Anthropology Times

Status and Style in Language
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 14: 557-581 (Volume publication date October 1985)
J T Irvine
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

My mind was instantly filled with various language experiences just from reading the title of this article. I am learning that I will likely continue reading articles on linguistics after my year of self-study, so I could stand to read some type of basic introduction to linguistics.

During a discussion of studies on variance in language-use according to caste in India, Irvine writes that sometimes speakers would attempt to “caste-climb” by using speech forms associated with higher ranks and how this dynamic was “at odds with the stereotypical picture of Indian castes as rigid, immutable strata, unchallengeable and unmanipulable.” This idea of status climbing by changing the manor of speech put me in mind of several language experiences I had/observed while living in London. Several times before class or during breaks in law school lectures I heard a concern repeated. The speaker said to her group that they had to be careful not to socialize with Oxbridge people who hadn’t gone to the proper (pre-university) schools, in other words, those who weren’t genuinely members of the upperclass. The speaker seemed concerned that a non-upperclass person might try to use the prestige of having gone to Oxbridge combined with having adopted an acceptable accent to “class-climb.” One of the most vocal speakers on this matter was an upperclass person from the Indian subcontinent. I wonder whether she had a special sensitivity due to experiences in India. (Note: Many applications for upper-level jobs required the applicant to list schools as far back as middle school for similar reasons.)

American movies sometimes show Londoners with widely different accents getting together as couples or being members of the same family without comment. The reality that I observed was much different. Several times I observed (middle class) Londoners who seemed to be from similar economic backgrounds, in similar places in their careers and otherwise compatible refuse to date each other because of a difference in accent – at times a level of difference that wouldn’t seem significant to an American ear. It seemed some couples made due if they had the same accent, but their parents had different accents; but it was a source of discomfort.

Part of legal study in the UK involved acquiring a two-year training contract with a law firm. Several of my classmates significantly shifted their speaking styles to match what might be expected at a perspective law firm. One friend  said that she did so unconsciously during a short internship at a law firm. She could not reproduce the same accent outside that law firm’s environment. She was from a well-to-do Taiwanese family which placed her outside the normal British accent scrutiny to a certain extent. It appeared that successfully adopting the right accent could make things a lot smoother for her than it would for a non-upperclass British person doing so.

Irvine didn’t engage in a detailed discussion of status and style in British English, but I believe she pointed to some relevant literature in the bibliography. I’m sure I will want to revisit her bibliography at a later date.

Thank you for your many kindnesses,

S.

The Past, Present, and Future of Flintknapping: An Anthropological Perspective
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 13: 187-203 (Volume publication date October 1984)
J J Flenniken
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor….

My dearest Simone,

This article left me thinking of the various ways we make connections to the past.  Flenniken says,“As an anthropological term, flintknapping is simply the manufacture of stone tools by the reductive processes of flaking or chipping.” He also writes that “..flintknapping constitutes an anthropological concept whereby the processes of prehistoric flintknapping are better understood by modern flintknapping experiments.” He distinguished between people who simple make stone tools, artificers, and people like Donald Crabtree who are replicators, those who use the same tools, materials and methods employed by people of old (producing similar products and debris).

Shortly after reading this article, I was lost in thought about how magical it is to touch history in the way that replicators do. It’s one thing to visit the British Museum and gaze upon things that were used by such and such historical figure or to visit an historical site and touch structures and items that were used by early peoples. It’s quite a different thing to go through a similar process, to have the same considerations running through one’s mind, to make the same movements.

This connection to the past is one of the reasons that despite being tomboyish/bohemian as a child, I always loved wearing long dresses, hooped dresses, formal wear. In fifth or sixth grade I played the old woman on the “Old Woman in the Shoe” parade float. Yes, not exactly an historical figure, but … The music teacher loaned me a prairie-styled dress and bonnet to wear. I didn’t want to take the dress off. I loved gently lifting the skirt to walk up stairs. I loved the feel of the fabric brushing back against my legs with every stride. And somehow the feeling of being a bit out of place when walking among people in normal dress also highlighted the connection to a past time when most women wore such dresses and made such movements.

