Language and Human Nature: Toward a Grammar of Interaction and Discourse by Harvey B.

Sarles
Review by: Roger W. Wescott
American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 88, No. 4 (Dec., 1986), pp. 1022-1023
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
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1022 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
[88, 1986]
glosses
and of root
morphemes
in their
singu-
lar
forms,
followed
by
their
plural forms,
the
"grammatical categorization"
of the roots
(whether noun,
pronoun,
transitive
verb,
in-
transitive
verb, numeral, etc.),
and the
glosses
of the roots when their
meanings
can be read-
ily
abstracted from occurrences in the data.
Examples
of the occurrences of affixes and
roots in
words, phrases,
and sentences are
given
as
subentries,
and
sub-subentries,
of the
lemmata,
with a
large
number of
examples
taken from Kiliwa Texts.
English-to-Kiliwa
and
Spanish-to-Kiliwa
indexes are
given
at
the end of the volume.
The
organization
of the
dictionary,
with its
alphabetical listing
of
roots,
not
words,
re-
quires
users to
identify
the roots of words
they
want to look
up.
Since
Kiliwa,
like other Yu-
man
languages,
almost
always
accents the
root
syllable,
identification of this
syllable
generally presents
few difficulties. In
addition,
most roots
begin
with the vowel of the ac-
cented
syllable
or with the consonant that
pre-
cedes this vowel. In other
words,
most roots
have the canonical
shape: (C)V(V)(C).
Mixco has
analyzed
all the material in the
examples.
An
equal sign
links
compounds,
a
hyphen precedes
suffixes and follows
prefixes,
and a
plus sign precedes
roots. The user need
only
look
up
a
given
form in an
example,
whether root or
affix,
in its
alphabetical posi-
tion in the
dictionary
to learn its
gloss
or func-
tion and to find
examples
of its use.
Mixco has
designed
his
dictionary
to be of
optimum
use for
comparative studies,
for
which an
alphabetical listing
of roots is ideal.
The
dictionary
is a useful
aid
to a better un-
derstanding
of the narratives and
myths
of
Kiliwa Texts.
Although
Mixco has made a
thorough morphemic analysis
of the texts and
has
provided
interlinear
translations,
a
deeper
insight
into the structure of Kiliwa can be ob-
tained
by studying
the
expansions
of the inter-
linear
glosses
and the numerous
examples
given
in the
dictionary.
Mauricio Mixco is to be commended for
having produced
a
very usable,
first-class
dictionary.
His fellow Americanists look for-
ward to the
publication
of his Kiliwa
gram-
mar.
Language
and Human Nature: Toward a
Grammar of Interaction and Discourse.
Harvey
B. Sarles.
Minneapolis: University
of
Minnesota
Press,
1985. 296
pp.
$19.50
(cloth),
$9.95
(paper).
ROGER W. WESCOTT
Drew
University
This book is a
paperback reprint
of Sarles's
After Metaphysics (Peter
de Ridder
Press, 1977),
itself a
republication
of 14
essays
from the
pre-
ceding
decade. The 1985 volume differs from
its
predecessor chiefly
in
having
a foreword
by
William C. Stokoe.
Sarles's chief
point
is that most
scholars, in-
cluding linguists,
have
glorified language
as
the
badge
of
humanity
and
denigrated
all
other forms of communication. He writes as if
this
point
were a
startling revelation, although
many
of us who teach courses in human eth-
ology
and communication
theory
have been
making
it for
years,
both
orally
and in
print.
Despite
the new title of his
book,
he never tells
us
how,
if at
all,
his definitions of
language
and
human nature differ from those of
"metaphy-
sicians."
Nor,
after
repeated complaints
about
philosophical dualism,
does he tell us
what,
if
any,
kind of monism he
espouses.
Sarles criticizes his
predecessors George
Trager
and
Ray
Birdwhistell for their
overly
schematic focus on
phonemes
and kinemes.
Yet however overschematized their
analyses
may seem,
these scholars at least
provided
in-
vestigators
with
systems
for the
arrangement
and
interpretation
of data. Sarles
gives
us little
more than a
pervasive
sense of dissatisfaction
with the current state of communication stud-
ies. To be
sure,
some discontent with the
scholarly
status
quo
is a
prerequisite
to intel-
lectual
progress.
But we need more than a
sweeping
exhortation to
"relisten";
we need
explicit proposals
on what to listen for.
The author's
prose
is
graceless,
marred
throughout by capricious
use of boldface
print, dashes,
and sentence
fragments (e.g.,
"A Martian, hearing
this?" on
p. 182).
In sev-
eral matters of
style,
he oscillates between ex-
tremes each of which is
deplored by
hand-
books of
writing.
While some of his
para-
graphs
are
journalistically abrupt,
others
seem endless.
(Pages
229 and
230,
in
fact,
con-
tain a 300-word
sentence.)
In most
cases,
he
overhyphenates (as
in
"object-event-time," p.
229)
but
occasionally
omits
hyphens
that
might clarify meaning (as
in
"circumoral," p.
69).
