bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
From Colonial Neglect to Post‐Independence Heritage: the housing landscape in the central area of Singapore
Authors: Yeoh Brenda S.A.
Published: November 2004

PUBLIC HOUSING ASSUMED AN IMPORTANT place in the modemization of Singapore since independence in 1965. With establishment of the Housing and Development Board, modem, state–subsidized, high‐rise flats have become the norm for over 85 per cent of the Singaporean citizenry. At the same time, the remnant old housing stock in the form of pre‐war shophouses in the Central Area also underwent several re‐inventions. In the 1960s and 1970s when the need for rapid development dictated the planning agenda, a “demolish and rebuild11 philosophy prevailed and much of the shophouse fabric was excised. With the affluence of the 1980s and 1990s, there also occurred a re‐valorization of the historic past both as a tourism asset and a means to rediscover the city's roots. [Singapore, housing, heritage, vernacular architecture, Chinatown]
A Place Where I Can Let My Hair Down: from social club to cultural center in an urban Indian community
Authors: Jackson Deborah Davis
Published: November 2004

The "Riverton" Indian Center was established in the 1950s as large numbers of Native Americans migrated to the city from reservations around the Great Lakes and beyond, and underwent significant changes throughout the second half of the twentieth century. These changes, and the conflicts that resulted from them, were shaped by far larger political–economic and cultural forces: on the one hand, River ton's economy, along with the economies of many midsized cities in the Great Lakes region—was undergoing rapid deindustrialization with devastating consequences to local residents, including American Indians; on the other hand, social and cultural changes in the U.S., starting in the 1960s, made Native Americans—or at least a romanticized image of Native Americans—increasingly popular with non‐Natives. These forces converged to create the three distinct phases in the Riverton Indian Center's history, each associated with a particular age cohort—a trajectory that might well be typical of deindustrializing cities in the Great Lakes region. [American Indians; community and identity; deindistrialivng cities; Upper Great Lakes region]
Ethnography and the Meaning of Adolescence in High‐Risk Neighborhoods
Authors: Burton Linda M.
Published: November 2004

In this commentary it is argued that ethnography is the "most important method" for studying development among ethnic minority teens growing up in high‐risk neighborhoods. Data from a five‐year ethnographic study of inner‐city African American families and their adolescent children illustrates the utility of ethnography in identifying contexutal issues that are critical for understanding development among urban minority teens, but have yet to be systematically "uncovered" and explored in studies that use traditional survey methods. The implications of ethnographic approaches for developing future research on context and adolescent development in ethnic minority populations is discussed in the conclusion.
Anthropological Midrange Theories in Mental Health Research: Selected Theory, Methods, and Systematic Approaches to At‐Risk Populations
Authors: Trotter II Robert T.
Published: November 2004

The application of midrange theory to ethnographically based mental health research has proven to be highly productive. This is especially the case in international and domestic cross‐cultural contexts. Examples are given of the application of a variety of midrange theories in risk reduction and disease prevention programs.
The Making and Unmaking of Persons: Notes on Aging and Gender in North India
Authors: Lamb Sarah
Published: November 2004

This article explores aging and gender as dimensions ofpersonhood in West Bengal, India. The work of aging requires unravelling bodily and emotional ties (maya) to people, places, and things, even though these ties feel compellingly stronger and more numerous as life progresses. Women differ from men in that their connections are unmade and remade at a greater number of critical junctures in their lives, not only through aging and dying, but also in marriage and widowhood. This focus on aging and gender suggests a move beyond those models of South Asian personhood that tend to be static, degendered, and based on too sharp a dichotomy between East and West, to a more nuanced understanding of the plural and evolving nature of personhood conceptions over the life course.
What Does the Soul Say?: Metaphysical Uses of Facilitated Communication in the Jewish Ultraorthodox Community
Authors: Bilu Yoram , Goodman Yehuda C.
Published: November 2004

Facilitated communication (FC), a set of techniques designed to improve the communication skills of children with pervasive developmental disorders, was transformed in the Jewish ultraorthodox community into a mystical device through which autistic children disclose otherworldly messages. We use this case to study the process whereby, in a given historical moment, specific forms of deviance are selected and molded into ritualized moralistic performances through which the values of the community are reasserted. Following a comparison between clinical and metaphysical FC, we explore synchronic and diachronic aspects of the complex relations between the ultraorthodox and the secular society extrapolated from the case. A comparative analysis of FC sessions and exorcistic rituals of dybbuk possession provides a background for proposing a dichotomous model of mystical pathways to the sacred, highlighting the role of deviants in revitalizing religious beliefs.
Culture, Personality, and the Multiplicity of Identity: Evidence from North African Life Narratives
Authors: Gregg Gary S.
Published: November 2004

