ACADEMIC BIOGRAPHY September, 2015 Emeritus Professor of Anthropology

ACADEMIC BIOGRAPHY
September, 2015
GARY B PALMER
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology
University of Nevada at Las Vegas, NV, USA
Mail: P. O. 127, Nevada City, CA 95959
Email: [email protected]
EDUCATION
Ph. D., Cultural Anthropology, University of Minnesota, Summer 1971.
M.S., Physical Anthropology, University of Minnesota, August 1966.
B.S. in Biology, Hamline University of St. Paul, June 1964.
ACADEMIC AFFILIATIONS
Visiting Researcher, Department of Linguistics, University of the Philippines - Diliman,
January 19 - March 1, 1999.
Visiting Scholar, LSA Linguistic Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, Summer, 1989.
Visiting Scholar, LSA Linguistic Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, Summer, 1987.
Research affiliation with Makerere University College Institute of Social Research,
Kampala, Uganda, January 1968 to January 1969.
CIC Traveling Scholar to attend Interdisciplinary Program in Human Ecology, University
of Illinois, Urbana. September 1966 to January 1967.
SPECIAL INTERESTS
Linguistic Anthropology (Cultural Linguistics, Cognitive Grammar, Computer Analysis
of Texts)
Austronesian (Tagalog)
Salish (Coeur d'Alene, Columbian, Shuswap)
Bantu (Shona, Swahili)
Human Ecology
PUBLICATIONS
Books
1996 Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Reviews: Michael Agar, Language in Society, 1998, 27, 4, Dec, 523-526;
Zdenek Salzmann, Language, 1998, 74, 2, June, 450. Translated into Spanish
as: Lingüística Cultural. Traducido del inglés por Enrique Bernárdez.
Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2000.
Edited Volumes
2007. Applied cultural linguistics: Implications for second language learning and
intercultural communication. Sharifian, F. & Palmer, G. B. (eds.)
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
2003. Cognitive Linguistics and Non-Indo-European Languages. Gene Casad and Gary
B. Palmer (Eds.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
2003 Talking about Thinking across Languages. Gary B. Palmer, Cliff Goddard, and
Penny Lee (Eds.). Journal of Cognitive Linguistics 14(2,3), Special Issue.
1999 Languages of Sentiment: Cultural Constructions of Emotional Substrates.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Co-edited with Debra J. Occhi.
Reviews: C. Jason Throop, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2001, 8 (3), 9496. Keiko Matsuki, Language in Society 30(4):649-652. Alan S. Kaye,
Language, 2002, 78 (2), 361.
Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals
2015 Ethnography: A neglected method of inductive linguistics. Etnolingwistyka 27:
21-46.
2014 Emotional, evaluative, and ideological subjectification in Tagalog and Shona.
International Journal of Language and Culture 1(1): 1-20.
2004 (with Russell Rader and Art Clarito, co-authors). Every affix is an archipelago:
Tagalog ka- as a semantic partial. Southwest Journal of Linguistics 23 (1):45-85.
2003 The Grammar of Snchitsu'umshtsn (Coeur d'Alene) Plant Names. Journal of
Ethnobiology 23 (1):65-100. Co-authored with M. Dale Kinkade and Nancy
Turner.
2003 Cultural Linguistics and Shona Noun Classifiers. Alternation 10 (1): 63-86.
2001 Indian Pioneers: The settlement of Ni'lukhwalqw (Upper Hangman Creek, Idaho)
by the Snchitsu'umsh (Coeur d'Alene Indians). Oregon Historical Quarterly 102
(1): 22-47.
1996 Performance and Imagination: Towards an Anthropology of the Spectacular and
the Mundane. Co-authored by William Jankowiak. Cultural Anthropology 11 (2):
225-258.
1993 "Where There are Muskrats": The Semantic Structure of Coeur d'Alene Place
Names. Linguistic Anthropology 32 (3-4):263-294.
1988 The Language and Culture Approach in the Coeur d'Alene Language Preservation
Project. Human Organization 47 (4):307-317.
1985 Coeur d'Alene Exceptions to Proposed Universals in Anatomical Nomenclature.
With Lawrence Nicodemus. American Ethnologist 12 (2):341-359.
1978 Water Development Strategies in the Colorado River Basin: Expansion versus
Involution. Anthropological Quarterly 51 (2):99-117.
