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try

ðæt dɪdɪnt læst, barz ðæt dɪd, ðə tɔrčərd trai

of local drivers to accelerate their lives.

əv lokəl draivərz tu æksɛləret ðɛr lɪvz.

Only churches are kept up. The jail

onli čΛrčəz ar kɛpt əp. ðə ǰel

turned 70 this year. The only prisoner

tərnd sɛvənti ðɪs yɪr. ðə onli prɪzənər

is always in, not knowing what he’s done.

ɪz ɔluez ɪn, nat noɪŋ wət hɪz dən.

The principal supporting business now

ðə prɪnsəpəl səpɔrtɪŋ bɪznəs nau

is rage. Hatred of the various grays

ɪz reǰ. hetrəd əv ðə vɛrɪəs grez

the mountains send, hatred of the mill,

ðə mauntənz sɛnd, hetrəd əv ðə mil,

The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls

ðə silvər bɪl rəpɪl, ðə bɛst laikt gərlz

who leave each year for Butte.

hu liv ič yɪr fɔr byut.

Wisdom Sits in Places

Many consider Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf to be “[t]he two most influential figures in the development of linguistic anthropology.” While never coming together to write a formal hypothesis, the combined work of both men revolutionized the social sciences by asserting “that all human experience, is, to some extent, mediated through culture and language.” This notion caused linguists to ask themselves whether there was a “limit to the way different systems use classification…[d]id language vary without constraint?” In experiments with Yucatec (Mayan) speakers, scientists John Lucy established that there is a “strong effect of language structure on memory and classifying tasks…[and] revealed that English speakers classified objects on the basis of shape, whereas Yucatec speakers classified objects on the basis of their material composition.” 

In technical terms, this idea gave rise to “what…is…called a polysynthetic class…  A group, a class of items, which share many characteristics, but that need not have one element in common.” In this way language is said to be a social construct – as cultures change and grow over time language is constructed and evolves alongside it. Experiments confirm that “the strength of linguistic structuring and meaning in interaction with cultural pattering and cognitive processes.” Sapir studied this structuring and interaction in his search for universal categories in languages across cultures in the mid-20th century, when he worked among the Hopi Indians in Arizona.  Theorizing that time, numbers, and duration were universal conceptualizations, Whorf determined that the Hopi “language emphasizes continuity, cyclicity, and intensity in events, whereas SAE [a language group containing English] emphasizes the boundedness and objectification of entities.”  One example he offers relates to the phases of the sun and moon, which are statically defined periods of time in American English whereas the words referring to these events in Hopi, such as ‘morning’, translated “as ‘while morning-phase is occurring…treats phases as continuing events.” These differences led Sapir to the conclusion that some universal concepts “depend on the nature of the language or languages through the use of which they have been developed.”

A wonderful expression, and application, of the study of complexities of classification and universal meanings in language is explored by anthropologist Keith H. Basso in his ethnography Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache.  Basso discerned a problem in modern anthropology and linguistics, noting that scholars have “a widespread view of language in which proper names are assumed to have meaning solely in their capacity to refer…” But his journey through the Cibecue places with Apache lore keepers like Dudley Patterson produced for Basso a basic conceptual framework for Apache placenames as descriptions of both places and wisdom.  Basso noted, “The Western Apache practice of ‘speaking with names’…may be used to accomplish all of the following actions: 1.) produce a mental image… 2.) evoke prior texts… 3.) affirm the value and validity of traditional moral precepts… 4.) display tactful and courageous attention… 5.) convey sentiments of charitable concern… 6.) offer practical advice… 7.) transform distressing thoughts [into] optimism and hopefulness; and 8.) heal wounded spirits.”

The task that unfolded before Basso ultimately, in addition to the maps, which remain unpublished at the request of the Apache, would lead him to discover that “American Indian place-names are intricate little creations and that studying their internal structure, together with the functions they serve in spoken conversation, can lead the ethnographer to any number of useful discoveries.” Among these discoveries was the notion that “Western Apache historical tales” sometimes “tell of persons who have acted unthinkingly and impulsively in open disregard for ‘Apache custom’…who pay for their transgressions by being humiliated, ostracized, or killed.” By connecting these morality tales with the places and features of the Cibecue they “may establish highly meaningful relationships between individuals and features of the natural landscape.” In this way, places with names like White Rock Stands Up and Out are transformed, “landscapes and the places that fill them become tools for the imagination, expressive means for accomplishing verbal deeds, and…eminently portable possessions to which individuals can maintain deep and abiding attachments, regardless of where they travel.” Basso’s mapping project became an ethnography as well, as “geographical landscapes are never culturally vacant.”

Universal Principles of Classification

Returning to these classifications, Bonvillian notes that “[s]tudies of categories and taxonomies in vocabulary often focus on analyses of semantic domains.  A semantic domain is an aggregate of words, all sharing a core meaning, related to a specific topic – for example…colors.” Plants and animals are two other examples of domains.  Because domains require defining characteristics of classes of objects, ethnocentricity and even human error contribute to “fuzziness” when scientists attempt to construct them.  Nevertheless, researchers have concentrated on “universal processes” that do not emphasize “linguistic and cultural differences." This endeavor aims at providing insight into cognitive process, Bonvillian adds.

All languages, linguists note, have a word for at least two colors – ‘black’ and ‘white’ – as documented by researchers Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in a study of ninety-eight languages involving 329 color chips that were categorized by subjects.  From there, societies were classified into a total of eleven categories, based on the number of color terms present in the languages of those societies which, according to Berlin and Kay, represented “[their] order of development."  Nevertheless, as Bonvillian points out, these experiments with color only point to “universal patterns in the development of systems of color-term classification” and that the model has had to be modified several times to account for inflexions, such as the 1975 discovery of a word for ‘blue green’ in the Inuktitut language family.  As Dr. McKee notes in her lecture, the ancient Greek language differentiated only between four color types, but there can be no doubt that the eyes of the Greek people were any different than ours, and so, as is often the case, broad generalizations such as the one encompasses by semantic domains are not applicable and suffer from biases in culture and experience.

Likewise, with plants, as Dr. McKee demonstrates in Lecture 5, some basic categorization is evidenced by the existence of the word for ‘tree’ – that is, culture groups “[that] have basic lifeform terms…will always have tree. And if [they] have two, [they will] always have a word for tree and a word for grassy herbaceous thing. And if [they] have those, then you can add, in no order, bush, vine and grass. That is, special basic terms for those things. It’s less precise than the system of classifying, or the system of adding complexity to color classification.” As the specificity and/or complexity of terms increases, the classification system becomes ever ‘fuzzier’.  And for animal classification systems, all people do have a term for basic life-forms, according to Dr. McKee, as well as terms for fish, bird, and snake.  But as you climb up the tree of life and organisms become more complex, or even geographically isolated, the use of a broad classification system to ascribe universal classification for specific concepts becomes more tenuous.  For this reason, social scientists today rely on holistic but focused, specific, and targeted fieldwork by trained, educated experts who apply a broad number of theoretical frameworks to scientific matters in the humanities to capture the stories of individuals without inadvertently stereotyping.

References

Basso, Keith H. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque. University of New Mexico. 1996.

Bonvillain, Nancy. Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of Messages. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Pearson. 2014.