This article investigates identity in two autobiographies and two life‐history interviews from North Africa. The autobiographies show the centrality of "key" self‐representational symbols which the authors selectively draw from their cultural lexicon but invest with idiosyncratic affective meanings. The life narratives show how the "structured ambiguity" of self‐symbols allows them to be reconfigured to articulate contrasting identities, among which the narrators shift. Generative models of musical cognition describe crucial features of this multiplicity. Against both modernist and postmodernist views of culture and self, narrative data argue for a distributed model of culture and for a theory of multiple identities integrated by "key" cultural symbols.
Singers, Saints, and the Construction of Postcolonial Subjectivities in Algeria
Authors: Goodman Jane E.
Published: November 2004

Through a close study of the multivocal plays ofintertextuality in the "new songs" of Algeria's Berber Cultural Movement, this paper explores how genres can support the emergence of new forms of self‐recognition and promote novel possibilities for engagement with older expressive forms. Via double‐voiced parodies of religious chants known as adekker, the new Berber singers call into question the "magical" powers of saints and exhort the population to relinquish the notion that saints control human destiny. Paradoxically, however, this interplay of genres generates unexpected interpretive possibilities, which in some cases subvert new song's secularist vision.
Anxious Conformity: Anxiety and the Sociocentric‐Oriented Self in a Tlaxcalan Community
Authors: Farley Brian P.
Published: November 2004

This article examines emotional conflicts and anxiety associated with the formation and functioning of the sociocentric‐oriented self in one highland Mesoamerican community.The principal argument is that cultural mechanisms subordinating individual interests to collective purposes also generate resentment and distress. I examine psychoanalytic concepts of anxiety and relate the deep sense of social responsibility community inhabitants experience to high levels of anxiety arising from inconsistent and often severe socialization practices and moral controls. In this case, individuals subordinate their own interests to collective purposes because their drives and desires cause discomfort and they fear retaliation from social contemporaries and the supernatural realm.
Giving Sorrow New Words: Shifting Politics of Bereavement in a Papua New Guinea Village
Authors: Brison Karen J.
Published: November 2004

This article examines the relationship between personhood and polity among the Kwanga of New Guinea, using as an example the response of a Christian pastor and his wife to the sudden death of their daughter. The position is adopted that emotional experience and expression are profoundly shaped by cultural scripts, which are, in turn, linked to systems of inequality. Conditions are identified under which, during personal crises— such as bereavement—when fundamental assumptions are challenged, some people can reflect on and make restorative innovations in tacit cultural scripts whereas others incorporate suffering within a passive identity as victim. Particular attention is given to gender relations and the creation of new roles for Kwanga men.
Devouring the Mother: A Kleinian Perspective on Necrophagia and Corpse Abuse in Mortuary Ritual
Authors: Stephen Michele
Published: November 2004

This article argues that the ethnography of corpse abuse and mortuary cannibalism takes on new significance in the context of a Kleinian psychoanalytic paradigm. Kleinian theory suggests that such practices are not merely culturally approved outlets for aggression but explicable in terms of the mourning process itself which involves a complex interaction between unconscious guilt and the need to make reparation. From this perspective, one can understand why the body of the deceased provokes powerful cannibalistic urges; why it is transformed, literally and symbolically, into gifts to be eaten by others; why the corpse may be subjected to multiple constructions and deconstructions; and why a compulsive repetition seems to characterize many of these mortuary rituals.
Two Languages in the Self/The Self in Two Languages: French‐Portuguese Bilinguals' Verbal Enactments and Experiences of Self in Narrative Discourse
Authors: Koven Michèle E. J.
Published: November 2004

Discussions of the cultural and linguistic construction of self often assume monoculturalism and monolingualism to be the norm. This article explores how the complex sociolinguistic repertoires of French‐Portuguese bilinguals allow speakers to perform different kinds of "selves" in each language. Narratives of personal experience in each language are analyzed in terms of the effect of narrative forms on speakers' reported experience of dual selfhood and the effect of these forms on others' perceptions of the speakers in each language. This approach shows how different ways of speaking in each language point to contrasting experiences and positional identities of bilinguals in French and Portuguese societies. It is suggested that the context from which "self" emerges is itself created in part by the choice among different forms of language(s).
"We Were Through as Keepers of It": The "Missing Pipe Narrative" and Gros Ventre Cultural Identity
Authors: Gone Joseph P.
Published: November 2004

A detailed narrative performed by a Gros Ventre elder is analyzed/or its significance in the construction of cultural identity. In the context of these analyses, it is argued that narrative performance can be central to the active construction of cultural identity for individuals engaged in social interaction. In the present instance, certain performative features of the narrative involve a discursive identification by the narrator with the narrative protagonist that affords a personal resolution of a cultural crisis‐in‐meaning. Finally, this discursive identification by the narrator results in the re‐creation of narrative events that involve the audience as participants in ways that powerfully impact the cultural identities they too will construct.
The Makings of Personhood in a Shelter for People Considered Homeless and Mentally III
Authors: Desjarlais Robert
Published: November 2004