1978 Cultural Ecology in the Canadian Plateau: Estimates of Shuswap Indian Salmon
Resources in Pre-Contact Times. Northwest Anthropological Research Notes 12
(1):5-8.
1975 Shuswap Indian Ethnobotany. Syesis (J. Brit. Col. Prov. Mus.) 8:29-81.
1975 Cultural Ecology in the Canadian Plateau: Pre-Contact to the Early Contact
Period in the Territory of the Southern Shuswap Indians of British Columbia.
Northwest Anthropological Research Notes 9 (2):199-245.
1974 The Ecology of Resettlement Schemes. Human Organization 33 (3):239-251.
Chapters in Edited Volumes and Proceedings
2014 Co-authored with Jennifer Thompson, Jeffrey Parkin, and Elizabeth Harmon. The
ceremonial origins of language. In Masataka Yamaguchi, Dennis Tay and Ben
Blount, (Eds.). Towards an Integration of Language, Culture and Cognition, 145177. Palgrave MacMillan: New York/Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire.
2009 The metonymic basis of a 'semantic partial': Tagalog lexical constructions with
ka-. Klaus-Uwe Panther, Linda Thornburg and Antonio Barcelona (eds.).
Metonymy, 111-144. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. John Benjamins. Revision of
Palmer, Rader, and Clarito (2004) article.
2007 Co-authored with Farzad Sharifian. Applied cultural linguistics: An emerging
paradigm. In Sharifian and Palmer (Eds.) , pp. 1-14.
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1999
Movements of Social Transformation Actually Are Just Languages by Another
Name: Toward a Functional Analysis of Social Movement Language . In Lisa
Kaye Brandt (Ed.), Cultural Analysis and the Navigation of Complexity.
Influences of Gerlach’s Anthropology on Studies of Environmental Policy and
Resource Management, Language and Discourse, Power and Belief,
and Social Health. A Festschrift in Honor of Luther P. Gerlach. Lanham:
University Press of America, Inc., 21-38.
“Cognitive Linguistics and Anthropological Linguistics.” Chapter 39, In Dirk
Geeraerts and Hubert Cuyckens (eds.). Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1045-1073.
Energy through Fusion at Last: Synergies in Cognitive Anthropology and
Cognitive Linguistics. In Gitte Kristiansen and Rene Dirven, eds., Cognitive
Linguistics: Foundations and Fields of Application, pp. 64-305. Berlin/New
York: Mouton de Gruyter.
When Does Cognitive Linguistics Become Cultural? Case Studies in Tagalog
Voice and Shona Noun Classifiers. In June Luchjenbroers (Ed.) Cognitive
Linguistics Investigations across Languages, Fields, and Philosophical
Boundaries. John Benjamins, 13-46.
The Filipinos. Co-authored with Art Clarito and Heather Lawler. In Jerry Simich
and Tom Wright (Eds.) Peoples of Las Vegas. Reno: University of Nevada Press.
Introduction. In Palmer, Goddard, and Lee, 97-108.
Talking about thinking in Tagalog. In Palmer, Goddard, and Lee, 251-280.
Introduction: Rice taboos, broad faces, and complex categories. Co-authored with
Gene Casad, In Casad and Palmer (Eds.), 1-38.
Metonymy and polysemy in the Tagalog voicing prefix PAG-. In Casad and Palmer
(Eds.), 193-222.
What's wrong with Dreaming Filipinos? Grammar and subversion of cultural
imperialism in a Tagalog film. In Corazon D. Villareal, Lily Rose R. Tope, and
Patricia May B. Jurilla (Eds.), Ruptures and Departures: Language and Culture
in Southeast Asia. Diliman, Quezon City: Department of English and
Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines and the Authors, 187-211.
Language and Emotion: The Interplay of Conceptualization with Physiology and
Culture. By Zoltán Kövecses, Gary B. Palmer, and René Dirven. In René Dirven
and Ralf Pörings (Eds.). Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast.
Amsterdam/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 133-160. [Revision and reprint of
Kövecses & Palmer (1999)]
Ontological Classifiers as Polycentric Categories, as Seen in Shona Class 3
Nouns. With Claudia Woodman. In Martin Puetz and Marjolijn Verspoor, eds.
Explorations in Linguistic Relativity. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John
Benjamins, 225-249.
Introduction: Linguistic anthropology and emotional experience. with Debra J.
