Ethnolinguistics: Boas, Sapir and Whorf Revisited 9783110804157, 9789027975973

Citation preview

ETHNO LINGUISTICS BOAS, SAPIR AND WHORF REVISITED

Contributions to the Sociology of Language

27

Joshua A. Fishman Editor

MOUTON

PUBLISHERS

THE

HAGUE

PARIS

NEW

YORK

Ethnolinguistics: Boas, Sapir and Whorf Revisited

Edited by

Madeleine Mathiot

MOUTON

PUBLISHERS

• THE HAGUE

• PARIS

• NEW

YORK

ISBN: 9 0 - 2 7 9 - 7 5 9 9 - 3 Jacket design by Jurriaan Schrofer © 1979, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands Printed in Great Britain

/ wish to dedicate my contributions to this volume to Regina Flannery Herzfeld whose broad-minded intellectual support eased my way into a professional career. M.M.

Contents

Preface

I. ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL MEANING 1. Madeleine Mathiot (assisted by Marjorie Roberts) Sex Roles as Revealed Through Referential Gender in American English 2. Blair A. Rudes and Bernard Healy Is She for Real?: The Concepts of Femaleness and Maleness in the Gay World 3. Sally McConnell-Ginet Prototypes, Pronouns and Person 4. Harriet E. Manelis Klein Noun Classifiers in Toba 5. J. Peter Denny The 'Extendedness' Variable in Classifier Semantics: Universal Features and Cultural Variation

II. ANALYSIS OF LEXICAL MEANING 6. Madeleine Mathiot Folk-Definitions as a Tool for the Analysis of Lexical Meaning 7. Richard Anderson Maps and Trailers: A Restudy

viii

Contents

8. Carol Rinnert Complexity of Class Inclusion in American English: The Many Kinds of 'Kinds of'

279

9. Christine von Glascoe Evidence for Multiple Cognitive Realities in Yucatec Game Cognition

297

III. OVERVIEW Madeleine Mathiot

315

Preface

My concern as editor of this volume was to assemble individual contributions to the investigation of referential meaning, continuing the tradition started by Sapir, Whorf and, to my mind, best of all Boas. As I conceive of it, referential meaning is related to the referential function of language as follows: the referential function is attributed to the lingguistic system as a whole while referential meaning is attributed to the individual units of the system which are regarded as conveying particular meanings. The referential function, and consequently referential meaning, manifests itself as a culture's system of reference, through language, to the phenomena that this culture distinguishes. In other words, the referential function, and consequently referential meaning, manifests itself as a culture's categorization of 'the world' through language. Language is conceived of as a system with two separate dimensions, the grammatical and the lexical, 1 each dimension being viewed as having a separate structure, i.e. as having units and relations, in its own right. Thus there are, on the one hand, grammatical units and grammatical relations, on the other hand, lexical units and lexical relations. Both dimensions manifest the referential function, i.e. they serve to refer to the phenomena differentiated by the culture in which the language is spoken. The difference between the two dimensions lies in the way in which this reference is made: In the grammatical dimension it is obligatory and to a large extent subconscious. In the lexical dimension it is optional and to a large extent deliberate. Boas, Sapir and Whorf s approach to the analysis of referential meaning is what I call empirical semantics. It is an observation-based approach to the investigation of referential meaning rather than a speculative one or an experimental one. The question being asked in empirical semantics is what meanings are communicated through language and how do these meanings reflect the way in which the speakers conceive of 'the world', rather than, what is the nature of meaning or, what is the nature of man's ability to understand meaning, or again, how can the psychological reality of certain meanings or of the relation between meaning and world view be demonstrated? The methodology characterizing empirical semantics is one in which

