With this in mind, how do we go about “proving” that centeredness is a cultural and grammatical theme in Mam?
1. First, we don’t do away with careful observation. Rather, we contextualize it. Itkonen reminds us that meaning exists only in social context. So, instead of trying to extract ourselves from social context, linguistic anthropologists embrace it. This is quintessential participant observation, the hallmark of ethnographic description (see section 4.1 below). The ethnographer is part of the context—not a fly on the wall—and, as such, needs to be described and discussed just as any other fact of the context. Some feel that this kind of reorienting of context around the researcher is useless and tangential navel gazing. Like anything else, it can get out of hand, but by committing to a focus on those being researched, the researcher is normally only manifested as a grounds against which more central figures play out their roles. The focus of good ethnography, while not denying the researcher’s presence, is not about the researcher.
2. We look for historical continuities. Frenchman Émile Durkheim, the father of modern sociology, says, “The determining cause of a social fact should be sought among the social facts preceding it” (1988:244). Since I claim that centeredness is a “social fact,” in the tradition of Durkheim, that is, a pervasive, culture-wide phenomenon, it should be manifested through time, as well as across social sub-groups within the culture. These facts don’t just pop up fully grown like Aphrodite from the sea foam. They take time to spread—more broadly and more deeply. And despite differences of gender, social class, education, home region, religion, and economic standing, there are nevertheless issues that supersede these differences in uniting members of a culture group. These include language, values, and worldview, continuities which can be uniting principles even in the face of extensive social variation.
3. We seek patterns in the data that we observe, both linguistic and cultural; the more disparate and atomistic the data, the more helpful an encompassing theory “within which the observations find a natural place” (Chafe 1994:21). And, as we’ve discussed already, the patterns should be independently verified (chapter three); yet, at the same time, we should be able to unite them under the common notion of centeredness. Hymes says that a basic practice of anthropological study is “the showing of a pattern, fashion of speaking, or style among a number of traits” (1966:117). This is the goal of my study—to explain how such diverse observations as religious choice, the constructed world, the perception of health and illness, daily language use, and aspects of the formal grammar of Mam are all instantiations of a single theme.
This kind of analysis is based on triangulation, a term used by ethnographers to indicate that conclusions are drawn from a variety of sources based on disparate observations across different aspects of the culture, in order to draw inferences that are integrated across the observations and commensurate with native opinion. Something that we observe just once really doesn’t tell us anything. If we see it a second time, perhaps it is a coincidence. But if it happens three times or even more, there may well be a pattern emerging.
4. Itkonen says that the people themselves must be able to understand and accept the description arrived at in our research (1978). This is what Amy Zaharlick, in a personal communication, calls the “Aha! factor.” When locals appropriately understand the data and the explanation, they should agree that the analysis is realistic and that it reflects how they view the world. The fact that locals would say, “You know, this is really the way we think about things,” is itself data and therefore subject to analysis.
5. When someone acts outside cultural norms we can expect some kind of critical reaction from the group. Culture includes learned and shared patterns of behavior. These cultural norms aren’t deterministic—people can decide to comply or not to. Nevertheless, these norms exert tremendous pressure on individuals in the culture to conform. As Durkheim (1988:240) says, because society “surpasses the individual in time as well as in space, it is in a position to impose upon him ways of acting and thinking which it has consecrated with its prestige.” As we have said, culture is built up over time and its influence is spread over entire areas of habitation. It is practiced by family, friends, and pretty much everyone—and has been for a long time. A cultural value becomes salient via its absence, and ignoring these norms exacts a price. I discuss this in chapter three in terms of Timo’s patio. When centeredness was considered compromised (ignored or flouted), something had to be done.
6. Finally, assuming that our theme of centeredness is as pervasive and explanatory as I’ve suggested, we would expect it to be manifested in many ways in the daily life of the Mam.
In chapters three, four, and five I attempt to “prove” or affirm my premise via this six-fold rubric. The careful reader will see that the first three points of the rubric are methodological in nature—the priority of participant observation, the search for continuity from the past, and the identification of patterns of behavior. The second three points are predictive, something we should expect from any theory worth its salt. Our rubric predicts that the Mam will generally agree to the notion of the center as an organizing and influential principle of life, that either the flouting or ignoring of this principle leads to strong response and that the instantiation of centeredness will be pervasive and varied in Mam behavior. These six points will provide us with a track to run on.
I consider chapter four the heart of the book. In it I show how centeredness is a part of daily life among the Mam. I look at a marriage proposal and an agreement protocol where I was personally (and innocently, I might add) involved in offending a man’s wife, and I discuss how centeredness comes into play in each event and, also, how the two events coalesce around the notion of a commitment to reciprocal action, which I claim is an analogue of a search for metaphorical center space among disputants. I also discuss the language of centeredness, how the Mam themselves talk about daily life in terms of our theme and what vocabulary they use to do so. Most of this is based on lexical items taken from discussions in which I played a participatory role, although the longer discussion of -k’u’j ‘stomach’ terms stems from Scotchmer’s (1978) unpublished componential analysis of such terms and my resultant ethnographic interview session with a number of Mam men based on Scotchmer’s findings, and confirmed in local conversations.
1.2.1 A future for linguistic anthropology
As sociolinguistics has become a well-respected branch of linguistics by showing the relevance of social context to language choice and structure, so I believe that anthropological linguistics merits the same respect from the broader linguistic field, as we see how relevant cultural context is to language. My hope is that this study will be a step in that direction, presenting linguistic and anthropological data together in order to show the critical importance of both in our quest to understand another culture and the language that culture members speak.
As sociolinguistics looks at variety within language, based on differing social contexts (when language varies or correlates with gender, age, socio-economic class, geographic region, education, vocation, etc.), so linguistic anthropology seeks to understand the commonalities that all culture members share despite social and linguistic variation. In this sense, I consider culture to provide a “context for contexts.” In other words, despite language variation based on the variables mentioned above—along with other potential factors10—people within the larger culture still largely agree on linguistic code and worldview, powerful factors that allow for successful communication and basic agreement about how the world works despite observable differences within the larger group. I suggest that it is these cultural themes that hold across social and even linguistic contexts, as well as across time, that help solidify and account for social practice, “the behavior of whole cultural groups” (Martin 1977:366), despite the distinctions of class, gender, education, and geographic region.
An academic book should put its claims in a larger context. A study of great beaches shouldn’t limit itself to observations about the chemical composition of the sand. So I will keep coming back to the bigger picture. We’ve already talked quite a bit about linguistic anthropology, specifically the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and the corresponding notions of cultural and grammatical theme. We’ve heard the voices of a number of heavy hitters, all of whom