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I78 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST Linguistics [87,1985] Kuna Ways of Speaking:An Ethnographic Perspective. Joel Sherzer. Texas Linguistics Series. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. xii + 260 pp. $22.50 (cloth). H. STEPHEN STRAIGHT State Uniuersip of NPW York, Binghamton Based on over a decade of periodic field- work among the Kuna of the San Blas Islands in northeastern Panama, this fine monograph describes in vivid and largely nontechnical prose the complex intermeshing of language with virtually all of her aspects of life on the is- land of Mulatupo Sasardi (which Sherzer calls by its Kuna name [Sasartii-] Mulatuppu). “Everyday” Kuna speaking differs in specific respects from speaking in each of the three ma- jor domains of Kuna ritual activity: politics, magic and curing, and girls’ puberty rites. And even everyday speaking is rich and sub- tle. Phonological, lexical, syntactic, and seman- tic-stylistic differences separate the four iden- tifiable linguistic varieties. Every Kuna has some passive familiarity with the ritual vari- eties, but individuals vary in their ability to use these varieties. Indeed, active control of these requires years of practice, whether prac- tice in the spontaneous elaboration of tales and homilies in the political arena or practice in the rote incantation of spells and sacra- ments in the two more fixed styles. The Kuna most probably descend from people Balboa encountered nearly 500 years ago in his trek across the Darikn jungle to be- come the first European to see the eastern shore of the Pacific. One can guess that much of what Sherzer calls “traditional” among the Kuna is of considerable antiquity. Unfortu- nately, Sherzer is silent about things that might bear on this question. For example, the Kuna’s use of sonorous chanting and arcane vocabulary reminds one of the Latin masses the post-Balboa Kuna must have heard. Similarly, the centrality and massiveness of the gathering house might be- speak a similar deliberate parallelism to the placement and size of the church in Catholic communities. Nevertheless, the numerous ways the Kuna differ from more hispanicized Indian groups suggest that such parallels may be accidental. If this “ethnography of speaking” is not so- cial history, it is also not linguistics. Sherzer’s accounts of the structural features of Kuna “ways of speaking” are often simplified and sketchy in the extreme. For example, consider the phonological rules that relate the sound pattern of ritual speech to that of everyday speech. Sherzer says merely that these rules are “ordered” and that “the longer forms more characteristic of ritual vari- eties . . . derive from the same abstract, un- derlying forms [as the colloquial forms] but do not carry the derivation as far” (p. 37). Examination of Sherzer’s examples sug- gests a far more specific characterization: rit- ual speech, it would appear, is characterized by obligatory deletion of stem-final vowels when followed by an affix but only optional deletion of affix-final vowels when followed by another affix, while everyday speech requires deletion in both cases. (The appearance of many seemingly superfluous affixes in ritual speech thus accounts for its marked phono- logical difference from everyday sound pat- terns.) The rules of consonant deletion, assim- ilation, devoicing, and affrication appear to be obligatory in both speech forms. The contexts for their application are established by vowel deletion, and they appear to be applied when- ever their specifications are met. The “order- ing” of these rules thus appears to be entirely “intrinsic”-a point of some interest to phon- ologists. Another underanalyzed linguistic topic is the cooccurrence of stems and affixes, espe- cially in ritual speaking (with its seemingly su- perfluous affixes). Specifically, do the Kuna attach any significance to a given affix or can any ritual affix be attached to any word in rit- ual speech? The latter conclusion is not sup- ported by Sherzer’s examples, but we are left wondering whether Kuna speakers might at- tach each affix to a particular category ofstem in just the way that Tzeltal speakers attach noun classifiers to particular kinds of noun phrases. A third example of sparseness in Sherzer’s handling of linguistic issues can be identified that has more relevance to the nonlinguist. Sherzer presents no observations concerning the historical sources of Kuna’s ritual and nonritual styles. It would be interesting to dis- cover, for example, that the ritual vocabulary and affixation patterns are newer than those of everyday speech. This would support the con- jecture that they were introduced to mystify audiences the way Latin masses mystified their audiences-though this would contra- dict the Kuna’s belief that ritual forms are “more conservative” (p. 39) (as they indeed are in regard to phonology).

