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Text
and
Temporality:
Patterned-Cyclical and Ordinary-Linear Forms of
Time-Consciousness, Inferred from a Corpus
of
Australian
Aboriginal and Euro-Australian Life-Historical Interviews
Warren
D.
TenHouten
University of California,
Los
Angeles
It
is argued that autobiographical tests, such
as
life-historical interviews,
provide the richest possible source
of
information about
a
person‘s temporality
and a culture’s historical past. It is proposed that time-consciousness can be
inferred from such texts. To this end, ethnographic and other studies of
Australian Aboriginal time-consciousness were
iised
to construct
a
seven-part
model of pa tterned-cyclical time-consciousness. Turning these seven attributes
of patterned-cyclical time-consciousness into their opposites yields seven
features of one-dimensional, ordinary-linear time-consciousness, thereby estah-
lishing a structured temporal polarity. A lexical-level, content-analytic method-
ology, Neurocognifive Hierarchical Categorization Analysis (NHCAI, is intro-
duced, in which folk-concepts of time from Roget’s
International Thesaurus
were used to construct wordlist indicators for
9
of the
I3
definitional compo-
nents. Then, using NHCA for
d
comparative analysis of texts consisting of
life-historical interviews, earlier results
of
an
empirical study were briefly
re-presented. Australian Aborigines, compared to Euro-Australian controls, used
a significantly smaller proportion of words for an inde?r
of
ordinary-linear time
but a higher proportion of words for an index of patterned-cyclical time,
indicating a time-consciousness that
is
primarily patterned-cyclical rather than
linear. Females were less linear and more patterned-cyclical
than
males in both
cultures. These cross-cultural results contribute predictive validity to the
proposed polarity of time-consciousness. Implications for the culture-and-
cognition paradox and its resolution in dual-brain theory are addressed.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS
One’s memory of life is intimately connected with language. Stories told about one’s life
are verbal accounts that can be tape-recorded and then transcribed as texts. The primary
origins of such texts are social relations and social events.
Our
understanding of
Direct
all
correspondence to: Warren
D
TenHouten, Department
of
Sociology, University of California,
P
0
Box
951551,
Los
Angeles, CA 90095-1551
Symbolic
Interaction
ISSN
01 95-6086
11
(2):
121
-1
37
~
~
______
Copyright
8
1999 by Elsevier Science Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
122
Symbolic
Interaction
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2,
1999
biographical time-with its orientation to both the past and the future-depends upon the
use of language in both its written and spoken forms. Such understanding requires a
temporal stretch (Heidegger
[
19271 1962, p. 423) that extends the context in relation to
a
project, and a concernful understanding, necessary in order for meaning to be communi-
cated and shared. Language provides for liberation from the immediate present and
a
measure of control over the future. Through language, .we can choose from among various
courses of action. Dewey
(
1958, pp. 344-45) wrote that language, together with
typification, makes it possible for “every experience [to live]
on
in future experience” and
for the past to “provide the only means
. . .
for understanding the present.” The account,
together with description, belongs to elementary memory because it concerns objects
which endure or have endured. The main value of
an
account
is
its power to tell
us
something worth knowing about our temporal world, by means of its ability to constitute
a
narrative (Ricoeur 1984, 1985, 1988). When such an attempt succeeds, it creates what
Ricoeur calls temporality (i.e., the structure of existence that reaches language
as
narrativity). And
as
Richardson (1986, p. 94) writes, “we reach ahead toward our ends,
from out of our rootedness in what we have been, and through (or by means
of)
the entities
with which we are preoccupied.” An authentic time-consciousness, then, must appreciate
both the past and the future.
The study of individual lives as bearers
of
culture, in a general sense, requires the use
of texts produced by individuals reflecting upon, and telling stories about, their lives and
times. From Heidegger’s
([
19271 1962) notion of temporality stretched from birth to death
as
a
basis for life experience, it becomes apparent that texts appropriate for analysis of
temporality require reflection upon one’s entire life. The logic of this argument takes us
immediately to life-historical interviews and autobiographies as
the
most appropriate
source of data for sociohistorical analysis. The life story represents an overall construction
of the informant’s past and anticipated future life, in which relevant experiences
are
linked
together in temporally and thematically consistent patterns. The consideration
of
one’s life
does not mean simply
a
series of isolated experiences laid down in chronological order;
it “must be rather interpreted in the gestalt sense of biography
as
a
comprehensive, general
pattern
of
orientation that is selective in separating the relevant from the irrelevant” (Kohli
1986,
p.