This paper is about the pragmatic makings of identity and personhood in a Boston shelter for people considered homeless and mentally ill. Drawing upon the philosophical writings of Amelie Rorty, it examines the ways in which the words and actions of shelter residents and staff effected certain discourses of selfhood and personhood. In the course of their everyday engagements with staff and others, residents took the form of or were quietly depicted as, variably constituted "characters," "individuals," "figures," "persons," or "selves." Differentials of power were crucial to such dialogic constructions, for many of the residents' presentations of self developed in rhetorical, tactical response to the dominant imageries advanced by others.
Socio‐Economic Change and Emotional Illness among the Highland Maya of Chiapas Mexico
Authors: Collier George A. , Campero Pablo J. Farias , Perez John E. , White Victor P.
Published: November 2004

This paper analyses the relation of processes of socio‐ economic differentiation and change to the well‐being and health of families within highland Maya communities and to the lived experience of emotional suffering, as defined by local categories of mental illness. We specifically analyze how highland Maya Indians of central Chiapas, Mexico, experience the contradictions of a rapidly changing economy, social relations, politics, and culture in conjunction with chawaj (chuvaj),3 one of the major Tzeltal and Tzotzil native categories of mental illness (Castille 1996; Fabrega et al. 1970).
Yellow Crocodiles and Bush Spirits: Timpaus Islanders' Conceptualization of Ethereal Phenomena
Authors: Broch Hapald Beyer
Published: November 2004

This paper examines how Timpaus villagers encounter and experience spirits while they are awake, dreaming, and in dream‐like states. It is argued that the position many people take on what is right or wrong, or how they define what is real, must be viewed as contextually grounded. Seeking the company of others who share an understanding of existential questions is part of identity management. Thus, this paper attempts to demonstrate that there are many different interpretations of how reality is constituted, and that this also holds true for small Indonesian communities.
Reparation and the Gift
Authors: Stephen Michele
Published: November 2004

This article argues that Melanie Klein's theories of primary indebtedness to the mother and the need for reparation can extend Freudian insights concerning the anal significance of gifts, thus providing an answer to Mauss's original question: "What force is there in the thing given which compels the recipient to make a return?" Kleinian theory can also account for the fact that gifts wound, that the donors triumph, that gifts may be made only to be destroyed or sacrificed, and that the giving of gifts plays an important role at significant social junctures, especially death.
My Mother's Garden: Transitional Phenomena on a Japanese Sacred Mountain
Authors: Schattschneider Ellen
Published: November 2004

Drawing on Winnicott's concept of transitional phenomena and Doi's approach to dependence, this article explores ascetic disciplinary practices undertaken by women at a northern Japanese mountain shrine. In dreams and visions, the mountain evokes infantile desires and anxieties of dependence and encompassment. Pilgrims may be kidnapped or possessed by sexually ambiguous demons or "trapped" in the mountain's feminine apertures, associated with wombs and vaginal passages. Over time, however, many women worshipers report being able to transcend proximate generational crises and familial predicaments, and to achieve a measure of peace and autonomy at home and at work.
Culture, Gender, and Work in Japan: A Case Study of a Woman in Management
Authors: Hirsch Jennifer L.
Published: November 2004

This article analyzes the conflicts experienced at work by Keiko Nakagawa, a Japanese female manager at a U.S. company in Tokyo. It uses a cultural models‐in‐practiceframework to explore the role that Keiko's ideas about gender and work played in causing both the social conflicts she faced with her subordinates and the inner conflicts she experienced later.The article demonstrates that even if an individual can reconcile contradictory beliefs for herself her subject‐position in a particular social situation—in Keiko's case, as a Japanese female manager in Japan—may prevent her from successfully avoiding conflict. It suggests that cultural models play an imporant role in engendering conflict by obscuring the complexities of everyday life, and that psychological anthropologists will be able to shed some light on this phenomenon by studying how people put such models into practice in the context of social interaction.
Dreaming, Adaptation, and Consciousness.The Social Mapping Hypothesis
Authors: Brereton Derek P.
Published: November 2004

This article develops and tests the social mapping hypothesis, namely, that the neurophysiology of dreaming may have been a preadaptation for the evolution of hominid consciousness. Dreaming locates the dreamer in emotionally salient social space, a trait possibly derived from hippocampal spatial mapping. This skill in self‐imaging and location can be correlated with the broader social brain hypothesis. Dreaming is thus expected to share significant features with consciousness, symbolization, and cognitive mechanisms pertaining to culture; and it is shown to do so. Rival models of consciousness and dream function are compared and assessed, and Flanagan's assertion that dreaming is epiphenomenal is challenged.
"The Lust to Kill" and the Arnhem Land Sorcerer: An Exercise in Integrative Anthropology
Authors: Burbank Victoria Katherine
Published: November 2004