Occhi. In Gary B. Palmer and Debra J. Occhi, eds. Languages of Sentiment:
Cultural Constructions of Emotional Substrates. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 122.
Bursting with Grief, Erupting with Shame: A Conceptual and Grammatical
Analysis of Emotion-Tropes in Tagalog. With Heather Bennett and Les Stacey.
In Gary B. Palmer and Debra J. Occhi, eds. Languages of Sentiment: Cultural
Constructions of Emotional Substrates. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 171-200.
Language and Emotion Concepts: What Experientialists and Social
Constructionists have in Common. With Zoltán Kövecses. In Gary B. Palmer and
Debra J. Occhi, eds. Languages of Sentiment: Cultural Constructions of
Emotional Substrates. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 237-262.
The Domain of Ancestral Spirits in Bantu Noun Classification. Co-authored with
Dorothea Neal Arin. In Masako Hiraga, Chris Sinha, and Sherman Wilcox, eds.
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Cultural, Typological and Psycholinguistic Issues. Selected Papers of the Biannual ICLA Meeting in Alburquerque, July, 1995. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
25-45.
Langacker Semantics for Three Coeur d'Alene Prefixes Glossed as 'On'. By Roy
H. Ogawa and Gary B. Palmer, In Leon de Stadler and Christopher Eyrich (eds.),
Issues in Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 165-224.
Coeur d'Alene. In Deward E. Walker, Jr., Ed., Plateau, Vol. 12, Handbook of
North American Indian. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 312-326.
Section on "History" with John Bower, In Jay Miller, Middle Columbia River
Salishans. In Deward E. Walker, Jr., Ed., Plateau, Vol. 12, Handbook of North
American Indian. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 266-269 of 253-270.
The Ideology of Honor, Respect, and Emotion in Tagalog. Co-authored with Rick
Brown. In Angeliki Athanasiadou and Elzbieta Tabakowska, eds. Speaking of
Emotions: Conceptualization and Expression. Berlin/New York: Mouton de
Gruyter, pp. 331-355.
Foraging for Patterns in Interior Salish Semantic Domains. In Ewa CzaykowskaHiggins and M. Dale Kinkade, eds., Studies in Salish Linguistics: Current
Perspectives. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 349-386.
Like Hair, or Trees: Semantic Analysis of the Coeur d'Alene Prefix ne' 'amidst'.
Debra Occhi, Gary B. Palmer, and Roy H. Ogawa. In Margaret Langdon, ed.,
Proceedings of the 1993 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the
Indigenous Languages of the Americas, July 2-4, 1993, and the Hokan-Sioux
Conference, July 3, 1993, Columbus, Ohio. Report 8. Survey of California and
Other Indian Languages, pp. 40-58.
Concurrent Application of Language Research. In Guy P. Buchholtzer, ed.,
Amerindian Languages & Informatics: The Pacific Northwest, Amerindia,
Special Issue No. 7, pp. 135-164.
The Microcomputer and the Culture Language Approach to American Indian
Language Maintenance. In Douglas Hainline, ed. New Developments in
Language CAI. London: Croon Helm, pp. 32-52.
Adaptation through Evolving Interdependence. With Luther P. Gerlach. Chapter
16. In Paul C. Nystrom and William H. Starbuck, eds., Handbook of
Organizational Design, Vol. 1, Adapting Organizations to their Environments.
Oxford University Press, pp. 323-381.
Indian Pioneers: Coeur d'Alene Mission Farming from 1842 to 1876. In Papers
in Anthropology, Special Issue on Comparative Frontiers, Stephen I. Thompson,
ed., pp. 65-87.
Persecution, Alliance and Revenge in Shuswap Indian War Legends.
Anthropological Papers in Memory of Earl H. Swanson, Jr. Edited by Lucille
Horton, et. al. Idaho State University, Pocatello. Pp. 1-7.
The Agricultural Resettlement Scheme: A Review of Cases and Theories. In
Bernardo Berdichewsky, ed., Anthropology and Social Change in Rural Areas,
New York: Mouton. Pp. 149-186.
Reviews and Short Communications
2005. Review of Päivi Koivisto-Alanko, Abstract Words in Abstract Worlds.
Directionality and Prototypical Structure in the Semantic Change in English
Nouns of Cognition. Helsinki: Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de
Helsinki, Tome LVIII, 2000. Cognitive Linguistics 16/2:431-436.