93).
In
reconstructing his or her life history, the informant connects and relates
events, actions, and experiences with other events, actions, and experiences according to
substantive and temporal patterns. These patterns do not follow the linear sequence of
objective time but rather conform to
a
perspectivist time model of subjective time
(Rosenthal
1993,
p. 62; Flaherty 1991). The order that can
be
discovered in a life story
is
brought about by the world experiencing life. And Rosenthal
(1
993, p. 63) adds, “It is the
order of the primordial interrelation of ‘world’ and ‘I.’
”
Life-histories of individuals can be seen as cultural universal histories in miniature.
As
Ferrarotti (1990, p. 107) points out, a life history, being manufactured by
a
real actor
within the history of
a
culture, justifies reflecting
on
the life course by means of
“biographical testimony and autobiographical accounts.”
In
the life-historical interview,
the informant draws from his or her memory, which makes it possible “to integrate
experience in
a
series of ongoing syntheses which becomes understandable
as
we interpret
the past and
a
future in a changing present” (Kern 1983, p.
45;
Dilthey 1962). Thus, while
Text
and
Temporality
123
a life-historical interview is a personal account and a private statement, it is also a bearer
of
collective meaning.
In
an oral history, the experience of the present provoked by the interview itself brings
the external temporal structure to bear
on
the creative moments of past and future
penetration, which is crystallized in the creative narrative of the interview and which
informs the primordial temporality of finitude (Heidegger
[
19271 1962). As explained by
Schutz and Luckmann (1973, p. 47), “knowledge of finitude stands out against the
experience of the world’s continuance. This knowledge is the fundamental moment of all
projects within the frameworks of a life-plan, as it is itself determined by the time of the
life-world.” Schutz and Luckmann define their concept of multiple life-worlds in terms of
temporality, as the phenomenological
moment
in
which the private and the public-
collective intersect and interpenetrate. The experience of producing an oral self-history
involves confrontation of tensions between private and public life, which are apt to render
the experience cathartic and gratifying for the informant (Kaplan 1982).
The informant’s past is brought forward to the present by the socially-constituted stock
of cultural knowledge, by language, and by the relevances of the person’s extended social
relationships, all of which are past-dependent. According to Adam (1995, p. 78), this
means “first, that the past is fundamentally embodied in projects, and second, that the
public and the private, the objective and the subjective, the past, present, and future
interpenetrate
in
actions and their representations: historically sedimented knowledge,
goals, and concerns permeate actions, interactions, and communications.” Certainly the
telling of stories from one’s life and times is in itself a significant social interaction and
communicates not only story content but also the cognitive orientation of the author. The
interview, then, is fundamentally temporal: informants refer both to their common past
and their collective future. Adam (1995, p. 78) points out that such narrative “allows us
to think in both the past and the future tense: we can conceive of past pasts, future
presents, present futures and future futures, or a number
of
other combinations.” A
life-historical interview necessarily takes place
in
the present (with the tape-recorded
audio record, and subsequent transcript, existing as valuable cultural artifacts). The reality
that emerges
in
such a present, according to Mead’s ([I9321 1980, pp. 1-32) philosophy
of time-consciousness, reflects into the past, re-creating, changing, and developing its
meaning in light of the new present (occasioned by the interview-as-conversation). The
past, Mead correctly proposed, is not the past “in itself’ or “out there” and has
no
independent status;
only
its relation to the present provides the ground of its pastness.
Mead ([1932]
1980,
p. 31) recognized that reconstruction of the past was crucial to his
interest in resolving the contradiction between determinism and emergence because “the
novelty of every future demands a novel past” (Flaherty 1991, p. 76). The past, in Mead’s
radically insightful and pragmatist view, is, in Adam’s (1995, p. 79) terms, “as revocable
and as hypothetical as the future. The ‘real’ past, just like the ‘real’ future, is unobtainable
for us. Only through [the rational action
of]
mind do we transcend the present and extend
our environment. Only through mind is the past open to us in the present.” Mead (1934,
pp. 3 14, 339) saw that “intelligent control of immediately foreseeable conditions” requires
grasp of the emergent and novel: “To unravel the existing past in the present and
on
the
basis of it to revise the future is the task of science. The method
is
that of ideation.” From
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Symbolic Interaction
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the
nature of the human act, the present involves bringing future into the act and the
reconstruction of the past in terms of the present: “The present is the combination of the
future and the past in the process that is going on. The future is the control of the process,
and the past is that which is there
as
an
irrevocable condition of the ongoing of the
process” (Mead 1938, pp. 347-48).
