- Witness theoretical discussions of the 19th century concerned with elementary ideas independent invention or psychic unity of mankind, and cultural evolution; cyclic history theories of today are partly comparative in the 19th century sense, partly sequential (evolution and devolution of one culture in one area). Linguistic theory and method is also concerned with sequential and comparative problems beside its more recent concern with exclusively synchronic statements.
- It may well be that anthropologists who work exclusively in culture, and linguists innocent of culture theory espouse this view, if they think of it at all; those who attempt to work in both fields seem more apt to appreciate the distinction and to speak of language and culture rather than of language as a part of culture. Compare the question as to whether linguistics belongs to the social sciences or to the humanities, and Sturtevant's vote for the latter [(36) in A Sample of Technical Terms in Linguistics, IJAL 14.118 (1948)].
- Because culturalists do not, in actual field work [operations, analysis], find culture traits by asking what are ‘irreducible ways of acting shared by a social group’; rather, culture traits found in a whole culture reflect the ethnologists' sophistication of comparative ethnography,—of the area in which he works, or, more generally, of world ethnography. Besides the explicit argument supporting this in C. F. Voegelin and Z. S. Harris, AA 49. 590–3 (1947), see also the Index references to Typology in A. L. Kroeber's Anthropology (New York, 1948). Per contra, John Lewis Gillin and John Philip Gillin, Cultural Sociology (New York, 1948) who equate phonemes and culture traits, without any critical reservations (p. 155): they say a culture trait is identifiable by being irreducible and cite a single digit (1, 2, 3 etc.) as an example of such a trait; what then are fractions and negative numbers?
- Morris Edward Opler, Some Recently Developed Concepts Relating to Culture, SWJA 4.116 (1948).
- Themes as Dynamic Forces in Culture, AJS 51.198–206 (1945).
- An Application of the Theory of Themes in Culture, JWAS 36.137–66 (1946).
- Bernard J. Siegel, Currents of Anthropological Theory and Value Concepts, SWJA 4.208 (1948).
- Cited in fn. 4; cp. p. 119: ‘… since the concepts [translate: ‘what the anthropologist says’] to be used are the devices of the social scientist and not the stock in trade of the carriers of the culture under consideration, they need not rest upon whether or not the guides to conduct are perfectly obvious to those who respond to them, that is, upon distinctions between the overt and covert.’
- Clyde Kluckhohn, Covert Culture and Administrative Problems, AA 45.214 (1943).
- See especially p. 277 ff., Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Philadelphia and London, 1948). Sexual frequency appears to be cultural (rather than merely physiological,—because correlated with occupational classes); how is awareness of occupational class frequency communicated to persons in the same or other occupational classes? For a given individual, this frequency may be within the range of a given occupational class; or, in anticipation as it were, a young man's frequency may be within the range of the status class which he expects to achieve later in life. In terms of occupational level (the occupational class of the parent gives an ascribed status to a child still at home or on the way to his own level), and expectable achieved status (but not of the intermediate levels in upward mobility), the Kinsey report is able to show frequency differences in sexual behavior which correlate with the occupational levels. Other kinds of behavior also correlate with these levels; or rather, the levels are attested or established in part by these other kinds of behavior. On the lighter side of living there is etiquette, recreation, choice of clothing, food, drink, and so on; for basic subsistence as well as for the economic provision of the lighter side, there is the definitive occupation. All of these kinds of behavior are stateable in ethno-linguistic terms: one talks about (and while) eating, drinking, and so on; one likewise talks shop and talks while working. But one does not talk about the frequencies which are revealed in the Kinsey report. To generalize: because of the existence of verbally tabu areas within a culture, there may be fractions of a culture whole which are apparent only in non-verbal behavior (or when elicited by scientists).
- Clyde Kluckhohn and William H. Kelly, The Concept of Culture [p. 42 of a mimeographed paper: 'This paper will be published (in abbreviated form) late in 1944 in “The Science of Man in The World Crisis” (Columbia University Press), edited by Ralph Linton.']
- In cultural transmission from parent to child, positive rules may never be mentioned (e.g. on analogical extensions of language patterns), but deviations from the adult pattern may be laughed at or even spoken about explicitly. I am indebted to George Herzog for pointing out many instances where verbalization is entered into only in reponse to deviant behavior, and for giving me the benefit of his insight into other aspects of more or less covert behavior.
- Each of the authors represented has not only advanced cultural theory, but has related his theoretical findings to those of his predecessors; while Opler leans toward the sociological, and Kluckhohn toward the psychological, there are features of simularity in both expositions (e.g., appreciation of structure) which may ultimately have been simulated less by the theoretical considerations of their predecessors than by the peculiar phrasing of aboriginal culture in the Southwest in which both are steeped,-as was Ruth Benedict, and also Edward Sapir.
- Compare the following statements from (1) a culturalist, and (2) a linguist. (1): ‘The longer an investigator lives with any tribe and the better he comes to know them, the more Alternatives will be brought to his attention. Thus when I was studying the Comanche and asked for the process of making buckskin, I was told only the method which my particular informant preferred. Other informants checked the accuracy of this account point by point, and it was not until some time later that I learned that it was only one of three methods all of which were still in use in the tribe. Some women were familiar with all three, some with two and some with only one.’ (2): 'The circle at the end of this row represents words beginning with vowels… The majority of natives of Peiping pronounce these words with a slight squeeze in the back of the tongue, producing a sound like the rubbing sound used by many Germans in pronouncing the g in lage. A minority of speakers use a glottal stop, and a very small minority a nasal beginning ng-.' These citations are from (1): Ralph Linton, The Study of Man, An Introduction, p. 279 (New York and London, 1936); and (2): Yuen Ren Chao, Mandarin Primer, An Intensive Course in Spoken Chinese, p. 20 (Cambridge and London, 1948).
- I am here following Y. R. Chao who gave the clearest statement I have heard on this distinction in six lectures at Berkeley, in the spring of 1948.
- Evidence to support this assumption is given in IJAL 15.82–3 (1949).
- Z. S. Harris, Methods in Descriptive Linguistics (in press).
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