2000 Review Article. Anna Wierzbicka, Understanding Cultures Through Their Key
Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997) and Semantics: Primes and Universals. (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996). Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 10(2): 279284.
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Review of Noam Chomsky, The Minimalist Program. Cambridge: The MIT Press,
1995. International Studies in Philosophy XXXII (2): 130-131.
Review of Joel C. Kuipers, Language, Identity, and Marginality in Indonesia: The
Changing Nature of Ritual Speech on the Island of Sumba. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998. American Ethnologist 26 (4): 1014-1015.
Review of Language and Conceptualization. Jan Nuyts and Eric Pederson, eds.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 282 pp. American Anthropologist
100 (4): 1047-1048.
Review of Angeliki Athanasiadou and René Dirven, On Conditionals Again
(Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Science: Series IV - Current
Issues in Linguistic Theory) Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing
Company, 1997, 418 pp. Cognitive Linguistics 10 (2): 185-188.
Review of Axel Hübler, The Expressivity of Grammar: Grammatical Devices
Expressing Emotion Across Time. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Cognitive Linguistics 10 (2): 190-192.
Review of Berndt, Heine. Cognitive Foundations of Grammar. Cognitive
Linguistics 10 (2): 189-190.
Review of Lucy, John A. 1992. Grammatical Categories and Cognition: A Case
Study of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. International Cognitive Linguistics Association E-Newsletter 97.6.
Review of Robert A. Rhoads, Coming Out In College: A Struggle For Queer
Identity, Westport, Connecticut: Bergin and Garvey, 1995. International Journal
of Contemporary Sociology 33 (2): 271-272.
Review of Niall MacKinnon, The British Folk Scene: Musical Performance and
Social Identity. International Journal of Contemporary Sociology 33 (1): 125126.
The science of linguistic anthropology and the postmodernist outbreak.
Anthropology Newsletter 36 (9)/December 1995, pp. 28-29.
Review of Keith Basso, Western Apache Language and Culture: Essays in
Linguistic Anthropology. Journal of Anthropological Research. 46 (3):366-69.
Stalking with Stories: Linguistics Institute Offers Insights into Southwestern
Indian Languages and Cultures. InsideOut (UNLV Faculty/Staff/Alumni
Publication), May/June.
The Gobbler. The World and I. (March) 4 (3): 652-659.
Ethnogeography with Microsoft File Data Management Program for the Apple
Macintosh. Social Science Microcomputer Review 4 (1): 91-100.
A Magic Mushroom for the Epson Alice. Dr. Dobbs Journal. April, pp. 58-73.
Review of Now That the Buffalo's Gone by Alfred M. Josephy, Jr., New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 27 (4):288-91.
Coeur d'Alene Indian Land-Use Values. With Tom Connolly, S. J., Richard Hart,
ed. Special Issue. Wealth and Trust: A Lesson from the American West, Sun
Valley.
Light Shining on the Mountain, A Thumbnail Biography of Louis Victor. Idaho
Humanities Forum, Spring, 1981, pp. 2, 12.
Review of John D. Kesby, Cultural Regions of East Africa. New York: Academic
Press, 1977, American Anthropologist 81 (4):931.
Introduction and Summary of Findings. The Social Organization of Tourism in
Alamos de Sonora, Mexico: Research Reports from the University of Nevada,
Las Vegas. Anthropology and Ethnic Studies Department Field School in
Ethnography. Journal of Anthropology 1978:45-49.
Review of Chamberlain's The Harrowing of Eden: White Attitudes Toward
Native Americans, Seabury Press, New York, Nevada Historical Society
Quarterly, 20 (4):292-293.
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1976
1975
The Ecology of Frontier Communities: African Settlement Schemes.
Comparative Frontier Studies 4, Fall.
Reply to Thayer Scudder's commentary on "The Ecology of Resettlement
Schemes." Human Organization 34 (3):310.
Research Reports and Contract Writing
1991 Ethnohistorical Report on Columbia, Wenatchee, Entiat, and Chelan for Colville
Confederated Tribes, United States vs Oregon, 1990-1991.
1987a Khwi' Khwe Hntmikhw'lumukhw: This is My Land. Department of Education,
Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Idaho, DeSmet. with Lawrence Nicodemus.
[ethnogeography]
1987b Khwi' Khwe GuL Schitsu'umsh: These Are the Coeur d'Alene People.
Department of Education, Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Idaho, DeSmet. with Lawrence
Nicodemus and Tom Connolly, S. J. [personal names]
1985 Workbooks in the Coeur d'Alene Language, 2 Vols., with Lawrence Nicodemus
and Lavinia Felsman, approx 200 pp., 3-6th grade, Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Idaho,
1985. [phonetics and introductory syntax]
1980 Karok Indian World Renewal and Village Sites: A Cultural and Historical
District. USDA-FS-Klamath National Forest, July 1980.
n.d.
Rural Involution in Flores: A Ladino Village in Highland Guatemala. 150 pp.
ms.
Thesis Advising, Committee Chair
Ph.D., Anthropology, Kennedy Ondieki, December 2004.
M.A., Anthropology, Anja Vogel, May, 2000.
M.A., Debra Occhi, summer, 1994.
M.A., Martha Roberson, April, 1993.
ACADEMIC BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVE, GARY B. PALMER
In 1940 the famous linguist Benjamin Whorf analyzed the grammar of complex words in
Shawnee using the notion of figure and ground, which he took from gestalt psychology.
Whorf found typical figures in Shawnee stem words such as pap- ‘roomy configuration’
and kish- ‘warm, hot’. He found typical grounds in suffixes such as –peewe ‘hair,
feathers’ and –aapo ‘liquid,’ and he observed that figures precede grounds in Shawnee
word grammar, just as they do in English sentence grammar. The opposite order prevails
in Navajo.
The example gives us a taste of how grammar reveals patterns of thought, which was the
question that led me to the topic of language and culture. An exposure to the writings of
Benjamin Whorf in grad school at the University of Minnesota in the late 1960s
convinced me that the grammar of each language would reveal a distinctive way of
thought. But the approach to grammar that was widely taught at the time was the
mathematically inspired “generative linguistics.” I studied it, but found it barren, in part
because it focused on a quest for rules of word order applying to all languages regardless
of word meanings and in part because the proposed “syntactic universals” were
implausible. The meanings of words and grammatical constructions occupied only a
marginal position in these mathematically inspired theories. Meanings specific to another
culture existed outside the theory altogether. As one consequence, Whorf was also being
marginalized along with the whole theory of linguistic relativism.
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Seeking more engagement with meaning in language, I turned to the contemporary
anthropological approaches. They went by such technical sounding terms as
“ethnoscience” and “componential analysis”. And they were technical. Some researchers
tried to apply generative assumptions to fields of meaning. That is, they assumed that you
could understand a domain such as kinship terms by identifying a few recurring features
of meaning (e.g. sex, generation, lineality) in their definitions. Give each feature a symbol
and write rules that recombine the symbols and generate appropriate native language
terms for each type of relative.
I tried to apply these approaches to the study of two languages in the Salish family of
northwestern North America, commonly known for historical reasons as Shuswap and
Coeur d’Alene. Of course they have their own names for their languages, and their names
are more interesting than the English names. I found that their terms for plants, places
and anatomy resisted arrangement into tidy tables organized by features, and no small set
of formulas could be devised to generate terms from meanings. Each domain had its own
organizing principles, though each might borrow parts from the others. These results
were published in journals such as Syesis, Linguistic Anthropology, Journal of
Ethnobiology, and American Ethnologist and edited volumes. Much of this is discussed
and referenced in Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics.