This comparison of the Western serial sex killer and the Arnhem Land sorcerer arose from reading the argument that the serial sex murderer is the creation of a series of discourses. "The discourse," say Cameron and Frazer, "is the heart of the matter and the rest is silence." While acknowledging the power of culture to structure lives, I argue that the rest is not "silence" but something requiring anthropological understanding. This article is an exercise in integrative anthropology, an attempt to address the multifaceted character of human experience and trace some of the possible means and mechanisms of human development in the sphere of sexual passion.
The Fragility of Healing
Authors: Mattingly Cheryl , Lawlor Mary
Published: November 2004

This article explores a paradox—the simultaneous cultivation and suppression of "healing dramas" by pediatric rehabilitation therapists. Dramatic moments are defined as ones in which the routine exercises and treatment activities of therapeutic practice are transformed into narrative plots. These improvisational plots involve multiple characters, risks, suspense, and above all, a heightened sense that something is at stake. Experience itself becomes the focus of attention for the patient. Based upon ethnographic research in Chicago and Los Angeles, this article offers an anatomy of two such moments, investigating not only how healing dramas are constructed between patients and healers but how and why institutional discourses and practices invite their abandonment.
Working Mothers and the Work of Culture in a Papua New Guinea Society
Authors: Barlow Kathleen
Published: November 2004

Issues of mothering and work, though often spoken about in practical terms, express deeper concerns about the transmission and acquisition of cultural values and the part mothering plays in the creation of the self in society. Based on a case study of the Murik of Papua New Guinea and recent insights into intersubjectivity and recognition of the motherchild relationship, I argue that Murik mothers deploy their capacity for subject‐subject interaction in ways that teach children crucial cultural schemas related to work, food, and recognition. In negotiating intersubjectivity, mother and child establish the broad outlines of a competent self in a cultural world.
Crafting Sociocentric Selves in Religious Discourse in Rural Fiji
Authors: Brison Karen J.
Published: November 2004

This article examines narratives about religious experience among rural Fijians in order to reexamine the claim that Fijians and other Pacific Islanders have "sociocentric selves." Individuals insisted in their narratives that they had actively chosen to commit to churches in order to become more sociocentric. They suggested that sodocentrism was only a satisfying orientation if freely chosen. This article suggests that in our contemporary global village, Fijians choose to adopt a sociocentric orientation to define a worthy place for themselves vis‐à‐vis urban relatives and Western visitors.
Windfall and Socially Distributed Willpower: The Psychocultural Dynamics of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations in a Bengkulu Village
Authors: Fessler Daniel M. T.
Published: November 2004

Rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) occur in myriad forms around the world. ROSCAs promote saving and make capital available. However, psychocultural factors distinct from monetary concern make both the existence of ROSCAs possible and participation in them attractive. This article analyzes the arisan, a ROSCA in Bengkulu, Sumatra. Psychocultural factors that inhibit mobility and prevent cheating make the arisan feasible. The arisan is popular because, through a process of socially distributed willpower congruent with familiar mechanisms of behavior regulation, it aids individuals in overcoming a weak ability to defer gratification. The arisan also allows individuals to sidestep prescribed sharing by exploiting the same values of reciprocity. Part of the arisan's appeal lies in its ability to create rewarding experiences by evoking both the culturally marked event of obtaining a windfall and the related thrill of gambling. This analysis demonstrates that economic behavior must be understood in the context of the culturally patterned motives that shape action.
House and Street: Narratives of Identity in a Liminal Space among Prostitutes in Brazil
Authors: Meis Carla De
Published: November 2004

This article is an ethnography using Da Matta's theoreticalframework of "house" and "street" among prostitutes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. These prostitutes generally regard prostitution as immoral and deny their association with an activity that they inwardly despise. Alternatively, among the prostitutes who adopt a positive self‐identity as the whore or the sex worker, this picture changes. By accepting and assuming these roles, they leave the space of ambiguity, ofliminality, of street, and find a social place. They also demonstrate a higher self‐esteem and more solidarity toward their colleagues. The sex worker perceives herself as a citizen and prostitution as a job; AIDS prevention is a current topic among them. The whore, although not considering prostitution as a legitimate job, also leaves liminality by accepting marginality as her home (house) and choice.
Urban Middle‐Class Japanese Women and Their White Faces: Gender, Ideology, and Representation
Authors: Ashikari Mikiko
Published: November 2004

There are multiple gender discourses and gender representations in contemporary Japan, but a "traditional" gender ideology—men working soto (outside the home) and women managing uchi (home)—keeps its dominant position among them. Japanese women care about their compleochon and put foundation on their faces when they go outside (soto). This article illustrates how the women's white faces serve as a symbolic language, which communicates gender relations. Women present the white face in public, performing the subjectivity of ideal women based on the gender ideology. The practice of face whitening enacts the gender ideology of the tradition and the past, and this bodily practice itself is a mode of knowledge about the gender ideology. In other words, the gender ideology is authorized through the public representation of "ideal" gender relations.
The Ecology of Collaborative Child Rearing: A Systems Approach to Child Care on the Kibbutz
Authors: Maital Sharone L. , Bornstein Marc H.
Published: November 2004