This connection is one of the great parts of reading your diaries. You share so many of your simple and grand thoughts, your simple and grand movements.

I’ll leave you with that.

S.

Shamanisms Today
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 21: 307-330 (Volume publication date October 1992)
Jane Monnig Atkinson
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor….

My dearest Simone,

I’ve used the word “shaman” without much depth of thought as to what shaped the meaning of that word for me. When I think shaman, I think of someone who is especially observant, skilled at mediation (person to person or person to “spirit”) and less bound by the popular cultural rituals while at the same time putting off a sense of a greater awareness of the heart of the culture. I have little connection to Atkinson’s statement that “the identification so shamanism with altered states of consciousness has become so strong that indeed the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.” It’s not as though I have no association between shaman and person who engages in trance-like states; the one just doesn’t immediately call to mind the other. And while I associate shamanisms – the plural in use to say that definitions of shamanism vary by culture – with healing and spirituality, I don’t have a strong sense of those characteristics being absolutely required for use of the term. Perhaps this is because I haven’t had much contact with some of the early writing on shamanism?

Atkinson says that D. Holmberg and M. Taussig argue that shamans “engage in the disruption of order (conceptual, psychic, social), but shamans create and sustain order as well – the coherence and viability of their patient’s beings, the continuity of a community, or the well-being of a household.” This statement speaks well to my view of shamans being in touch with the heart of the culture, any culture. I don’t think of shamanism being a term to be applied to non-Western cultures exclusively. Even some of the more exoticized descriptions of shamanism aren’t that exotic to me because there was a lot of those types of behaviors integrated into the Christian practices where I grew up (Mississippi) – trance-like states involving communion with the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, holy dancing, laying of hands to heal and the like. I think in rural Mississippi, Catholicism was a lot more exotic than most varieties of shamanism.

So it looks like I must stop here if I am to publish this before heading out to do my bit of volunteer work. This is a good change of pace from my usual mad dash to publish before midnight after returning home. Now if I could only be a little better about integrating outside reading…

S.

Language Socialization
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 15: 163-191 (Volume publication date October 1986)
B B Schieffelin, and E Ochs
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor….

My dearest Simone,

In reading “Language Socialization” and thinking about how language is used to instruct about culture, I thought more on the baby talk exercises in my extended family. Schieffelin and Ochs write about how some children’s early encounters with language are more one-on-one, mostly caregiver to child, and how others have an early immersion into multi-person conversations and how the latter learn early that conversations can be complicated and multi-layered. They also speak about how children “must learn how to appropriately convey their feelings to others as well as to recognize the moods and emotions that others display.” It seems the baby talk exercises in my family meant immersion from birth into multi-person conversations for the infant as well as early instruction on reading and interpreting emotions and affect. Here’s something I wrote earlier:

When I was younger, there was much baby talk on behalf of the fetus and on behalf of the infant. Older people would talk on behalf of infants (much the same way one might talk in place of a stuffed toy for a child) at least through a time at which the infant was aware that the talk/speech had to do with her. There was an expectation that the older speaker would pay attention to the facial expressions and body language of the infant when creating communication on behalf of the infant. Other would-be speakers might challenge poor interpretation and take up speaking for the infant with a “no, I don’t think that…” I remember these interaction being fun social experiences. Even very young children could give a go at speaking on behalf of the infant as long as the would-be speaker had the requisite language and observational skills.

I felt the whole experience helped communication between children in the family and between children and adults. I think it encouraged a wholistic approach to interpreting communications from children. The authors write of a divide between “child-centered communication” and “situation-centered communication,” and how adults with a child-centered orientation make a greater effort to decipher the verbal utterances of the child in an effort to understand what the child is trying to communicate,  and how those who were situation-centered paid less attention to or even ignored the verbal utterances of a child. I wonder whether it’s not so much that situation-centered adults were ignoring the verbal utterance, as much as it was that the verbal utterances were one of many clues used to decipher the desires of the child, along with facial expressions and body language and environmental cues.

Seems I’m pressing closer and closer to my Monday before midnight deadline for writing to you. Next week, I’ll post earlier.

Many warm thoughts,
S.

P. S.  It’s my grandmother’s birthday.  (Happy Birthday, Granny!)