X

Preface

the meanings of linguistic units are inferred on the basis of the observation of naturally-occurring linguistic behavior. It is not a methodology based on arguments and counter-arguments boosted by selected examples. Nor it is a methodology based on the construction of experiments aiming at testing hypotheses. As I understand the program outlined by Frake for ethnosemantics in the early 1960's, it was in keeping with the Boasian spirit both with regard to its goal and its methodology. Unfortunately, ethnosemanticists were attracted too often either by facile and fruitless formal semantic analyses or else by dangerously premature evolutionary interpretations. Meanwhile, the basic question as to what meanings are communicated through language remained unanswered. This volume is a collective effort to go back to this basic question. It reflects my conviction that without a better substantive knowledge than we presently have of the meanings communicated through language, any further inquiry into the relation of language to world view, or into the relation of language to the rest of culture, runs the danger of being vacuous. Madeleine Mathiot March 1977

State University of New York at Buffalo

NOTE 1. For a detailed justification, see my 'The Place of the Dictionary in Linguistic Description', Language, 43, 1967, pp. 7 1 7 - 7 2 .

PART ONE

Analysis of Grammatical Meaning

MADELEINE MATHIOT (assisted by MARJORIE ROBERTS)'

Sex Roles as Revealed Through Referential Gender in American English INTRODUCTION

Scope of pilot study This paper reports on a pilot study aiming at a semantic and cognitive analysis of the grammatical category of referential gender in American English. Grammatical categories are understood here in the traditional sense proposed by Boas and Hockett among others. The crucial characteristic in this conception is that the primary defining criterion is semantic rather than formal: Grammatical categories are regarded as being manifested by sets of grammatical forms related to one another through a common meaning.2 The common meaning of the grammatical forms traditionally regarded as manifesting gender in Indo-European languages has to do with the classification of entities on the basis of their biological nature, especially their sex. The traditional handling of gender is usually concentrated on intrinsic gender, i.e. gender assigned to lexical units as a constant. In this case particular genders — such as male, unaltered male, altered male, female — are viewed as inherent characteristics of given entities and are manifested through various means in the nominal expressions used to refer to these entities (e.g., English lion: lioness;3 tom-cat: she-cat; dog: bitch; stallion: gelding: mare). This paper is concerned with another variety of gender, namely, referential gender.4 In English referential gender is manifested together with person (only third) and number (only singular) in portmanteau forms conveying pronominal reference. 5 Referential gender has three members: the masculine, the feminine and the neuter. An inventory of the pronominal forms in which the category of referential gender is manifested appears in Table 1. For the sake of brevity three of these pronominal forms, 'he', 'she' and 'it', have been chosen to stand for the various manifestations of the three genders. Thus, 'he' stands for all the manifestations of the masculine; 'she' stands for all the manifestations of the feminine; and 'it' stands for all the manifestations of the neuter. 6 In the present approach (see Mathiot, 1970, pp. 249-253) the analysis of the cultural significance of grammatical categories proceeds on two consecutive levels of abstraction. Analysis on the first level of abstraction constitutes semantic analysis; analysis on the second level of abstraction constitutes cognitive analysis. Thus, semantic analysis is conducted on the basis of infer-

2

Madeleine Mathiot (assisted by Marjorie Roberts)

Table 1.

Inventory of the pronominal forms manifesting the category of referential gender

Pronominal forms

Genders Masculine

Feminine

Neuter

Pronoun object Possessive adjectives

he him his

she her her

it it its

Possessive pronouns

his

hers

its*

Pronoun subject

Reflective pronouns himself herself *I have never heard or seen this form in actual usage.