Collective child rearing on the Israeli kibbutz serves as a model for articulating changes in patterns of familial and nonfamilial child rearing associated with cultural change. Kibbutz children, like other children with working parents, are cared for by multiple caregivers in multiple settings. Historically, kibbutz child care has been communally run in keeping with the collective beliefs and organization of the setting. As collective practices have been relaxed, the contemporary kibbutz children's house has been likened to other day care arrangements. In this article, we examine the process of change in collective childcare arrangements on kibbutz as a dynamic system involving patterns of reciprocal relations among parts of a collaborativechild‐ care system. Influences of the views of developmental experts and economic forces impact reciprocal relations among the physical and social setting, changing practices, and beliefs of kibbutz members. A system dynamics approach turns our focus to feedback loops among parts of the eco‐cultural child‐care niche rather than developmental outcomes resultingfrom static features of kibbutz and other child‐care arrangements. Contrasting different feedback systems points to cultural conditions under which some stability in demand for collective child care may be maintained, as compared with conditions that might lead to the demise of collective child care.
Parental Beliefs about School Learning and Children's Educational Attainment: Evidence from Rural China
Authors: Chi Jin , Rao Nirmala
Published: November 2004

This study investigated Chinese parents' beliefs about school learning and how they were reflected in rural family settings. Participants were 13 families, with eight high‐ and five low‐achieving children enrolled in Primary 3. Home observations and interviews were conducted on three separate occasions. Findings indicated that all parents focused on the pragmatic value of school learning and equated schooling with language and literacy acquisition. They believed that effort was important for explaining children's academic performance but recognized the limits placed by innate ability and environmental conditions. There were no consistent differences in parental beliefs based on children's level of attainment, but parents of high‐achieving children tended to be better educated and more knowledgeable about their children's performance and provided more educationally supportive home environments than other parents. Parents had different expectations of boys and girls, reflecting traditional gender stereotypes. Contextual influences on parental beliefs about education are discussed.
Trials of Navajo Youth: Identity, Healing, and the Struggle for Maturity
Authors: Dole Christopher , Csordas Thomas J.
Published: November 2004

In this article, we examine the experiences of Navajo youth living on the contemporary Navajo reservation with the aim of conceptualizing how they position themselves between overarching discursive tensions of what it means to be Navajo and the everyday constraints of existence on the Navajo reservation. We take up three topics in particular: the categorical problems and processes of Navajo youth specifically in terms of their use of such organizing terms as tradition, the multifaceted reservation and off‐reservation worlds that Navajo youth move through, and the mediating role of Navajo ritual healing in cultivating a sense of connectedness for adolescents, which in turn feeds into the broader task of negotiating a uniquely Navajo identity. This article is based on interviews with 11 adolescents and postadolescents who took part in the larger Navajo Healing Project
Searching for the Words to Say It: The Importance of Cultural Idioms in the Articulation of the Experience of Mental illness
Authors: Vanthuyne Karine
Published: November 2004

This article analyzes the role cultural idioms play in the articulation of the experience of mental illness. After a brief survey of the literature concerned with the narrative transformation of experience and its expression in the social realm, this article identifies some of the narrative structures of the illness accounts that were collected for this project. I look, on the one hand, at the various languages used in the articulation of "mental illness" and, on the other hand, at the power relations that are activated through the use of those languages. In so doing, I try to determine to what extent it is possible for a sufferer of "mental illness" to empower him or herself through the narrativization and expression of one's experience of mental health problems.
Fictions of Childhood: Toward a Sociohistorical Approach to Human Development
Authors: Lewis Jeffrey L. , Watson‐Gegeo Karen Ann
Published: November 2004

In the wake of the recent shift in the "nature‐nurture" debate as evidenced in Neurons to Neighborhoods, we examine and critique how context, culture, and development are currently construed in human development research. We go on to argue for a sociohistorical approach to development that incorporates multiple positional perspectives, micro‐ and macrohistorical processes, and globalization processes, thus positing a more holistic and realistic understanding of human development.
The Narcotrafficker in Representation and Practice: A Cultural Persona from the U.S.–Mexican Border
Authors: Edberg Mark
Published: November 2004

This article proposes a type of cultural model of the self called a “cultural persona” that acts as a nexus between representation and practice, using evidence from ethnographic work in the U.S.–Mexico border region on popular interpretations of the narcotrafficker, particularly as represented via a popular song genre called the “narcocorrido,” and listener interpretations. Narcocorridos, in the form of a traditional border song called the “corrido” that typically portrayed actions of populist heroes (e.g., Pancho Villa), are narratives about the character and exploits of narcotraffickers. The paper looks at both popular and media industry interpretations of the narcotrafficker persona, the articulation of mass media imperatives on the persona, examples of individuals drawing on that persona in their own self‐presentation, and connections between corridos and the self.
Mother–Child Relationships in France: Balancing Autonomy and Affiliation in Everyday Interactions
Authors: SUIZZO MARIE‐ANNE
Published: November 2004

