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backed up by nonlinguistic, that is, cultural material. Formulating hypotheses about such a relationship on the basis of linguistic data and then using further linguistic data to prove these hypotheses is circular and trivial. Hoijer suggests that any connection between language and culture will come “from a totality of categories cutting across lexical, morphological, and syntactical materials plus the impresses of these upon other behavior which is nonlinguistic” (1954:129). The categories he mentions are what we’re calling grammatical themes, while the nonlinguistic behavior reflects our cultural themes.

      In his discussion, Hoijer lays out a research agenda for establishing the value of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis for cross-cultural understanding and to “develop the hypothesis” (1954:102). It’s interesting that he didn’t see the hypothesis as something to be proved or disproved, but rather, as a discovery procedure to be developed. As in all scientific endeavor, his basic research question is in essence, “What is going on here?” His call for research has no clinical, laboratory component (although many such experiments have been carried out such as those by John Lucy (1992) and Lera Boroditsky, Lauren Schmidt, and Webb Phillips (2003), which I think are very convincing). Rather, Hoijer’s call is mostly related to the gathering of nonlinguistic, cultural information that would enable cross-cultural comparison of similar and dissimilar languages with similar and dissimilar cultures, in order to understand not only “what is going on” in specific cultures, but to provide empirical data for the cross-cultural comparison of how language and culture interrelate at a higher level. This book is in part a belated response to Hoijer’s plea.

      In this book, I suggest that we look at the relationship between language and culture in terms of local interpretation. This removes—albeit only partially—the investigator from the analytical process by asking how the people themselves view such a relationship between how their grammar works and what are some of the salient values of the culture that they live out on a daily basis. How is such a grammatical theme instantiated in the culture and vice versa, how is such a central cultural theme instantiated in the grammar, and how does an outsider mount evidence to endorse such an integral interpretation? To do this, I suggest that we adopt an interpretive model of analysis based not on empirical (physically measureable) findings, but on interpretive reflection.

      The Finnish linguist Esa Itkonen (1978) claims that proof in the human sciences is different in a number of ways from proof in the natural sciences. He says that proof (and data) for the more “human” sciences is hermeneutic, interpretive rather than positivistic, where the term “positivistic” implies logical or mathematical preciseness and measureable proof. This is not meant to be an apology for anthropology, but an admission that what we’re looking for is not spread out over the measurable spaces between and among cultural players. Rather, we’re looking for what things mean to locals.

      A hermeneutic approach is basic to Clifford Geertz’s interpretive anthropology, an understanding of culture that privileges local action as well as local understanding and explanation. Nevertheless, for Geertz, although the local view is privileged, it isn’t presented in isolation, nor does it trump all outsider observation. Just because we may be outsiders, it doesn’t follow that we can make no valid observations about another culture. Rather, Geertz models an ethnographic technique where he observes culture as a participant, one involved (even embroiled) in the very cultural and linguistic notions he is attempting to understand and explain. At the same time, he relates this participation and these formal linguistic notions to similar situations in our own culture and language. In this way, he tries to make the strange familiar by showing how an event as gruesome to Western eyes and minds as a cockfight (1973:412–453) is basically an instantiation of the issues of prestige, leadership, dominance, and respect—things that we understand very well within our own cultural trappings. At the same time, by focusing on the common occurrences of daily life in almost microscopic detail, Geertz also succeeds in making the familiar seem strange by showing us that we are largely unaware of many of the intricate details of things that we think and do each day. Anthropologists call this idea of making the strange familiar (or vice versa) strangemaking. I detail this ethnographic technique in chapter four and discuss how an emic (insider) analysis of cultural values overlays an etic (outsider) account of “what the camera sees.” We will try to see beyond the reach of the camera’s lens.

      This etic-emic distinction in anthropology is attributed to Ken Pike, who first applied the difference between phonetics and phonemics from the field of linguistics, to culture. For a thorough discussion of these terms, especially as used by anthropologists, see Headland, Pike, and Harris (1990).

      Geertz explains that the difference can be encapsulated in the difference between a wink and a twitch, a comparison we’ve mentioned several times already, but which gives us a good touch point for discussion. Although the mechanics of the two movements are identical, one is full of cultural meaning (the wink), whereas the other is simply a response to a bug in your eye. In ethnography, it is local meaning—the wink—that is of greatest interest, not the twitch. The reason we’re concerned about the etic perspective at all is that, as outsiders, we can’t know ahead of time what will end up mattering and what won’t. For example, there is a common rural Guatemalan gesture where you bend your index finger and swipe it lightly across your nose. It seems to be merely the classic response to an itchy nose, but it isn’t. It actually means “nothing happened.” So I could say something like, “I went to Carlos’s house to get what he owes me, but [gesture],” which would mean Carlos didn’t cough up the ten bucks he has owed me for two years. If I had made no observation of the etic swipe of the nose—what the video camera itself would have duly recorded—I would have almost certainly missed this, interpreting it to mean the same thing in the new culture as it does in my own culture, merely a response to an itch, and I would never have learned that there is something behind the swipe: real, cultural, meaning. So being attuned to the etic perspective keeps us open to what might shake out as meaningful and emic upon further cogitation.

      For Geertz, the goal of ethnography is not a recapitulation of everything etic, as the empirical behaviorist would want it—think B.F. Skinner—but rather an understanding in the hermeneutic sense of interpreting behavior as it is locally meaningful. Dealing with culture and the human sciences is less about logic in the strict sense of the physical scientist and more readily about meaning, interpretation, or validation—showing pattern, if not necessarily cause.

      Of course, since culture is so often expressed linguistically, and since language can only be fully understood in extended cultural context, the teasing apart of the linguistic and cultural aspects of these themes—especially when they coincide—may not be at all straightforward, but, repeating England, “Where these themes overlap [culturally and linguistically, WMC] will be found powerful elements of the world view of a people” (1978:226). This makes sense, since we would expect a language to code most adequately and extensively those factors most important to the speakers of that language, or, as John DuBois so quotably puts it: “grammars code best what speakers do most” (1985:363). This coincides with Dell Hymes’s observation that not only does our native language affect how we conceive of the world (linguistic relativity as per Benjamin Whorf), but also culture—how we look at the world and participate in it—has a profound effect on our native language, by effectively coding or “packaging” those elements and themes that are most salient to us as cultural insiders (1966).

      I propose that the Maya-Mam theme of centeredness is just such a powerful cultural and grammatical element, one which reflects, affirms and, indeed, constructs this Maya-Mam worldview. As one speaks Mam, the worldview that is represented and reflected by the language is confirmed and established. Indeed, it emerges in the very act of speaking. Action in the world, of which speaking is a prime example, is both the outflow or product of the worldview which engenders it, as well as the prime building block used to establish that very worldview. This is at the root of what Pierre Bourdieu calls the habitus, the idea that as language actively structures cultural reality, at the same time, it is itself structured by that reality (1990:52). In the same way, I consider centeredness among the Mam as both a template of how the world works (that which is seen as a structured whole) as well as a goal to achieve personal peace and communal accord (that which helps structure our behavior). Mayanist Evon Vogt of Harvard (d. 2004) says that this idea of the Mayan sense of centeredness “symbolizes the essence of social order,

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