itself

ences drawn directly from the data, while cognitive analysis is conducted on the basis of inferences drawn from the results of semantic analysis. In semantic analysis, the question asked is: What is the relation between the linguistic forms under investigation and that which they stand for? In cognitive analysis, the question asked is: What do the results of the semantic analysis reveal about the way in which the speakers of the language conceive of reality — more specifically, that aspect of reality referred to through the grammatical category under investigation? The latter, i.e., the aspect of reality referred to through the grammatical category under investigation, is called the underlying concept. It is the intervening concept postulated in order to make the transition from semantic to cognitive analysis. It is postulated on the basis of the total range of meaning variation exhibited by the grammatical category under investigation. In the case of referential gender, the underlying concept is identity of entities, i.e., the ways in which the nature of entities is conceived of in American culture. The semantic analysis of referential gender consists of two successive phases: The first phase aims at specifying the referential meanings of 'he', 'she' and 'it', i.e., both the denotative and the connotative values attributed overtly and/or covertly by the members of the culture to these forms. The second phase aims at establishing how the meanings uncovered in the first phase relate to one another. The conduct of the two analytic phases involves different problems. In the first phase, problems arise in connection with the following two tasks: (1) the collection of meaning variants, i.e., the various meanings of 'he', 'she' and 'it' in specific instances of usage; (2) the assignment of these meaning variants to individual ranges of meaning, i.e., to semantic constants under which the meaning variants can be subsumed. In the second phase, the analytic problem is to ascertain how the previously established individual ranges of meaning relate to one another, i.e., what semantic oppositions these meanings enter into. (The procedures utilized in the pilot study in order to meet these three types of analytic problems are described in some detail further on.)

Sex Roles as Revealed Through Referential Gender

3

The cognitive analysis of referential gender consists in relating the semantic oppositions ascertained in the semantic analysis to the underlying concept, i.e., the identity of entities. In other words, the semantic oppositions uncovered in the semantic analysis serve to infer the ways in which Americans conceive of the nature of entities. Knowledge available at the onset of the pilot study: pattern of usage

the

normative

The knowledge at the onset of the pilot study was based on the descriptions of referential gender given in normative grammars. In these descriptions it is stated that there is a right way and a wrong way of using 'he', 'she' and 'it'. The right way constitutes the normative pattern of usage. The wrong way constitutes deviations from the normative pattern. The normative pattern can be succinctly presented in two rules. The first rule reads as follows: Use 'he' or 'she' when referring to human beings, otherwise use 'it'. The second rule reads as follows: Use 'he' when referring to a male human being and 'she' when referring to a female human being. Two types of information are contained in these rules: on the one hand, how the linguistic forms under consideration contrast with one another, i.e., what formal oppositions the three genders enter into; on the other hand, how the meanings of the three genders contrast with one another, i.e., what semantic oppositions correspond to the formal oppositions. The three genders enter into the following two formal oppositions: (1) ('he' or 'she') vs. 'it'; and (2) 'he' vs. 'she'. To each of these formal oppositions corresponds one semantic opposition, as follows: To ('he' or 'she') vs. 'it' corresponds the semantic opposition human vs. nonhuman; to 'he' vs. 'she' corresponds the semantic opposition male vs. female. The deviations from the normative pattern usually mentioned in normative grammars include the use of 'she' to refer to countries, cars, ships and storms, and that of 'it' to refer to babies.7 No explanation is given for these usages. Goal of pilot study A casual observation of the ways in which people use 'he', 'she' and 'it' in everyday life soon reveals that the normative pattern is actually used but that the deviations from the normative pattern are much more numerous and varied than is surmised in normative grammars. The hypothesis of the pilot study is that the so-called deviations from the normative pattern are in fact manifestations of one or several additional patterns of usage. In other words, the full range of usage of 'he', 'she' and 'it' is believed to be accountable for in terms of a few patterns representing shared - rather than idiosyncratic — meanings.8 The goal of the present pilot study is to uncover and describe these patterns of usage.

4

Madeleine Mathiot (assisted by Marjorie Roberts)

Collection of data base The immediate problem that arises is methodological: How to uncover efficiently the patterns of usage of 'he', 'she' and 'it' that lie outside the normative pattern? Two radically different procedures were tried out: (1) the direct elicitation of forms and meanings; (2) the collection of naturally ocurring instances of usage of 'he', 'she' and 'it', with the concomittant assignment of meaning variants to these forms. Only the second procedure, in spite of its obvious drawbacks, was retained as adequate to the stated goal. The direct elicitation procedure This procedure consists of two consecutive phases: first, the elicitation of instances of usage; next, the elicitation of the intended meaning. The latter procedure was conducted only occasionally and always with the same informants from whom instances of usage that lie outside the normative pattern had been recorded. The elicitation of instances of usage of 'he', 'she' and 'it' was conducted by selecting lexical units referring to entities the attributed gender of which was being tested. These lexical units were then placed either into a question frame or into utterances with blanks to be filled in. Examples of question frames and utterances with blanks to be filled in are shown in Table 2.9 Table 2. The direct elicitation procedure Examples of question frames are: a car your car 1. When referring to

a bee Russia

would you use 'he', 'she' or 'it'?