French child‐rearing beliefs share features of both individualist and collectivist cultural orientations and have appeared contradictory within this individualism–collectivism framework in previous research. For this study, 32 Parisian mothers of infants and young children were interviewed regarding four possible sources of variation in their relationships with their children: interpersonal distance, communicative accommodation, desirable and undesirable early behaviors, and long‐term goals and values. Five themes are identified and a cultural model of Parisian parenting is elaborated, demonstrating how beliefs, practices, and goals are connected in mothers' minds. This study demonstrates that individualism and collectivism are orthogonal, multifaceted orientations, each containing dimensions, such as autonomy as separateness and group affiliation and belonging, that can coexist both harmoniously and in dynamic tension within individuals and within cultures.
Sociolinguistics and Aphasia
Authors: Burns Allan F. , Blonder Lee Xenakis , Heilman Kenneth M.
Published: November 2004

Neurolinguistic studies of language processing in aphasic patients have traditionally analyzed phonology, syntax, and lexico‐semantics. We report, using home interviews as a major source of speech data, preliminary sociolinguistic observations of conversations between aphasic patients, their spouses, and an investigator. Examination of illocutionary force, the conversational strategies used to maintain discourse, and the cultural integration of speech deficits shows that sociolinguistic fluency may be obtained in spite of phonological, lexico‐semantic, and/or syntactic dysfunction.
Anchoring, Iconicity, and Orientation in Guugu Yimithirr Pointing Gestures
Authors: Haviland John B.
Published: November 2004

Speakers of Guugu Yimithirr at the Hopevale aboriginal community in Queensland use inflected forms of four cardinal direction words in all talk about location and motion. This article compares the pointing gestures in parallel episodes of two tellings of a single story, first to demonstrate that gestures too can be directionally anchored, and then to contrast other gestures that are emancipated from cardinal direction. Different sorts ofindexical space and different modes of directional anchoring are posited to account for the contrasting gestural forms.
"Uphill" and "Downhill" in Tzeltal
Authors: Brown Penelope , Levinson Stephen C.
Published: November 2004

In the face of the prevailing assumption among cognitive scientists that human spatial cognition is essentially egocentric, with objects located in reference to the orientation of ego's own body (hence left/right, up/down, and front/back oppositions), the Mayan language Tzeltal provides a telling counter‐example. This article examines a set of conceptual oppositions in Tzeltal, uphill/downhill/across, that provides an absolute system of coordinates with respect to which the location of objects and their trajectories on both micro and macro scales are routinely described.
Oye Oye lo que Ustedes no Saben: Creativity, Social Power, and Politics in the Oral Practice of Chismeando
Authors: Hall Joan Kelly
Published: November 2004

People in interaction are in a continual state of engagement in socioculturally framed activities. Our participation in these practices involves our knowledge and use of generic‐specific linguistic resources, the instantiations of which move between the expected and the creative. The focus of this article is the locally situated nature of such interplay in the oral practice of chismeando (gossiping) by a group of Dominican women. Specifically I focus on one participant's strategic, creative use of some of the features to transform the nature of her involvement in the intragroup practice. Her actions are discussed in terms of the social powers they engender and the politics of her participation. I suggest that such attention to the everyday experiences of a group helps build an understanding not only of the linguistic and paralinguistic articulations of the practices themselves but, and certainly more importantly, of the sociohistorical lives of the people who construct and participate in them.
Semantic Universals and Primitive Thought: The Question of the Psychic Unity of Humankind
Authors: Wierzbicka Anna
Published: November 2004

This article argues that the belief in the "psychic unity of humankind," which the author shares, can degenerate into an empty rhetorical posture if it is not linked with an empirical search for a shared conceptual basis linking different cultures and languages. The author argues that the reasoning of believers in "primitive thought" is fallacious, and she tries to show where exactly it goes wrong. In particular, she argues that the proponents of the primitive‐thought doctrine do not understand the phenomenon of polysemy and have no methodology that would allow them to establish whether a word has one or more meanings. More generally, she tries to show how the claims of the proponents of the primitive‐thought doctrine can be refuted on the basis of solid evidence, sound analysis, and rigorous methodology.
Discourse Structure and Rhetorical Elaboration in Mocho Personal Narrative
Authors: Martin Laura
Published: November 2004

Two versions of a Mocho (Mayan) personal narrative about killing a large snake are subjected to close comparative analysis. The greater rhetorical elegance of one is the sum of a series of modest elaborations and strategic revisions at various levels, from lexical to episodic, rather than the result of large‐scale revisions in discourse structure. Repetition makes a substantial contribution to the aesthetic power of the elaborated version. The goal of the revisions is shown to be associated with issues of personal agency and heightened narrator participation.
Therapeutic Ways with Words
Authors: Ainsworth‐Vaughn Nancy
Published: November 2004

