Dark Matter of the Mind
Page 27
In line 6 we hear, “He did not do a little.” This means that he took a lot of Brazil nuts from the grove (yet did not pay for the use of the grove). Notice here, again, the major, familiar misunderstanding of land payment. The Pirahãs do not see land as sellable, only available for paid use on a case-by-case basis, much as the aborigines at Medicine Lodge. Chico believes that he has purchased this Brazil nut grove for a payment in perpetuity, the Pirahãs think of him as a thief. (Ultimately the Brazilian government agreed with the Pirahãs, forcing him out of the land without indemnification after I complained.)
Now clearly, these two perspectives are not ineffable. I believe I have just made them more or less explicit. But to the Pirahãs, the transactions’ assumptions would be difficult to state because the presupposition that land cannot be sold is so deeply embedded. This is an interesting point with regard to emicization and dark matter. Emicization often results in making the retrieval of knowledge more difficult. Emicized knowledge can be fairly obvious as such to an outsider, but nearly impossible for an insider to talk about because they have “absorbed” the knowledge—they have stored it in their (collective and individual) subconscious.
In line 7 the speaker gives the name of the Brazil nut grove in both Pirahã and Portuguese, to make it clear what place is being discussed.
In line 8 another foreigner is introduced, João Baowa. (The surname here is a Pirahã pronunciation of a Portuguese word, but I haven’t been able to further identify this person or the actual name.)
Line 9 lets us know that the character introduced wants a particular grove. Again, though, the literal translation fails to communicate the emic understanding of place, as something that can be enjoyed but not owned. As Nida (1964, 161) put it, “Adherence to the letter may kill the spirit.” Dark matter is the spirit of a text.
On my first hearing of line 10, my question was “Who are Bernardo and Moisés?” It turns out that they are two brothers who live at the Auxiliadora. They are named without introduction, but as I said earlier, it is assumed that I know them. Is this failure to introduce them due to the speaker’s assumption that I must know them? I think so. But why would he think I know them? The answer is part of the speaker’s dark matter, an assumption that we all live in a “society of intimates”—like Pirahã society—where everyone knows everyone, rather than a “society of strangers” where many or even most of the people we see in public places are unknown to us. The Pirahãs’ conception of the world as an intimate world is natural. It reflects their own society and the emicization of their knowledge of the social. Of course, the Pirahãs know that Brazilians and Americans are separate groups, like the Pirahãs and their Amazonian neighbors the Tenharim and the Parintintin. The issue, though, is their knowledge of how large those groups might be—surely I know all Brazilians. And this view persists even though Pirahãs, especially, Kaabogí, have traveled with me to several Brazilian cities, including Porto Velho, Belém, Brasilía, and São Paulo. In Brasilía, Kaabogí watched a procession headed by the then-president of Brazil, João Batista Figueirdo. I referred to Figueirdo as the “Tuchawa” of the Brazilians. Since the Pirahãs used this Tupi loanword for “chief” I mistakenly thought that they would understand this use of it for head Brazilian. But no, the Pirahãs attach no significance to this term other than as how they understand land use–temporary, not permanent. In other words, in Pirahã someone can be a leader in a particular situation, as on a hunt or talking to a river boat trader, or a parade or procession, but there is no concept of a permanent leader, or royalty, or a chief. Kaabogí just asked if we could leave the sun and go into the shade to get a soft drink. No one in Pirahã culture has a concept of “famous” or “powerful” or “rich.” Therefore all the cultural trappings of a head of state were meaningless to Kaabogí.
This view of an egalitarian, intimate humanity where everyone knows everyone else is a form of tacit knowledge, rather than a tacit value per se (though it likely is that, too). It is a filter on the Pirahãs’ understanding and interaction with the world that simply cannot be fully explicated by those affected by the filter because of its deep emicization. Not only being raised in a society of intimates but also learning to interpret all interactions in the assumption that no one is superior to any other socially has a profound effect on what Pirahãs see, hear, and understand. For example, proper names in texts are never introduced with identifying information; but notice that there are not even any relative clauses in this or any other Pirahã story. This is interesting because, as I have argued elsewhere (D. Everett 2005a, 2008, 2012, 2014b), it shows the architectonic effects of Pirahã culture on Pirahã grammar—core grammar, in the Chomskyan sense.
The function (not the only one, but arguably the main one) of relative clauses is to help the hearer identify the speaker’s intended referent by expressing information that the hearer shares with the speaker about the referent. For example, consider these English examples:
The man is in the room vs. The man who is tall is in the room.
John, who said hi to you yesterday, punched John, the guy of the same name who works in the pizza parlor and insulted the first John’s girlfriend.
In these examples, the restrictive relative clause (who is tall) and the appositive relative clauses (who said hi to you yesterday and the guy of the same name . . .) have a variety of functions in English discourse. But their main function here is to let the hearer know who the speaker is talking about and which part of her speech is about which referent—that is, they restrict reference.