a country a car 2. Do you ever

Have you ever heard anyone

your car use 'he' when referring to a bee Russia

?

a country Examples of utterances with blanks to be filled in by either 'he' 'she' or 'it'are: 1. Our bioloev teacher has taupht for manv vears. is well-liked among the students. 2. Russia is presently a member of the United Nations Security Council. was an allv of the United States in 1945.

Sex Roles as Revealed Through Referential Gender

5

The insights gained from the attempt to utilize the direct elicitation procedure can be summarized as follows: (1) The level of awareness that naive members of the culture have of their use of 'he', 'she', 'it' and of the meanings of these forms seems to be correlated to the degree of acceptance by normative grammars: They have a high level of awareness only of what the normative source regards as either good or at least tolerable. They have a low degree of awareness of any other usage, no doubt because it is regarded as bad or not tolerable. 10 (2) The self-consciousness that subjects feel at being tested manifests itself in their adherence to the usage regarded as good or at least tolerable, i.e., the usage described in normative grammars. There seems to be a correlation between degree of self-consciousness and degree of formal education: The higher the level of formal education, the greater the degree of self-consciousness, and consequently, the greater the adherence to the usage regarded as good or at least tolerable. 11 (3) When people are asked to explain what their intended meanings are it is difficult to tell a 'genuine' explanation from a rationalization.12 The three observations presented above clearly account for the reasons why the direct elicitation procedure was abandoned as not adequate to the goal of the pilot study. It was therefore concluded that the only way to obtain information about spontaneous usage was to record such usage.

Collection of naturally-occurring instances of usage The collection of naturally-occurring instances of usage of 'he', 'she' and 'it' was conducted off and on, first over a period of 3-1/2 years in the Los Angeles area, then over a period of 6-1/2 years in the Buffalo area. The focus of the data collection remained the same over the 10 years, namely, the various ways in which 'he', 'she' and 'it' were used in informal occasions of face-to-face interaction. These occasions involve spoken rather than written language. The settings are the home and the place where one works or meets people: an office, a cafeteria, a department store, various surroundings in a college and a university. The people involved are family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, colleagues, fellow students, and workmen (such as movers, painters, plumbers, electricians, nurserymen) in the process of doing a piece of work for a customer. 13

Inference of meaning variants The immediate problem that arises in connection with naturally occurring instances of usage of 'he', 'she' and 'it' is that the meanings conveyed through

6

Madeleine Mathiot (assisted by Marjorie Roberts)