In the late-1980s two books revived my enthusiasm for Whorfian linguistics. These were
Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. I, a daunting and rigorous work by Ronald
Langacker, and the much more accessible Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, by
George Lakoff. Langacker later produced more generally readable texts, such as my own
favorite: Grammar and Conceptualization, published in 1999. Langacker, Lakoff, and
others were developing a theory they termed “cognitive linguistics”. They didn’t propose
universals of word order, but they identified universals in how people attend to and frame
their experiences. These frames or “schemas” become part of linguistic symbols and
networks of symbols. Langacker proposed that in every language certain aspects of
attention and cognition are symbolized in grammar. These include relative prominence,
figure and ground, process, granularity, vantage point, and complex categories. Lakoff
discussed complex categories, universal schemas of up and down, the trajectories of
objects, and the importance of metaphor and metonymy. For both theorists, meaning was
very much a part of grammar. I reread Whorf and realized that he would see the theory as
an elaboration of his own approach. Other notable theorists whose ideas I found
particularly instructive include, in no particular order, Charles Fillmore (frames), Len
Talmy (force dynamics and spatial schemas), Wallace Chafe (meaning in grammar), Joan
Bybee (nouns and verbs), Eve Sweetser and Elizabeth Traugott (language change), Zoltán
Kövecses (emotion schemas), Dirk Geeraerts (historiography), Michael Tomasello and
Chris Sinha (intersubjectivity, language development in infants and children), John
Haviland and Stephen Levinson (spatial orientation), Naomi Quinn (propositionschemas), John Lucy (linguistic relativity), and Allesandro Durante (ergativity and social
structure). Fine grammars and case studies have been produced by David Tuggy of
Nahuatl, Eugene Casad of Cora, Zoltán Kövecses of English, Ning Yu of Chinese, Farzad
Sharifian of Aboriginal english, Maïa Ponsonnet of Dalabon, and many others of equal
value.
Though Lakoff and Langacker emphasized the importance of universal experiences and
thought processes, they also recognized the importance of cultural influences on the
thoughts of individuals. Each society offers certain kinds of experiences and organizes
meanings according to what is given prominence in the culture and according to how
things and events are thought to be connected. Hence, cognitive linguistic theory offered
the promise of a new approach to the study of language-and-culture. On the one hand,
one studies grammar to learn how it reflects important universal ideas and ideas of
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importance in specific cultures; on the other hand, one studies culture to uncover schemas
that may have grammatical significance. Thus, one discovers that the eight to ten classes
of nouns found in some form in every Bantu language (e.g. Kiswahili, Chishona, Gikuyu)
reflect the general importance of ideas about such things as ancestors who send rain, the
spirits of deceased chiefs who inhabit the bodies of lions, and the domestic activity of
pounding grain in a mortar and pestle. Nouns connected to one of these schemas take the
same prefixes and demonstrative pronouns. Typically the noun classes are named by
linguists with handy glosses such as “persons,” “animals,” “things,” or “abstract entities,”
but a more thorough study of ethnography and the meanings of terms in each class
reveals connections to more elaborated, culturally defined, central schemas, as was
noticed by the famous archaeologist Louis B. Leakey in his grammar of Gikuyu, which
he learned in childhood. Many of these schemas that govern grammar are what we would
call “scenarios,” which are conventional sequences of events such as the daily pounding
of grain in Shona or, in Gikuyu folklore, the role of the chameleon, who failed to bring
the news that the supreme being Ngai conferred immortality on humans.
Now we have a way forward by which we can learn volumes about the connections
between language and thought. We can use our study of cultural schemas to illuminate a
particular area of grammar, which might be something as complicated as a set of noun
classifiers or as deceptively simple as a single preposition. I used the culture-first
approach in several studies of noun classes in the Shona language of Zimbabwe. Or we
can put grammar first, perhaps making a collection of the different ways one can use a
certain prefix. I applied this approach to the prefix ka- in Pilipino (Tagalog), finding that it
shows up in several distinctive grammatical patterns (“constructions”), each of which has
particular meanings. Looking at all the usages, we find that Pilipino ka- operates
somewhat like the English suffix -er in drawing our attention to something connected to
the image conjured up by the root word that it modifies. In English, a roofer is not the
roof; it’s the one who does the roofing. We try to discover the kinds of meaningful
connections that have significance for grammar. This introduction of cultural meaning
into cognitive linguistics while raising the prominence of culture in the theory is the
approach that I call “cultural linguistics.” In teaching this approach at the University of
Nevada at Las Vegas, I found that both graduate and undergraduate students took it up
with enthusiasm, and much of their work has been published. For my part, I am currently
retired from teaching. I hold the title of Professor Emeritus.
There is much more to cultural linguistics. It can also be applied to questions of how
people think and talk about their own discourse, so the approach unifies such traditionally
disjoint linguistic subfields as “semantics,” “syntax,” “discourse,” "pragmatics," and
“sociolinguistics.” It has interesting applications in phonology and applied linguistics.
Anyone attempting to learn a language will benefit from cultural linguistics and find it
useful for tying together language and cultural studies. Much research has been done—
more in cognitive linguistics than in cultural—but given the vast and unifying
implications of the theory, it’s safe to say that the work has hardly begun.
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