Life-historical interviews are arguably the key source of data for learning about,
measuring, and testing hypotheses about time-consciousness and temporality-through
the investigation of biographical text. Biographical texts, then, provide
a
key to the
understanding of biographical time. The interview, ordinarily a dyadic social interaction,
is an expression of sociality. Sociality is essentially temporal, and temporality is
irreducibly social, because both are located in the interactional process itself. Thus,
temporality is compressed
in
the moment of the interview; this moment is not
a
replication
of
the past, is not
a
standing still, but is rather an emergent phenomenon that is always
more than the processes that lead up to it (Mead 1932). Here, time is creative, constitutive,
and transformative. In the life-historical interview, there is
an
interruption of the flowing
unity of the informant’s stream-of-consciousness in the search for stories that represent
and reflect personal history and the experiences of significant other persons. The product
is not
a
single, unitary life story but rather
a
number of stories about the informant’s life
and times. The meaning of these stories is limited by the informant’s selection processes,
with
the
unsaid aspects of any story beyond the possibility of analysis. This limitation
follows from the nature of temporality, according to which the things, processes, and
objects of mental attention in the world are never fully present nor fully absent, never fully
remembered nor fully forgotten. We can only assume that the representations of the stories
are ordered according to individual and cultural hierarchies of values and meanings
Heidegger maintained that finding ways to productively and authentically relate to birth
and death, to origin and destiny, is
a
universal existential condition of human life-a life
that can be made meaningful by means of its preservation in memory and story, when
these stories are kept alive even after death.
As
Dunne (1973, p. 23) puts it, “The human
thing is not merely to live, to act.
. .
.
It is to have
a
relationship to one’s life, one’s action,
one’s love, even if the relationship is simply one
of
consent, simply
a
‘Yes.’
”
Mead
(1929, p. 235) saw the past,
as
one’s personal history, arising through memory and
existing
in
images which form the “backward limit of the present.” Similarly, the future
is
a
hypothetical existence. Again, Mead ([I9321 1980, pp.
95,
66),
saw that the past was
as
open to social construction
as
is the future: “We speak of the past
as
final and
irrevocable. There is nothing that is less
so.”
Rather, the past belongs to the specious
present in which “memory and anticipation build
on
both ends.”
Primordial temporality constitutes the opening of historical horizons through which the
advent of the “world”-the collective involvement of people within society and the
emergence of entities in nature-can unfold. Given its Heideggerian ecstatic-horizonal
constitution, temporality makes possible our understanding of Being as the reciprocal
interplay between the space of disclosure and the entities that appear, become present,
then disappear. Strenuous effort is apt to be involved in an informant’s telling of stories
about his or her life and times. Every act, including that of storytelling, “involves
a
span
(Schutz 1971, pp. 172-73).
Text
and
Temporality
125
of
time and the process of reflection and self-indication, and thus is not a mere
arrangement of isolated moments” (Maines et al. 1983, p. 161). The process of struggling
to remember important past events, that may have been repressed or otherwise not thought
about, renders current action, in Minkowski’s ([1933] 1970) terms, constitutive of a real
and important present. This present, Minkowski added (p. 33), “is to memory as
affirmation is to language.
. . .
The present is a particular act which reunites narration to
action. And as there is narration in the present, it necessarily implies the phenomena
of
memory.” This might appear paradoxical but is not. Memory is put into the present by the
act of storytelling, “which allows the present, the past, and the future, which individually
are only poems and inventions, to be completed in a single complete history.” Such
involvement in the interview “makes memory more consistent
. . .
[and] restores it the
practical domain of action.”
The present, in this sense, is not merely the now, the point on a time-line (as proposed,
for example, by Lewis and Weigert
[
1981]),
which is attainable even by daydreaming, but
is rather an accomplishment and an act of creation, being as it is the result
of
complex and
difficult action. By gathering and making coherent the past, the informant or interviewee
is potentially strengthened and possesses enhanced resources for formulating and carrying
out plans in the future. This strengthening of individuals is reinforced and taken to a new
level insofar as members of a community
are
able to productively share the narratives
constitutive of collective history. As Janet (1903) argued, time is not given to the mind
completely made; a viable temporality is not given but must be socially constructed
through the work of rendering accounts of lives and times.