these forms, i.e., the meaning variants, are often opaque. In the pilot study opaque meaning variants were inferred — when possible — on the basis of the linguistic context and/or the psycho-cultural context (see Appendix 1) . Whenever the context did not provide a clue to the meaning of a form, that particular instance of usage was not utilized in the semantic analysis. Not all the instances of usage collected in the course of ten years of data gathering could therefore be utilized. The linguistic context found most useful for the purpose at hand includes the entire utterance in which 'he', 'she' or 'it' occurs, together with a folk description of the accompanying paralinguistic and kinesic phenomena. Instances are: 'He is such a cute little fellow!', said by a woman with a 'maternal' intonation, i.e., the way a woman typically talks about a human baby or an animal baby, such as a kitten; 'She is delicious!' said by a girl eating an ice cream cone with a strong emphasis on the '1' indicating her utter enjoyment at the food and involvement in it;'She is a regular beauty!' said by a man with great conviction and admiration. By psycho-cultural context is meant the non-linguistic circumstances surrounding the occurrence of a particular instance of usage. An interpretation of these circumstances requires an intimate knowledge of the speaker — his views, his life style etc. In the following example the speaker is a school teacher, a young man who does odd jobs during his summer vacations. Whenever he has a large scale job to do, such as painting the outside of a house, he works with a friend of his who acts as his helper. Talking about a big ladder in the garage he said to his helper: 'I take her out, you take it back in!'. Why did he, in the same utterance, refer to the same entity—namely, a ladderonce as 'she' and the other time as 'it'? More specifically, why did he use 'she' when the ladder was connected with him ('/ take her out') and 'it' when the ladder was connected with his helper {'You take it back in')? It is only if one knows that the speaker is aware that he is a good worker while his helper is not that the implicit meaning of his utterance can be inferred as: 'I respect myself because I am a good worker; I do not respect you because you are not a good worker'. On the basis of the implicit meaning stated above the meaning variant of 'she' in this utterance can be said to be pride on the part of the person associated with the entity referred to, while the meaning variant of 'it' is contempt for the person associated with the entity referred to (see Note 23).

Additional pattern of usage: the intimate pattern The meaning variants of 'she', 'he' and 'it' in the instances of usage characteristic of informal occasions of interaction served to uncover a pattern of usage

Sex Roles as Revealed Through Referential Gender

7

called the intimate pattern.1* That the occurrence of this pattern of usage is governed by intimacy is clearly shown by the repeated observation of a switch from the intimate pattern to the normative pattern due to the presence of a non-in-group person, such as the boss or a customer. About her days as a clerk in A M & A, a big department store in Buffalo, Maijorie Roberts says: 'It was seldom that I heard the use of the 'he' when the clerks were speaking to customers, supervisors and the like.' In the following example, the same man reporting the same event (namely, fixing a door) uses the intimate pattern when talking to his family and the normative pattern when talking to his boss. What he said to his family is: 'Yeah I finally fixed her up. Boy, was she a mess! Her lock was busted and her knob fell off in my hand!' What he said to his boss is: 'I took care of the door leading to the stockroom. It wasn't much. The knob was on wrong and its lock wasn't working properly.' The striking characteristic of the use of 'he', 'she' and 'it' in the intimate pattern is the speaker's disregard for the attributes that serve as the defining criteria of entities in the normative pattern: (1) human status and (2) biological sex, and (3) the permanence of status of entities. In the normative pattern only nonhuman entities are referred to as 'it', only human females as 'she' and only human males as 'he'. The intimate pattern is constituted by three types of usage in which the rules of the normative pattern are disregarded: On the one hand, nonhuman entities are personified15 while human entities are denied their human status. On the other hand there is a reversal of sex roles: women are treated as if they were men and referred to as 'he'; men are treated as if they were women and referred to as 'she'. 16 In addition, while in the normative pattern the status of entities is a constant (a given entity is either human or nonhuman, and if human, it is either male or female), in the intimate pattern, the same entity may be referred to through either one of the three prenominal forms by the same speaker (see Note 27 and Appendix 3 for examples). The choice of 'he', 'she' or 'it' depends on the speaker's general attitude towards the entity referred to or his feelings of the moment towards that entity. 17 It is proposed that through the disregard of the rules of the normative pattern the speaker unconsciously expresses an alternative cultural conception of the nature of entities, more specifically of humanness, maleness and femaleness. The meanings conveyed through the intimate pattern are therefore all covert meanings. In summary: The naturally-occurring instances of usage of 'he', 'she' and 'it' collected in the course of the pilot study yield, on the one hand, an additional insight into the normative pattern, and, on the other hand, an elaborate semantic analysis of the intimate pattern.

