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" An Ethnographic Theory of Language and Some Practical Corollaries" [Full text]

"context of situation," "concerted activity," "practical result," and education

Let us survey rapidly the uses oflanguage in Trobriand gardening, starting, for instance, with a group of people who after the council (kayaku) repair to the gardens in order to "count the plots in the bush" ... These people have to determine the area to be put under cultivation, to fix the boundaries, in short to make everything ready for the cutting of the boundary belt. The older men, with experience and a good knowledge of the ground, identify the fields (kwahila), place the boundaries by means of landmarks and trace the lines ofstone (karige'i). All this is done by means of a combination of speech and bodily activity. Movements, words and gestures are used to solve this practical problem. The natives search for oqjects such as trees, coral outcrops, or stone heaps, discuss their proper names, point out, disagree. ... Speech is here equivalent to gesture and to motion. It does not function as an expression of thought or communication of ideas but as a part ofconcerted activity. If we jotted down the words spoken there and treated them ,as a text divorced from its context of action and situation, the words would obviously remain meaningless and futile. In order to reconstruct the meaning of sounds it is necessary to describe the bodily behaviour ofthe men, to know the purpose oftheir concerted action, as well as their sociology. Speech here is, primarily, used for the achievement of a practical result. Secondarily it also fulifils an educational purpose in that the older and better-informed men hand on the results of their past experiences to the younger ones. (p 7-8)

The call for conversational analysis

If the reader is still somewhat hazy about what I mean by context, let him reflect upon the manner in which we have framed the above narrative into its context of subject-matter. It is, alas, impossible, with the means at the disposal of a present-day ethnographer to reproduce certain aspects of the context. If I could, by a good phonographic record, counterfeit the living voice of Tokulubakiki : how it trembled with emotion when he was depicting the miseries and illnesses ...; the relative rest and satisfaction of its cadences ... as he described the gradual re-establishment of prosperity in the village; the accents of awe and reverence when he spoke about the dreaded and respected power of the chiefs through their magic of waygigi ... should certainly be able better to translate the text in the sense of imparting to it its full cultural flavour and significance. Again, if by a cinematographic picture I could reproduce the facial expression, the bodily attitude, the significant gestures, this would add another contextual dimension. The gesture in at least one place ... I had to indicate because without it the words became meaningless. But please remember that the integral role of gesture in speech is quite as important for our understanding of an utterance as the one or two significant movements or indications which actually replace an uttered word.

There is no reason whatever why, in the future, an exact and physiological study of speech should not use the apparatus of sound films for reproducing fully contextualised utterances.

and relating language to "associated activities"

There are parts of the context of speech, however, which we shall be able to reproduce as fully as is necessary to illustrate certain essentials of language and of meaning: I refer, not to the context of gestures or ofsignificant bodily movements, but rather to the context of associated activities. To this, however, we shall return when we have learned to understand the context of pragmatic speech, i.e. of utterances inextricably bound up with action. The contextual comments, whereby I have framed the fragments of the above narrative into their appropriate situational s~tting, correspond to a certain extent to such pragmatic contextualisation.

clarification and failure to address the question of whether it is possible to specify the meaning of text/act given the productive power of language/action to transform context and consequences. M.'s here only works in term of an abstract moment without quite addressing the sequences within which this moment occurs. But see below p. 52

C. The Contextual Specification of Meaning

It results from what has been said in the two preceding sections that a great many words have to be reinterpreted when we pass from the interlineal word-for ..word rendering to the free translation. This transition, however, is not arbitrary. It must be based on definite principles and the application of these principles has to be clearly although succinctly stated in a commentary to every text. In this commentary a brief 'contextualisation of meaning', as we might call it, has to be given for each sentence, for single words are affected by their integration into a significant sentence. The context supplies such grammatical data as subject and object; tense of the verb, i.e. temporal definition of action; the relation of clauses and the special meaning of the rare conjunctions. For instance, in each case we have to decide whether the b modifier of the verb rendered by 'might' signifies future or pending action, subjunctive mood, a command or merely potentiality. ... But the best way of showing how this contextual specification of meaning works will be to give a full commentary on the above text. This specimen commentary must be controlled by the collation of free and interlineal translation.

(I) If we compare the literal rendering 'informant's father in child his he see' with the free translation (cf. Ch. V, Sec. I) 'Molubabeba in his childhood witnessed a famine', it is clear that we have added the object 'a famine', changed the verb 'see' into 'witness' and given it the accomplished past tense, and slightly modified the order of the words. We were able to make these changes because we were aware of the context of situation to which this utterance belongs: i.e. we know that Molubabeba is the father of Tokulubakiki, that the subject-matter of the text is historical and concerns famine, and that the question had been asked whether anybody had himself experienced the calamity. p. 37

if language "acts, produces, achieves" then it does not simply mean as determined by context and we have to return to semiotics

DIV. V. MEANING AS FUNCTION OF WORDS

All our considerations have led us to the conclusion that words in their primary and essential sense do, act, produce and achieve. To arrive therefore at an understanding of meaning, we have to study the dynamic rather than the purely intellectual function of words. Language is primarily an instrument of action and not a means of telling a tale, of entertaining or instructing from a purely intellectual point of view. Let us see how the use of words is shaped by action and how reciprocally these words in use influence human behaviour. For if we are correct it is the pragmatic use of speech within the context of action which has shaped its structure, determined its vocabulary and led to various problematic characteristics such as multiplicity of meaning, metaphorical uses, redundances and reticences. (p. 52)

on "concerted work"

By concerted work I mean the performance of tasks which transcend the powers of one man, which have to be done by two or more people and in which verbal instructions passing between the workers are an indispensable ingredient of success. It is only in the erection of the large yam supports, in building an arbour and sometimes in the making of the fence that two or more people must co-operate and verbally communicate. (p. 60)

on education (of the anthropologist as well as of little daughters) and thus, by implication, on meta-communication, analytic awareness, including the analytic awareness of what needs to be taught and how

The most important aspects ofnative agricultural speech, however, would be found in education. Here again I have unfortunately not noted down the actual wording of gardening instructions though I heard them being given time after time. But many of my 'definition texts' and items of ethnographic information, as given in native, are of the type of speech used by an experienced gardener to a youthful helpmate .... As a matter of fact I was astonished by the fluency with which information texts on the meaning of words, on technical details, on the why, when and wherefore of magical ceremonies, were given to me. One day, after I had been discussing these matters with Gomila of Omarakana, I met this informant in the garden with his little daughter, Yona'i, and to my astonishment he repeated to her almost word for word some of the explanatory texts which he had given me the same morning. (p. 61)