Relatively Speaking : Language, Thought, And Kinship Among The Mopan Maya Hardcover

Eve Danziger

Eve Danziger's study re-addresses the issue of language and thought by viewing linguistic utterances as fully integrated into both the particular context of their use and the larger cultural context that makes it possible to use them at all. Using fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork among the Mopan Maya in Belize, she examines the semantic complexity of particular kinship terms used among Mopan women and children and shows that a culture-specific analysis of their terms is superior to other non-ethnographically-based methods of analysis.

9780195099102

English

Oxford University Press, USA

12-04-2001

136

..the greatest achievement of this work is its unique combination of ethnographic and quantitative methodologies. It is this combination that allows the study to rise above the many problems facing anyone who attempts to examine the relativity hypothesis.....The ethnographic research is itself a major contribution to Mayan ethnography. Danziger provides an excellent description of the Mopan system of kinship (and its role in establishing and maintaining social relationships) and her analysis of the importance of the 'tzik' concept of respect will be especially useful to anthropologists and Mayanists. * Linguist *