Therapeutic Ways with Words. Kathleen Warden Ferrara. Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. New York: Oxford University Press,1994. 199 pp.
The Pragmatic Return to Meaning: Notes on the Dynamics of Communication, Degrees of Salience, and Communicative Transparency
Authors: Verschueren Jef
Published: November 2004

This article inquires into the role of meaning in linguistic pragmatics (conceived in its widest interdisciplinary sense as a cognitive, social, and cultural perspective on language and communication). With reference to earlier discussions of the relationship between meaning and intention, especially in the anthropological linguistic literature, two case studies are adduced in order to further demonstrate the need to allow for types of meaning which do not depend exclusively or primarily on individual intentionality (even when dealing with language use in a mainstream Western context), and also to show how taking nonintentional forms of meaning into account can be done systematically in a theoretically and methodologically justifiable way. The first one focuses on the dynamics of interactional processes, the second on different degrees of salience which even result in direct contradictions between the level of implicit meaning and communicatively transparent information. The conclusion is that a straightforward pragmatic perspective allows linguists to return to the question, What is the meaning of expression X in context Y?, rather than to stick with the Gricean question, What did the language user intend X to mean in context Y?, even though the latter provided a major impetus for the development of the field of pragmatics in the first place.
Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching
Authors: Contini‐Morava Ellen
Published: November 2004

Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Carol Myers‐Scotton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. 263 pp.
The Great Bear: A Thematic Anthology of Oral Poetry in the Finno‐Ugric Languages
Authors: Darnell Regna
Published: November 2004

The Great Bear:. Thematic Anthology of Oral Poetry in the Finno‐Ugric Languages. Lauri Honko. Senni Timonem. and Keith Bosley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. 785 pp.
Home and Homeland: The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan
Authors: Dominguez Virginia R.
Published: November 2004

Home and Homeland: The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan. Linda L. Layne. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. 188 pp.
The Emergence of Color Cognition from Color Perception
Authors: Furbee N. Louanna , Maynard Kelly , Smith J. Jerome , Benfer Robert A. , Quick Sarah , Ross Larry
Published: November 2004

Reporting isomorphism between the perception and cognition of color, this article speculates upon how the two might interrelate and how that relation might be constrained. A pilot study of color perception revealed differences in the perception of color by sex and by eye color of subject. In the present study, we examine results of a triadic sorting task of color terms, finding that for the nine most salient terms in the subjects' color cognitions, the sortings of men and women varied significantly along two of the meaning dimensions revealed in the perceptual experiment. Differences were also found in the cognitions of blue‐eyed and brown‐eyed persons for the same nine terms. We argue that the cognition of color may be governed by two kinds of constraint: one that limits the level of abstractness the perceptual forms can evince, and one (based on connectedness) that governs the mapping of perceptual structures into their cognitive expressions in any language and culture.
Keepers of the Sacred Chants: The Poetics of Ritual and Power in an Amazonian Society.
Authors: Chernela Janet M.
Published: November 2004

Keepers of the Sacred Chants: The Poetics of Ritual and Power in an Amazonian Society. Jonathan D. Hill .Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993. 245 pp.
Language and the Law.; Trial Language: Differential Discourse Processing and Discursive Formation.
Authors: Dwyer David , Dwyer Anabel
Published: November 2004

Language and the Law. John Gibbons. ed. Language in Social Life Series. London and New York: Longman, 1994. 476 pp.

Trial Language: Differential Discourse Processing and Discursive Formation. Gail Stygall. Pragmatics and Beyond, New Series. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1994. 226 pp.
Lushootseed Texts. An Introduction to Puget Salish Narrative Aesthetics.; Northern Haida Song.; Our Tellings. Interior Salish Stories of the Nlha7kápmx People.; Tales from the Dena: Indian Stories from the Tanana, Koyukuk, and Yukon Rivers.; The Epic of Qayak: The Longest Story Ever Told by My People.; The Maidu Indian Myths and Stories of Hánc'ibyjim.
Authors: Bunte Pamela A.
Published: November 2004

Lushootseed Texts. An Introduction to Puget Salish Narrative Aesthetics. Crisca Bierwert. ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. 325 pp.

Northern Haida Song. John Enrico and Wendy Bross Stuart. eds. University of Nebraska Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. 519 pp.

Our Tellings. Interior Salish Stories of the Nlha7kápmx People. Darwin Hanna and Mamie Henry. eds. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1995. 217 pp.

Tales from the Dena: Indian Stories from the Tanana, Koyukuk, and Yukon Rivers. Frederica de Laguna. ed. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1995. 352 pp.

The Epic of Qayak: The Longest Story Ever Told by My People. Lela Kiana Oman. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996. 144 pp.