Linguistics: Kuna Ways of Speaking: An Ethnographic Perspective

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Page 1: Linguistics: Kuna Ways of Speaking: An Ethnographic Perspective

I78 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

Linguistics

[87,1985]

Kuna Ways of Speaking: An Ethnographic Perspective. Joel Sherzer. Texas Linguistics Series. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. xii + 260 pp. $22.50 (cloth).

H. STEPHEN STRAIGHT State Uniuersip of NPW York, Binghamton

Based on over a decade of periodic field- work among the Kuna of the San Blas Islands in northeastern Panama, this fine monograph describes in vivid and largely nontechnical prose the complex intermeshing of language with virtually all of her aspects of life on the is- land of Mulatupo Sasardi (which Sherzer calls by its Kuna name [Sasartii-] Mulatuppu). “Everyday” Kuna speaking differs in specific respects from speaking in each of the three ma- jor domains of Kuna ritual activity: politics, magic and curing, and girls’ puberty rites. And even everyday speaking is rich and sub- tle.

Phonological, lexical, syntactic, and seman- tic-stylistic differences separate the four iden- tifiable linguistic varieties. Every Kuna has some passive familiarity with the ritual vari- eties, but individuals vary in their ability to use these varieties. Indeed, active control of these requires years of practice, whether prac- tice in the spontaneous elaboration of tales and homilies in the political arena or practice in the rote incantation of spells and sacra- ments in the two more fixed styles.

T h e K u n a most probably descend from people Balboa encountered nearly 500 years ago in his trek across the Darikn jungle to be- come the first European to see the eastern shore of the Pacific. One can guess that much of what Sherzer calls “traditional” among the Kuna is of considerable antiquity. Unfortu- nately, Sherzer is silent about things that might bear on this question.

For example, the Kuna’s use of sonorous chanting and arcane vocabulary reminds one of the Latin masses the post-Balboa Kuna must have heard. Similarly, the centrality and massiveness of the gathering house might be- speak a similar deliberate parallelism to the placement and size of the church in Catholic communities. Nevertheless, the numerous ways the Kuna differ from more hispanicized Indian groups suggest that such parallels may be accidental.

If this “ethnography of speaking” is not so- cial history, it is also not linguistics. Sherzer’s accounts of the structural features of Kuna “ways of speaking” are often simplified and

sketchy in the extreme. For example, consider the phonological rules that relate the sound pattern of ritual speech to that of everyday speech. Sherzer says merely that these rules are “ordered” and that “ the longer forms m o r e c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of r i t u a l v a r i - eties . . . derive from the same abstract, un- derlying forms [as the colloquial forms] but do not carry the derivation as far” (p. 37).

Examination of Sherzer’s examples sug- gests a far more specific characterization: rit- ual speech, it would appear, is characterized by obligatory deletion of stem-final vowels when followed by an affix but only optional deletion of affix-final vowels when followed by another affix, while everyday speech requires deletion in both cases. (The appearance of many seemingly superfluous affixes in ritual speech thus accounts for its marked phono- logical difference from everyday sound pat- terns.) The rules of consonant deletion, assim- ilation, devoicing, and affrication appear to be obligatory in both speech forms. The contexts for their application are established by vowel deletion, and they appear to be applied when- ever their specifications are met. The “order- ing” of these rules thus appears to be entirely “intrinsic”-a point of some interest to phon- ologists.

Another underanalyzed linguistic topic is the cooccurrence of stems and affixes, espe- cially in ritual speaking (with its seemingly su- perfluous affixes). Specifically, do the Kuna attach any significance to a given affix or can any ritual affix be attached to any word in rit- ual speech? The latter conclusion is not sup- ported by Sherzer’s examples, but we are left wondering whether Kuna speakers might at- tach each affix to a particular category ofstem in just the way that Tzeltal speakers attach noun classifiers to particular kinds of noun phrases.

A third example of sparseness in Sherzer’s handling of linguistic issues can be identified that has more relevance to the nonlinguist. Sherzer presents no observations concerning the historical sources of Kuna’s ritual and nonritual styles. I t would be interesting to dis- cover, for example, that the ritual vocabulary and affixation patterns are newer than those of everyday speech. This would support the con- jecture that they were introduced to mystify audiences the way Latin masses mystified their audiences-though this would contra- dict the Kuna’s belief that ritual forms are “more conservative” (p. 39) (as they indeed are in regard to phonology).