8

Madeleine Mathiot (assited by Marjorie Roberts)

ADDITIONAL INSIGHT INTO THE NORMATIVE PATTERN

The additional insight into the normative pattern is the uncovering of a covert conception of the nature of entities. This covert conception is revealed by the nature of the contrasts reflecting the usage of 'he', 'she' and 'it' in the normative pattern. Both of the formal oppositions manifesting this pattern appear to be privative, i.e., oppositions in which one of the terms can be neutralized. The term of the opposition that can be neutralized is the unmarked term; the other is the marked term (see Trouhelzkoy, 1949, pp. 7680). In the case of the formal opposition ('he' or 'she') vs. 'it', 'it' is the unmarked term of the opposition whereas either 'he' or 'she' are the marked terms. Thus, while 'he' and 'she' always mean 'human', 'it' means either 'not human' or 'of ambiguous human status'. The latter is the meaning of 'it' whenever this form is used to refer to entities such as foetus, baby, child, 18 alien, ghost, corpse etc. . . (For a further discussion of the complex case of infant, baby and child, see Note 25.) In view of the above, in the semantic opposition human vs. nonhuman that corresponds to the formal opposition ('he' or 'she') vs. 'it', human stands for necessarily human and nonhuman for not necessarily human. In the case of the formal opposition 'he' vs. 'she', 'he' is the unmarked term whereas 'she' is the marked term. Thus, while 'she' always means 'female', 'he' means either 'male' or 'unspecified as to sex'. The latter is the meaning of 'he' whenever the speaker either does not know, or does not care to specify, the sex of the human referent. 19 In view of the above, the semantic opposition is female vs. nonfemale, in which female stands for necessarily female and nonfemale stands for not necessarily female. The formal opposition that corresponds to this semantic opposition is therefore best represented as 'she' vs. 'he' and not as 'he' vs. 'she'. In the case of the two semantic oppositions discussed above the significance of the fact that one term is marked while the other is unmarked is as follows: To the marked term corresponds the presence of a characteristic which is absent in the unmarked term. Thus (1) human beings are defined by American culture on the basis of a characteristic that nonhuman entities do not have; (2) women are defined on the basis of a characteristic that men do not have. With regard to human beings, the entities whose human status is ambiguous give a clue as to what is the defining characteristic of humanness in American culture. Babies and young children are a case in point. Even when they are regarded as lovable they are generally believed to lack the faculty of reason. This suggests that the latter faculty is the defining characteristic of humanness. 20 With regard to women, an informal knowledge of American culture sug-

Sex Roles as Revealed Through Referential Gender

9

gests that the defining characteristic of femaleness is the ability to give birth.21 These two criteria, faculty of reason and ability to give birth, serve to specify the two semantic oppositions manifesting the normative pattern as follows: The overt opposition human vs. nonhuman is covertly specified as Having-Reason vs. Lacking-Reason; the overt opposition female vs. nonfemale is covertly specified as Able-to-Give-Birth vs. Unable-to-give-Birth. The semantic oppositions pertaining to the normative pattern are shown in Table 3. Table 3. The normative pattern Formal oppositions

Semantic oppositions Overt: Human vs. Non human

('he' or 'she') vs. 'it'

Covert: Having Reason vs. Lacking Reason Overt: Female vs. Non-female

'she' vs. 'he'

Covert: Able to give birth vs. Unable to give Birth

The attributes which are the terms of these oppositions appear to reflect a view of human beings vs. nonhuman entities and of women vs. men held by our 'Western Civilization' in general rather than specific only to American culture. The following cognitive significance suggests itself for these attributes: Reason as an attribute of human beings suggests to a religious person that man is God's greatest creation; to a nonreligious person it suggests that man is himself God. The ability to give birth suggests that women are the means through which the race perpetuates itself.

DESCRIPTION OF THE INTIMATE PATTERN

In the intimate pattern the three genders enter into the same fundamental formal oppositions as in the normative pattern. These are: (1) ('he' or 'she') vs. 'it'; and (2) 'she' vs. 'he'. As mentioned further above, the intimate pattern is characterized by three types of usage: personification, denial of human status, and sex-role reversal. In the first formal opposition, only personification and denial of human status are relevant. Thus, both 'he' and 'she' refer only to nonhuman entities that are personified; 'it' refers to either human beings whose inherent human status is being denied, or to nonhuman entities whose attributed human status is being denied.

10

Madeleine Mathiot (assisted by Marjorie Roberts)

In the second formal opposition both personification and reversal of sex roles are relevant. Thus 'he' and 'she' may refer either to nonhuman entities or to human beings. Whenever 'he' and 'she' refer to nonhuman entities the latter are treated as if they were men and women, respectively. Whenever 'he' and 'she' refer to human beings, 'he' refers to a woman who is treated as if she were a man and 'she' refers to a man who is treated as if he were a woman. The above shows that, in the intimate pattern, entities are classified in terms of the same two fundamental oppositions as in the normative pattern: on the one hand, human beings vs. nonhuman entities (or the reverse); on the other hand, women vs. men (or the reverse).22 The goal of the semantic analysis is to ascertain how these four classes of entities (human beings and nonhuman entities, women and men) are characterized by considering the three types of usage making up the intimate pattern, namely, personification, denial of human status, and sex-role reversal. The goal of the cognitive analysis is to ascertain the cultural significance of the way in which entities are characterized. The meanings of 'he', 'she' and 'it' uncovered in the pilot study suggest that the intimate pattern conveys the speaker's various ways of relating to the entities around him. In other words, the intimate pattern conveys the various interpersonal role relationships in which the speaker sees himself vis-a-vis nonhuman entities, his own sex and the opposite sex. The attributes used to characterize entities are said to constitute the descriptive mode of the intimate pattern. The latter reveals the inherent image that Americans have of human beings and nonhuman entities, on the one hand, men and women, on the other. The role relationships of entities vis-a-vis one another that are further inferred from these attributes are said to constitute the interpersonal mode of the intimate pattern. The latter reveals the role image that Americans have of human beings and nonhuman entities, on the one hand, men and women, on the other. This role image is constituted by pairs of roles, consisting of the role attributed to oneself and the role attributed to the other party in the relationship. The descriptive mode corresponds to the semantic analysis of the intimate pattern. The interpersonal mode corresponds to the cognitive analysis of the intimate pattern. The results of the two consecutive analyses are summarized in Tables 4 to 9. The detailed description of the intimate pattern that will now be given is organized around the two formal oppositions ('he' or 'she' vs. 'it'; 'she' vs. 'he') as follows: For each of the semantic oppositions that correspond to the formal oppositions, the meaning variants manifesting each term of the semantic opposition are listed and illustrated. Then the inherent image and the role image inferred from these data are specified.

Sex Roles as Revealed Through Referential Gender

11

('he'or 'she') vs. 'it' To the first formal opposition, namely, ('he' or 'she') vs. 'it', there corresponds a single semantic opposition, Upgrading vs. Downgrading. Upgrading corresponds to personification. It is the use of either 'he' or 'she' to refer to entities that are not human beings. In other words an entity is upgraded by the mere fact of assimilating it to a human being. Upgrading indicates various degrees of positive involvement on the part of the speaker with the entity referred to, 2 3 from mild interest to passionate attachment, as will be exemplified below. Downgrading corresponds to the denial of human status, either inherent or attributed. It is the use of 'it' to refer either to entities that are human beings or to entities that have previously been upgraded but are now denied their previously attributed status. In other words, an entity is downgraded by the mere fact of denying it its inherent or attributed human status. Downgrading indicates various degrees of negative involvement on the part of the speaker with the entity referred to (see Note 23), from lack of interest to mild annoyance, contempt, or even violent rage, as will likewise be exemplified below. The instances of upgrading recorded in the data base are extremely numerous. It seems that any nonhuman entity can be referred to as either 'he' or 'she', i.e., be upgraded, without regard to its nature. Instances of upgraded entities include an ice cream cone, a football team, mathematical formulae, high prices, 24 a chairlift ticket, a California poppy, grass, a pool deck, a pillow, a vase, a key, a door, a wall, a metal strip on a window, a writing pen, a piece of furniture, a refrigerator and a bag of cement. A striking example of downgrading of human beings2 5 was reported by a student. Her mother, originally from Baltimore, when telling about a robbery that had recently taken place in her house said with anger: 'I can understand why they took the silverware etc. But why did it take my piggy bank?' An instance of downgrading of an otherwise upgraded entity is as follows: A man talking about his car indicates his change of attitude from anger back to love in the following way: 'Sometimes, I feel like junking it, just tossing . . . But then she comes back with her choke working okay. I just don't know what I am going to do with her'. The meanings described and illustrated above show that Americans' inherent image of entities is that human beings are intrinsically superior to all other entities in nature. Thus human beings are intrinsically superior while all nonhuman entities are intrinsically inferior. Regarding Americans' role image of entities, the above suggests that the role attributed to human beings vis-a-vis other entities is that of Master. The

12

Madeleine Mathiot (assisted by Marjorie Roberts)

role attributed to nonhuman entities that pairs off with the role of master is that of Servant. The role pair Master-Servant reflects Americans' conception of the place of man in nature: It is in keeping with the well known biblical saying 'Man is the master of creation'. The way in which the formal opposition ('he' or 'she') vs. 'it' manifests the intimate pattern is summarized in Table 4. 'she'vs. 'he' In the case of the second formal opposition pertaining to the intimate pattern, namely, 'she' vs. 'he', the semantic analysis is complex due to the unusually large number of meaning variants to be dealt with. In view of this complexity it is necessary to discuss the procedure followed in the analysis before summarizing the results obtained through the application of this procedure. Procedure followed The procedure is part of the standard procedure for semantic analysis mentioned in the introduction. The aim is to find appropriate criteria to carry out the two remaining tasks after the meaning variants have been identified, namely, first the assignment of meaning variants to individual ranges of meaning; next, the discovery of the semantic oppositions constituted by the latter.

From meaning variants to individual ranges of meaning Meaning variants are assigned to individual ranges of meaning on the basis of two mutually supportive variables: (1) the speaker's mental image of men and women; (2) his feelings about, or attitudes toward, men and women. Thus being beautiful is part of the mental image that men have of women. The attitude that corresponds to this aspect of their mental image is admiration. The distinction between mental images and feelings or attitudes proved to be necessary for two reasons: (1) sometimes one, and sometimes the other, variable was more readily apparent from contexts of use and thus helped in inferring meaning variants; (2) sometimes one, and sometimes the other, variable helped in deciding what is one individual range of meaning as opposed to two. Table 5 and 6 show a complete inventory of the mental images, attitudes or feelings accounting for the meanings of 'she' and 'he' in the intimate pattern.

Sex Roles as Revealed Through Referential Gender

aa t u

3, s

C'a

E o

T) ta £ o

Cl

tí o O O, •o 0>

i o

ItaME u E

ta

«

ccue £" u.S? o. a E 2 o e c'S « 3

Sex Roles as Revealed Through Referential Gender

a

EL

£

e

ü a ^ j«ì ti o-g e U x> £

« s s Cü

e

X> a

e ra

E

E

O

.2 g .2

o

ai

£

£

:

q¿

ii

si E

a p
— s •S t? ? s — o ÜS K "C « ? « 2 S o "sr U V u a t: e .c ^ < c Ä 3 3 C -a £ C 3 O .3 S S^ cq je

r

M Oi O J O 02 „ uw m p D W 02 o o

z o H g b W Q M i-J O b

B O

* o

o s9i o c g 3 u

c •a

3 o 2 I So »s «C K -gS ¿a• h s c— " S " !Si ^ s: T3 ao. o% S-> ?

•«•S a ^S o "S S« l. R O o

u ca , •a Oi JH -S HS S 5

M o ca xi a

C O

u I

cSn gS s ^ so os 's-s g s >§'§,2 - » sss:

o

"a § o

|« -o | aO a«o ^ M C 5 S

o •a "S g »•.S V. CJ | c •s a l | os S Sg

cd

&.

cd O. 1/3

Vi

S

06

cd

cd P