His diction fluctuates from
slangy ("plus
we have
language," p. 206)
to
pedantic ("ad-
ultocentric," p. 237). Often, moreover,
his lo-
cutions are
simply cryptic,
as in the title of
chapter 2,
"Could a Non-H?"
Are there no
insights
in this book that
might
be called both
original
and useful? I found
one-Sarles's idea that children with Down's
Syndrome may
not be
mentally
defective. He
suggests (on pages
98 and
99)
that the facial
immobility
and
lingual protrusion
of such
children
may
lead
parents
and others to treat
This content downloaded from 92.83.140.242 on Sun, 9 Feb 2014 11:13:49 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Learning
Without Lessons: Socialization
and
Language Change
in
Norway.
Karen A.
Larson.
Lanham,
MD:
University
Press of
America,
1985. 144
pp.
$19.75
(cloth),
$9.25
(paper).
SUSAN GAL
Rutgers University
This slim book is a case
study
of dialectal
variation,
its use and social
meaning,
in two
communities of central
Norway.
Larson com-
pares
the social networks and
language
use of
speakers
in
Svorkmo,
an
agricultural village
of
about 600
people,
and in
neighboring
Orkan-
ger,
a
growing
industrial town of about
4,000.
The stated aim is to understand how social
networks influence the
way
in which children
acquire
and learn to
uise
linguistic
markers
that
signify
social
relationships
in
speech.
Sur-
prisingly,
the
analysis
of social networks does
not make use of the
quantitative
methods that
are current in
sociolinguistics. Similarly,
al-
though
Larson has
interesting insights
into the
patterns
and "ethics" of
code-switching,
one
misses a discussion of definitions and the usual
quantitative
information that
provides
ac-
countability
to the data.
Larson observed three families in each com-
munity making
a total of 29
speakers,
with
children
ranging
in
age
from six to 16
years.
Participants provided
diaries of their network
contacts
and,
in addition to
interviews,
it was
possible
to
tape
conversations in homes and in
schools. Larson shows that
villagers
have
smaller and more
homogeneous networks,
use
more dialect
forms,
and have less variation in
their
speech
than those in town.
Although explicit
values in these commu-
nities
support loyalty
to one's local dialect and
exclusive use of it with
co-locals,
the standard
language
is
required
in school and has come to
convey
a
positive
social
authority.
This famil-
iar
sociolinguistic
situation is a result of in-
creasing
social and
geographical mobility
and
sets
up
a conflict of
identity
for the children.
Larson
argues
that as the
village
children's
networks
expand, especially upon entering
school in
town,
their contact with a wider
range
of
people
leads to ever
greater
use of the
standard
variants,
even at home. For
speakers
in
town,
contacts with non-locals lead to dia-
lect "dilution."
According
to
Larson,
the
young people's usage represents
the direction
of
long-term
social
change. However,
there is
no historical evidence
provided
to
support
this
argument,
nor
systematic comparison
be-
tween children of different
ages
and networks.
The
possible
interaction of
speakers'
social
status, residence,
and network in
determining
linguistic
variation is not discussed.
Larson
sensitively
describes the conflicts
that
village
children
experience
as their
par-
ents
press
them to use
only
local
variants,
while in school
they
feel
pressure
to
present
themselves as standard
speakers. Switching
as
the situation
changes
is not the usual
way
out
of this dilemma.
Rather,
Larson
gives many
vivid
examples
to show that
"metaphorical"
use of some few standard forms in dialect con-
versation is the
frequent
solution and consti-
tutes a situated claim to
authority. However,
some children
attempt
what Larson charac-
terizes as a new
strategy. They try
to "blend"
standard and dialect forms "and
adopt
a
pat-
tern of situational
variability
which slides
along
a continuum of dialect-standard fea-
tures, thereby engag[ing]
in
'passing'
both at
school and at home"
(p. 102).
To
separate
"switching"
from such
"blending"
both so-
cially
and
linguistically,
or to relate the
two,
is
a central
problem
in studies of variation. Yet
in this
study
we are not told how the investi-
gator
identified or
distinguished
them.
Thus,
Larson's
study provides
some useful
ethnographic
information on
language
use
among
children in
Norway
but its
picture
of
change
is not well
supported
and it
sidesteps
some
important methodological
issues.
LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY 1023
them as
communicatively unresponsive,
thereby making
them so.
Stylistically, however, Language
and Human
Nature is a
giant step
backward. And substan-
tively
it offers too little. The
busy
reader
may
extract the best of it from Stokoe's foreword
before
turning
elsewhere for intellectual nour-
ishment.
Literacy
in
Theory
and Practice. Brian V.
Street. New York:
Cambridge University
Press,
1984. 256
pp.
$34.50
(cloth),
$10.95
(paper).
RONALD KEPHART
University of
Florida
Anthropologists
and others involved with
"development"
often describe Third World
countries in terms of annual
personal income,
unemployment,
infant
mortality,
and illiter-
acy.
For
many, illiteracy
is the causative fac-
tor: if
enough people
can be
taught
to read and
write, development
will "take
off"
because
people
have
acquired
the
cognitive
skills
needed to
participate
in modern industrial
This content downloaded from 92.83.140.242 on Sun, 9 Feb 2014 11:13:49 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions