Commentary: Linguistic Structure and Social Structure

摘要

Lenkersdorf's paper tries to highlight the contention that foreign cultures and languages should be understood in their own terms. In this sense, it is important to underline that it is not fair to directly apply certain concepts such as science, culture or law as defined in Western societies to local communities whose culture has an entirely different background. It shows and illustrates this point by examining in considerable detail different forms and aspects of Tojolabal social and linguistic life. Unfortunately, some of the ways of doing that do not seem appropriate to me, at least from a linguistic point of view. The author starts with an interesting observation: in the Tseltal community in which the author lived, a single word appeared constantly in everyday speech. It is the word teek, meaning 'we'. This is directly related to the alleged fact that the social organisation of this community is built on WE; for the discussion to follow it is important to note that 'we' and WE are distinct elements: the first is a pronoun and the second is not a pronoun but presumably a social entity. In the paper, it is stated that the Tojolabal community bases its education, justice, science and social organisation on the collectivity and not on the individual. I have nothing substantial to say about the correctness of this social description of the Tojolabal community - it appears to be fair and exact.