16 Meaning and interpretation
G.H. Mead, Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press chap. 8, 9, 10, 11
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B. Malinowski, The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages
pp.296-336
C. Geertz, Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture, pp. 3-32
http://monoskop.org/images/5/54/Geertz_Clifford_The_Interpretation_of_Cultures_Selected_Essays.pdf
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Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Sheed and Ward, 1975. Rev. Ed. London: Continuum, 1989. EXCERPTS:
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C. Geertz - Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture
RispondiEliminaGeertz defines culture starting from the idea, according to Weber, that man is an animal caught in the nets of meanings which he himself has spun. For this reason, the culture consists in these networks and its analysis is an interpretive science in search of meaning.
The culture is made up of socially established structures of meaning, in terms of which people are showing signs of understanding or setting, insult and respond. So culture does not determine the behavior, but vice versa: are the behaviors that determine the culture. We must turn to these because through the flow of behavior, cultural forms find their structure.
Gilbert Ryle called “thin description” the explanation of what the character is doing and “thick description “ the social significance of what he is doing.
For Geertz do ethnographic research means trying to communicate with people to expand the universe of human language. For this purpose fits well the semiotic concept of culture, culture as a context, like the world of thick.
The descriptions of culture are anthropological and they are expressed in terms of interpretations. Anthropological writings are themselves interpretations of a second or a third order: they are treated as sense inventions.
The anthropological interpretation marks the evolution of a social discourse. The ethnographer notes the social discourse, turning it into a guide available. Is there to say however, that the reported social discourse is not what the anthropologist had direct access, but it is what the informants led him to understand. So the cultural analysis is to assume meanings, test hypotheses and draw explanatory conclusions from the best hypothesis.
So we can see that the ethnographic description is interpretative and what it interprets is the flow of social discourse. The interpretation is to try to preserve the content of the speech. Geertz also adds that the ethnographic description is microscopic and that leads to general views starting from local knowledge.
In conclusion we can see that the essential task in constituting a theory is not to encode regularity abstract, but to make possible the thick description and not to generalize across cases, but inside them.
B. Malinowski, The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages on the book The meaning of meaning
RispondiEliminaThe reading aimed at analyzing and understanding words and meaning from a primitive perspective of infants, children and primitive man. Before any philosophical understanding or process was undertake when it was act of pragmatic mean of using words. That described how children, savages and civilized adults alike react with vocal expression to certain situations-whether these arouse bodily pain or mental anguish, fear or passion, intense curiosity or powerful joy. For instance; infants discover the importance of words when they link to action. If they are hungry or irritated then start with making sound such as “Ma” and then his mother appear and solve the problem. That follows with the process that each sound starts to be affiliated to certain meaning, where children act by the sound itself.
This analysis was very close to what we discussed and read in class of “Acting of speech”. However, the sounds are not only the integration of sounds they produce individually based on their needs but in fact they are highly affected by the social surrounding which influence the formation of meaning and words to young adults where they hear similar syllabus but with more framed and better articulated means repeated by adults which build a stronger foundation of linking sound to an object or a meaning. Following the better articulations of sound and words children start building a strong believe that words are in fact a mean of act. This is when they could start to have a essential hold of reality.
This was later followed by discussing Ogden and Richard triangle of the formulations of meaning and the development of speech through explaining relations between Symbol, Act of Thought, and Referent. Which starts with a base of dotted line between Symbol and the thing it refers to, it’s Referent as the Authors name it. In the first stage sound-reaction, expressive, significant and correlated with the situation are the mean of communication, which is later, evolved when into the second step when it’s connected to “Act of Thought”. In that step we aim to articulate developed functions of speech, such as are, or such as in philosophical speculation or scientific language. Ogden Richard tried to further breaking it down into different structures based on being active, narrative and ritual. And started to discuss it’s relation of being genetically impeded.
In all it was very interesting and logical when the author started discussing how the real knowledge of a word comes through the practice of appropriately using it within a certain situation. Whereas he word, like any man-made implement, becomes of significance only after it has been used and properly used under all sorts of conditions. Thus, there can be no definition of a word without the reality which it means being present. And that’s why sometimes we tend to generalize or use one word to express number of different objective as long as they are not directly affecting our life or understanding so we would call whole spectrum of stars as stars or lovely accumulation of leaves and trees into just bushes.
Three other major and important points discussed in the reading were the evolution of words and their meanings in relation to ethnographic background, structure of languages, and grammatical structure. It was interesting how the author shed the light on the fact that grammatical structure no matter how different they are from different language there is a common ground and also how the evolution of grammatical structure of a language depends on how old language is and the cultural stages in has witnessed.
Finally the author started to question how language and meaning is used in one of the most rich fields or specialized words “ medical felid “. And questioned how come meaning are not updated or discussed and they are borrowed. But how major definitions are missing or only used as explanation with no better articulation or analysis such as the word “disease”.
C. Geertz - Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture
RispondiEliminaIn this chapter Geertz intends to stress the meaning of the study of culture. Echoing Weber, Geertz argues that man “is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun”. And the culture consists of these networks and their analysis consists of an interpretive science in search of meaning. In particular, we must look to ethnographers and social anthropology .
What makes ethnography is thick description (namely reconstruction of the social significance ) of the thin description (description of what the character is doing ). That is, in anthropological writings , the data are represented by reconstructions of reconstructions of others. Consequently, the data analysis is the choice of the structures of signification (established codes) and in the identification of their social base and their importance.
- The culture is set up as a public thing. It Includes the world of ideas but does not exist in anyone's head, it is not physical, nor hidden. Once human behavior is seen as a symbolic action no longer makes sense to ask whether the culture is subjective or objective, that is, we must ask not what is its ontological status, but what is its meaning.