The Pirahãs do not avail themselves of such devices. Though they can use parenthetical clauses to help with identification, such parentheticals are never part of the syntax of the clauses or clause constituents that they modify.5 The Pirahãs’ assumption that all people live in societies of intimates is emically derived dark matter that they would find difficult to explain to an outsider (in fact, my own wording suggests that even for someone who has experienced a different emicization of the understanding of societal relations, it is not an obvious concept).
Line 11 continues the discussion of the illicit use of Pirahã Brazil nut groves.
Line 12 identifies another Brazil nut grove, Sogohóíga.6 Notice the repetition in lines 13 and 14. Repetition in Pirahã discourse usually has two functions. First, it emphasizes an important line of the story, such as the transition here from Brazil nut grove, Passar Bem, to Sogohóíga. Second, the repetition functions meta-communicationally to overcome environmental noise. There is, by European languages’ standards, enormous redundancy in Pirahã discourse. But it plays an important role in a noisy, aliterate environment.
Line 15 raises the question of why Kaabogí bothers to tell us that the grove is located in the deep jungle. There are several Brazil nut groves not far from the banks of the Maici. But theft is paradoxically more common from the deep jungle groves. This is because back trails that wind for miles away from the shore can be used as a way to hide one’s actions, to execute more furtive theft. That one would walk miles in the jungle, one way, to steal (from the Pirahãs’ perspective), say, two hundred pounds of Brazil nuts may seem extravagant. But when such products are the only source of cash and extreme poverty is the norm for river traders and their employees, it makes sense.
Lines 16 through 18 underscore the need for river traders to secure Pirahã permission before taking out Brazil nuts. Forget the fact that the Pirahãs are almost totally monolingual and do not speak Portuguese, aside from a small vocabulary of trade words overlain on a Pirahã grammar (Sakel 2012a, 2012b). They know enough to recognize pagar, “to pay,” and castanha, “Brazil nut,” and to understand when someone is acknowledging Pirahã control of the land.
In lines 19 and 20, Kaabogí requests that I speak to the Brazilian, Martinho, even though he has threatened to shoot me. We are learning that a Pirahã text, like a Wall Street Journal article, is rife with dark matter.
DARK MATTER CONSTRUCTED BY POPULAR CULTURE
For members
of certain cultures, perhaps more obvious source of dark matter and cultural values and knowledge comes from a special kind of text: popular song lyrics. Songs in various cultures crucially rely on shared dark matters to trigger emotions and values, and to develop attachment to the song. So consider the lyrics to the classic 1962 Marty Robbins song “Devil Woman”:
Devil Woman
Marty Robbins, 1962
I told Mary about us.
I told her about our great sin.
Mary cried and forgave me,
Then Mary took me back again,
Said if I wanted my freedom
I could be free ever more.
But I don’t want to be,
And I don’t want to see
Mary cry anymore.
Oh, Devil Woman,
Devil Woman, let go of me.
Devil Woman, let me be,
And leave me alone.
I want to go home.
Mary is waitin’ and weepin’
Down in our shack by the sea.
Even after I’ve hurt her,
Mary’s still in love with me.
Devil Woman, it’s over,
Trapped no more by your charms,
’Cause I don’t want to stay.
I want to get away.
Woman, let go of my arm.
Oh, Devil Woman,
Devil Woman, let go of me.
Devil Woman, let me be,
And leave me alone.
I want to go home.
Devil Woman, you’re evil,
Like the dark coral reef.
Like the winds that bring high tides,
You bring sorrow and grief.
You made me ashamed to face Mary.
Barely had the strength to tell.
Skies are not so black.
Mary took me back.
Mary has broken your spell.
Oh, Devil Woman,
Devil Woman, let go of me.
Devil Woman, let me be,
And leave me alone.
I want to go home.
Runnin’ along by the seashore,
Runnin’ as fast as I can.
Even the seagulls are happy,
Glad I’m comin’ home again.
Never again will I ever
Cause another tear to fall.
Down the beach I see
What belongs to me,
The one I want most of all.
Oh, Devil Woman,
Devil Woman, don’t follow me.
Devil Woman, let me be,
And leave me alone.
I’m goin’ back home.
Popular songs like this reveal—perhaps more effectively than other texts would—common dark matter, including easily recognizable values. For example, in this text we are expected to agree with the values that wives should be told about sexual infidelity (Pirahãs would not agree), and that sexual infidelity is evil (Pirahãs would agree that it can bother a spouse). This would fail to resonate in many cultures. Other cultures might have values in which women should be faithful but not men, or vice versa. The lyrics further indicate that forgiveness for sex outside of wedlock is rare, but even when it occurs, sadness results. The singer also assumes that forgiveness by one party entails an obligation on the part of the other party.