Page 2: Linguistics: Kuna Ways of Speaking: An Ethnographic Perspective

LINGUISTICS 179

If this monograph is not truly linguistics, it’s not quite ethnography, either. There is lit- tle or no discussion of nonlinguistic aspects of Kuna social practices. Some random exam- ples: What a re the medicinal properties of Kuna herbs? What physiological changes sig- nal the need for a puberty rite? How do kin- ship and economic power interact with speak- ing ability to determine political succession? What proportion of a curer’s income comes from curing? These and many other ethno- graphic questions are simply not addressed

Almost because of this lack of linguistic and ethnographic detail, this book is one that eth- nographers and linguists are likely to find ac- cessible and valuable. Ethnographers will be impressed to see how deeply Sherzer has pen- etrated the forms of Kuna social life just by analyzing the linguistic resources and skills associated with each of these distinct forms. Linguists will be impressed to see how closely the variation in Kuna speaking parallels the varieties of experience in Kuna culture. Ap- preciation of the ways language and culture interact within a single social group encour- ages renewed exploration of the intermeshing of ways of thinking with ways of speaking. When a Kuna puberty-rite specialist calls a cup kila, are we not compelled to ponder whether this ritual form evokes (or creates) a world different from the everyday one in which a cup is called noka?

But however much ethnographers and lin- guists may benefit from reading this book, it is of course “ethnographers of speaking,” may their tribe increase, who will find this work most exciting. Sherzer has shown that the Kuna place extraordinary emphasis on speak- ing, and that their various ways of speaking are distinguished from each other, both nor- matively and structurally, to an unusual de- gree. But is this perhaps merely an extreme development ofwhat are actually universal (or widespread) tendencies?

Specifically, the differences between the various speaking styles bear interesting simi- larities to the differences one finds between the various jargons and registers identified in other societies. A bias toward the written word may have blinded us to the existence of dis- tinct ways ofspeaking associated with politics, medicine, religion, and familial life in our own society. It is not far fetched to suppose that an ethnography of speaking would reveal striking phonological, lexical, syntactic, and semantic- stylistic differences, along the same dimen- sions and in the same directions, among these and other domains of speaking in our own and many other societies.

It thus remains for Sherzer and other re-

searchers to determine to what extent the Kuna ways of matching speech variety to con- texts and purposes of speaking are universal or particular. We can look forward to the results of this further research with enhanced confi- dence because of the fine example set by Sher- zer’s book.

Text and Context: Folksong in a Bosnian Muslim Village. Yvonne R. Lockwood. Colum- bus: Slavica Publishers, 1983. 220 pp. n.p. (paper).

JANE SUGARMAN University of California, Los Angela

As Lockwood points out in her introduc- tion, folkloristic studies of song have been, since the 1960s, moving away from the analy- sis of texts in isolation toward considerations of the act of performance. Her monograph, based on research conducted in Yugoslavia in 1966-68, represents an intermediate phase in that development by discussing various genres of “lyric” song in light of attitudes and issues arising within the village context. The core of the study is a n examination of almost 500 texts, most of which revolve around the themes of love, courtship, and marr iage. These she analyzes with reference to discus- sions of courtship and marriage customs, re- lations between family members, and singing contexts such as work-bees, dances, and ritual activities, which make up the opening chap- ters.

As a study of music in context, the work helps to fill a sizable gap in the ethnographic literature on southeastern Europe, and Lock- wood touches on some important points re- garding the “function and meaning” of song. She does not, however, entirely succeed in fus- ing textual and contextual materials. For this an additional chapter would seem to be im- perative, one presenting accounts of specific occasions in light of the individual personali- ties and situations influencing their course. T h e texts themselves have been conscien- tiously rendered and translated, and should be of particular interest to scholars of South Slavic languages. The inadequate discussion of musical style, however, together with the transcriptions of song performances, should either have been omitted or prepared with greater care.

Xhosa Oral Poetry: Aspects of a Black South African Tradition. Jefl Opland. Cam-