The Maidu Indian Myths and Stories of Hánc'ibyjim. William Shipley. ed.Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1991.181 pp.
Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache.
Authors: Parmentier Richard J.
Published: November 2004

Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache.Keith H. Basso. Albuquerque University of New Mexico Press, 1996. 171 pp.
Universal and Culture‐Specific Properties of Greetings
Authors: Duranti Alessandro
Published: November 2004

The literature on greetings includes several commonly made claims that require an agreed‐upon definition of what constitutes a greeting exchange. I propose six criteria for identifying greetings across languages and speech communities. Applying these criteria to a speech community in Western Samoa, I identify four types of greeting exchanges there. These exchanges show, contra claims in the greetings literature, that not all greetings are devoid ofpropositional content and that they need not be "expressive" acts of the type proposed by speech act theory. In greetings, Samoans accomplish various social acts, including searching for new information and sanctioning social behavior.
Color Terms and Color Term Acquisition in Damara
Authors: Davies Ian R. L. , Roling Penny , Corbett Greville G. , Xoagub Fritz , Xoagub Jomo
Published: November 2004

A study of color terms in Damara, a Khoisan language spoken in Namibia, tested Berlin and Kay's (1969) theory of color term universals on a new language family (Khoisan) and investigated the extent to which the color term inventory was influenced by neighboring languages and recent social and political changes. The data indicate that Damara's 11 color terms (8 original and 3 loan terms) fit the theory well. The inventory is changing, but it has borrowed terms only to fill in the "missing" universals. Colonial circumstances and bilingualism have apparently influenced the age of color‐term acquisition, among other effects.
Natural Histories of Discourse
Authors: Katriel Tamar
Published: November 2004

Natural Histories of Discourse. Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban. eds. Chicago:University Of Chicago Press, 1996. 352 Pp.
Nikotwâsik Iskwâhtêm, Pâskihtêpayih! Studies in Honour of H. C. Wolfart
Authors: O'meara John
Published: November 2004

Nikotwâsik Iskwâhtêm, Pâskihtêpayih! Studies in Honour of H. C. WolfartJohn D. Nichols and Arden C. Ogg, eds. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, 1996. 490 pp.
Simultaneity and Bivalency as Strategies in Bilingualism
Authors: Woolard Kathryn A.
Published: November 2004

Influenced by the work of Bakhtin, a sociolinguistics has begun to take shape in recent years that takes multiplicity, hybridity, and simultaneity as key concepts. Such a sociolinguistics should place bi‐ and multilingual speakers and communities at its center, rather than in their traditional place at the margins. Within the frame of a Bakhtinian concept of simultaneity in language, this article reconsiders translingual phenomena of codeswitching and so‐called interference, and brings into focus a relatively understudied third form, here called bivalency. It further considers the ambivalent and simultaneous messages that are communicated in linguistic contact zones, and speakers' simultaneous claims to more than one social identity. There can be analytical advantage in comparing the frequencies, functions, and relationships of these different forms of simultaneity in different political economies of language contact
The Language of the City: Town Bemba as Urban Hybridity
Authors: Spitulnik Debra
Published: November 2004

This article describes the linguistic variety Town Bemba (Zambia) and considers its implications for the study of linguistic heteroglossia and the experience of modernity. I propose that Town Bemba be understood as a cover term for a set of Bemba‐based multilingual practices that exemplify urbanity but need not be tied to urban locales. The structural, ideological, and sociocultural features of Town Bemba are examined using data from naturally occurring discourse collected in Zambi
The Emergent Participant: Interactive Patterns in the Socialization of Tzotzil (Mayan) Infants
Authors: León Lourdes De
Published: November 2004

Ethnographies of some Mayan groups have reported that there is minimal interaction with prelinguistic infants. This study shows, to the contrary, that Zinacantec Mayan infants are socialized as participants in a flux of dyadic and polyadic interactions. I provide two kinds of evidence in favor of the child's emergence as a participant: (1) native evidence based on local theories of socialization, and (2) ethnographic evidence based on a microanalysis of verbal and nonverbal phenomena in different facets of the participation structures in which infants are immersed.
Gravity or Levity: Vertical Space in Japanese Rock Climbing Instructions
Authors: Kataoka Kuniyoshi
Published: November 2004

In notional frameworks of space, "(relative) ego‐centricity" and "(absolute) gravity" are assumed to be the dominant criteria for coordinating the horizontal and vertical dimensions. This article looks critically at the second criterion, the supremacy of gravity‐based verticality. By drawing on the discourse data from rock climbers, I propose that the absolute value assigned to vertical space may have been overestimated in European conceptualizations of space. It is shown that the "subjectified" (Langacker 1991) vertical dimension, contextually constructed within the speaker's cognitive space, can override the gravitational orientation in languages like Japanese.
Interaction and Grammar.
Authors: Sawyer R. Keith
Published: November 2004

Interaction and Grammar. Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff. and Sandra A. Thompson. eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. 468 pp.
Language in Canada.
Authors: Woolfson Peter
Published: November 2004

Language in Canada. John Edwards. ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 472 pp.