We see numerous other values represented—for example, the idea that two people hold authority over each other’s right to end or begin sexual relationships with others. The song also supposes that women who sleep with men married to other women bear more of the blame for the relationship than the man who slept with her. Thus in the line “Let go of me,” the man blames the “other woman” for his attraction rather than himself—not completely, perhaps, but it is an old trope originating from a similar value. We also assent, if we share the values of the text, that a wife must have exclusive sexual access to her husband. The woman who is not the man’s spouse is evil. The man is now tired of her or his attraction has worn off (he claims). He states this almost like a performative speech act—“Mary has broken your spell”—stating something to make it so. It seems a rather shabby treatment of the other woman, but its expression here demonstrates an expectation of resonance from hearers. The other woman is bad. She is the temptress. The man is but her victim. And this message gets driven home each time this song or any song with a similar message is heard.7
Asking more questions of the lyrics, we are expected to know that the answer to the question of why the other woman is evil is that she tempted the man—in other words, because he wants to bear little or no responsibility for their mutual relationship. It is taboo for a nonspouse to expect the same level of attention as a spouse, regardless of emotional attachment. His wife, Mary, however, came to his rescue by breaking the “spell” and once again placing him under obligation by taking him back.
The idea that the seashore and its trappings are symbols of freedom and escape is also assumed as shared dark matter, as is the singer’s transcendent joy at the moral victory of leaving one woman for the original woman. And we see lines near the end, like Western marriage vows (“till death do us part”), that are grandiose promises of future commitment (“Down the beach I see / What belongs to me”).
Now the husband and the wife, we are supposed to agree, are both free—the wife from his sin, he from sin and the evil other woman. The phrase “Don’t follow me” we are to recognize as a sign of his understood weakness and continued attraction to the other woman despite best intentions, as well as the evil power of the other woman. It’s almost humorous, in fact, but we are all supposed to share many of these values or at least share the knowledge that they are common, or the song would make no sense.
We are infused by dark matter from all the communication we attend to and much that we do not—through indexicals, presupposed values, conventional expressions, discourse assumptions, popular tropes, and so on. And as we use these, we reinforce our own dark matter and strengthen and expand the scope of this psychoculturalunspoken knowledge among our hearers and in ourselves.
Summary
In this chapter we saw that texts can be interpreted only against a background of structured knowledge, social roles, and ranked values. We saw this in the different roles implicated in the various texts explored: speakers, writers, audience, reporters of texts (me for the texts of this chapter), singers, composers, and others.
We also considered the role of texts and ideas about business culture—an important new issue in modern capitalism—arguing that though the use of the term culture by modern businesses is not completely misguided, the concept of culture upon which business ideas are based is an anemic one, usually focusing strictly on roles (as in holacracy), values (shareholders vs. stakeholders), or knowledge structures (marketing research would be one example). No company has thought this issue or concept through with sufficient care to realize that (i) a culture is built on not merely one, but all three of these three components; and (ii) what a company (or anyone else) professes its culture to be must be compared with what the culture is like in practice.
6
The Dark Matter of Grammar
If we adopt this point of view, language seems to be one of the most instructive fields of inquiry in an investigation of the formation of the fundamental ethnic ideas. The great advantage that linguistics offer in this respect in this respect is the fact that, on the whole, the categories which are formed always remain unconscious, and that for this reason the processes which lead to their formation can be followed without the misleading and disturbing factors of secondary explanations, which are so common in ethnology, so much so that they generally obscure the real history of the development of the ideas entirely.
FRANZ BOAS, Introduction to Handbook of American Indian Languages
In this chapter, we examine the architectonic effect of culture on language—in syntax, phonology, lexicon, morphology, semantics, and so on. This, I argue, was the original and laudable position of North American linguistics, as founded by
Franz Boas and Edward Sapir, but due to a not entirely salutary reification of linguistics research that began with Noam Chomsky in the 1950s, the connection between culture and language was forgotten. In effect, linguistics decided to pursue an alternative path, one that I argue here was and is severely misguided.
The chapter’s empirical core is the phonology and syntax of the Pirahã language of Amazonas, Brazil, arguing that their syntax and phonology, for example, must be reconceived as ethnosyntax and ethnophonology.
Symbols and Signs
Silverstein (1979, 2003, 2004) has argued convincingly that every component of grammar must be analyzed at multiple planes simultaneously—the social and the grammatical at an absolute minimum. This work complements my own insistence that grammar and culture work with the social (to the degree that that might be separate from culture) synergistically to produce language. He has argued that among the functions of language, we must acknowledge a semantic function (function1) and an indexical function (function2) of language. Function1 includes such ideas as, what do words really mean? That is, it is concerned with the situationally invariant (though this is a fiction that Wittgenstein, among others, attacked) meanings of words, from their diachronic development, etymologies, and so forth. Function2, on the other hand, looks at the use of language in dynamic social and ideological uses.
Silverstein (1979, 193) brings into his discussion of the two major functions of language, the structural principles that Whorf introduced decades earlier, the “cryptotype” and the “phenotype.” However, I think that Pike developed these ideas, though independently, much better in the etic and the emic, so I will ignore this component of Silverstein’s theory, though it is compatible with how we have been discussing language to this point. Another researcher already mentioned with compatible ideas on language is Enfield, especially in his work on relationship thinking (Enfield 2014).