For Geertz it is important to clarify that culture consists of socially established structures of meaning, but the behavior does not imply that culture is a psychological phenomenon, a frame of mind of someone. Geertz also incorporates the semiotic concept of culture, 'as interworked systems of construable signs’, a context within every situation can be interpreted. the anthropologist to interpret the human behavior, however, must take into account the way in which people interpret their experience.
In addition, to closely study a phenomenon, we must deal with the behavior, and with some exactness, because it is through the flow of behavior (social action) that cultural forms find articulation. That is, the student gains access to empirically symbolic systems, the subject of his study, examining them closely not only trying to abstract them and formulate problems. The ethnographer notes the social discourse, turning it into a searchable guide (definition which he draws from the concept of inscription of the action by writing of Ricoeur) with the aim of:
1 ) to interpret the flow of social discourse;
2 ) fix the speech does not make it go away;
3 ) make available the social discourse;
In addition , Geertz argues that the ethnographic description is:
4) microscopic, that leads to general views starting from local knowledge, extremely small.
Cultural analysis is not cumulative in the sense that you do not proceed from already proven theorems to prove new ones. Second, the theory of culture is not predictive. This does not mean that the theory should fit just past realities, but must also survive the reality to come. Geertz argues finally that the danger of the analysis of culture is to lose touch with the realities of life and of falling into a kind of sociological aestheticism. To avoid this we must first of all carry out their analysis of these reality, observing the symbolic dimensions of social action, that is, immersing himself in their midst.
Weinsheimer & Marshall - Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method
RispondiEliminaIn this article Weinsheimer and Marshall give their interpretation of Gadamer's work on Truth and Method. They start by illustrating how the Enlightenment started a new line of thinking, reflected by Kant's promotion of using your own understanding rather than a reliance of tradition in order to view the world in a true way. This was in line with other critique voiced against the religious tradition (most of all Christianity). The difficulties encountered when doing so, is reflected by the way in which written words have the tangible quality of something that can be demonstrated and is like a proof. "It requires a special critical effort to free oneself form the prejudice in favour of what is written down and to distinguish here also [...] between opinion and truth." This citation of Gadamer underlines the struggle to overcome the prevailing thoughts that were promoted by the Church and its doctrine. An approach, "similar as the natural sciences do with the evidence of the senses", was needed in order to understand traditions.
One of Gadamer's ideas that was quite striking to me, is that Romanticism gave rise to "historical science in the nineteenth century, because it no longer measures the past by the standards of the present but ascribes to past ages a value of their own and can even acknowledge their superiority in one respect or another". This is something that for me as a sociologist is an important remark since I think it is key to be able to properly interpret what you encounter. The connection to romanticism was surprising for me, but when I read the list of aspects of romanticism that Gadamer highlighted in order to support his claim I could see his point: the revival of the past, the discovery of the voices of the people in their songs, the collecting of fairy tales and legends, the cultivation of ancient customs, the discovery of the worldviews implicit in language... These all help to build a context and understanding for historical events that is necessary in order to appreciate the past.
In the next part, the focus is on how prejudice could provide conditions of understanding and it should even be accepted that there is such a thing as legitimate prejudices. The question is; what is the ground of the legitimacy of prejudices? Gadamer answered this question as follows: "The division of prejudices into those derived from ‘authority’ and those to do with ‘overhastiness’ is based on the supposition that the methodologically disciplined use of reason can safeguard us from all error".
Gadamer accepts that in the Enlightenment, when the prestige of authority displaces one's own judgement, authority becomes a source of prejudices. But this does not mean that it is being a source of truth; the essence of authority is not based on the subjection and abdication of reason but on an act of acknowledgement and knowledge. There is, however, a note where it comes to the different fields of science: "Historical research is carried along by the historical movement of life itself and cannot be understood teleologically in terms of the object into which it is inquiring" and in this way it differs from natural sciences, which are investigating deeper and deeper aspects of nature (bounded by strict, unchanging laws of physics and chemistry) where human sciences always need context and interest.
Malinowski, "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages" (on "The meaning of meaning" book).
RispondiEliminaMalinowski is one of the most important theorists for anthropological theory. His contributions to the world of research methods and approach to reality and other participatory study are transcendental to the Framework for Action and the fieldwork of this human science. However, one of the most important contributions of this author is in the field of communication , in the book of Richards and Odgen "Mean Of the meaning " where Malinowski wrote an article called " The problem of meaning in primitive languages " .
This article explains that when he worked at Pacific, met a lot of information about the culture of the studied tribes , but when I wanted to organize it was very difficult to translate and give the same meaning in another language : for example, when describing a ritual, it was very difficult to give full meaning and sense that he had a specific word for that specific tribe .
Thus, Malinowski reaches an important conclusion: it is difficult to translate how the natives use their tongue out of their cultural context and this is more marked in cultures where there is only the oral tradition and not written as studied by this theory. More however, explains that though writing is a way to communicate something that seeks to give meaning to a reality and is therefore only a supplement . Thus, when the only oral language is used , it is also using a text , to surround it with meaning.
From this logic , Malinowski argues that all languages without a context can not exist in the real world , ie , is an illusion , a fiction , since the language is not only a vehicle , language is action ( acquires meaning here the explanation of the theory of frames Goffman ) and aims to maintain links between one person and another , and between the individual and society. Hence its pragmatic character , because despite communicating thoughts or knowledge, per the link the speaker communicates with the sense that each culture gives a certain word .
In this sense, Malinowski argues that men do not communicate to communicate abstract knowledge : communicate to tell other and communicate what happens in the real world. Therefore, there is no need for explanation of the origins of something that is inserted into our culture ( when performed , is due to the related communication with someone or something metaphysical as religion - ) as the most important thing is to update the knowledge through conversation.