Ricoeur’s (1984) hermeneutics led him to see the main temporal task as finding
meaning in the intersection
of
cosmological time and the lifetime of a person. He
translates Braudel’s concept of
longue
durPe
into a form of narrative history, arguing that
long-term group-time is refractory to analysis and can
only
be approached through the
study of narratives. Ricoeur’s (1984, p.
3)
circular, hermeneutical assertion on this point
is that “time becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of
narrative; narrative, in turn, is meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of
temporal experience.” Assuming that life is made meaningful and worth living only
through the use of language, Ricoeur (1988, p. 245) argues that narrative has a therapeutic
function by bringing together these two scales of time-consciousness-the cosmological
and the personal. Long duration, for Ricoeur, becomes a stretched-out form of personal
time.
It would be too much to assert that playing the role of informant in a life-historical
interview has a therapeutic function, that it is constitutive of narrative therapy, but it can
certainly have beneficial effects. The telling of one’s life history does not necessarily lead
to catharsis or acceptance of reality; but if the past is scrutinized with care and
understanding, the result can be a life that is enhanced in its health and authenticity (Kern
1983, p. 61; Kaplan 1982). Freud saw that access to the past, memories of which can be
repressed, is essential for breaking down self-mystification, overcoming defense mecha-
nisms, and attaining mental health. What occurs in the life-history interview goes beyond
its possible therapeutic role. As Kaplan (1982, p.
48,
emphasis in text) writes, “The life
history method creates ‘extraordinary’ people out of ‘ordinary’ people. In giving people
126
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a chance to be really heard-the
signij5canc.e
of their own histories is revealed.” Kaplan
(
1982, p. 49), referring to interviews with heroin addicts, offers the following explanation:
“The debt the sociologist owes to the addict is paid back by providing the occasion for him
to talk seriously of his own life. Such talk makes extraordinary conversations and, in turn,
extraordinary people.
.
.
.
The life review process itself presents real choices for the addict,
to make in his
or
her life.” In the process of the life-historical interview, the informant
produces a meaningful account of his or her actions, with the intelligibility of this account
depending on an explanation of the present as “an extension of the past or of the future
. . .
as built upon the foundation of present endeavors” (Hoffman 1986, p. 50). The
social-constructivist approach of Schutz and Luckmann
(
1973) similarly informs our
understanding of how past, present, and future have an impact on the kind of temporal
reflection that finds expression in the life-history. Without a coherent past, it is difficult to
have a direction or orientation toward the future, and life is lived in the absence of history.
But if the person somehow summons the emotional energy, Minkowski’s ([1933] 1970,
p.
xxv)
Plan
vital,
to mobilize the human personality for effective action, for creating the
future, then there emerges the capability to “unite all of life’s various projects into a
unified whole, thus creating a life history.”
A TEMPORAL POLARITY: ORDINARY-LINEAR AND
PATTERN
E
D-CY C
L
I
CA
L
TI
M
E-CO
N
S
C
I
0
U
S
N
ES
S
Aristotle, in his
Physics
(
1936:A11,220a24), defined time not as motion but as the measure
of motion (and of rest): “Time, then, is the number of movement in respect of before and
after; and, being the number of what is continuous, it is also continuous.” Since Aristotle,
nearly all discussions of time have clung, in principle, to this definition. Time, here, is
what is counted; it is what we have when the travelling pointer (or the shadow) is made
present. It is the set of all “nows” that get counted-nows which forthwith-will-be-no-
longer-now and nows which have just been not-yet-now. This, as Heidegger ([1927] 1962,
p. 474) explained, is the ordinary understanding of time, which “shows itself as a sequence
of ‘nows’ which
are
constantly ‘present at hand,’ simultaneously passing away and
coming along. Time is understood as a continuous succession, as a ‘flowing stream’ of
‘nows,’ as the ‘course of time.’
”
This concept of ordinary, linear time has enjoyed a historically privileged place in
Western philosophy. The meaning of ordinary-linear, one-dimensional, clock time is
deeply taken for granted in the modern world. But it is a common claim among
philosophers concerned with temporality that there is something amiss, even wrong, in our
“ordinary” concept of time. Equally “ordinary” has been the belief that time is not a
unitary concept, that there exists at least one more kind of time-consciousness, an
inference that follows from the intuitive sense of time as experienced duration and of
human temporality, our finite life, spanned from birth to death. There is a wide variety of
contrasts that are used to distinguish two meanings of time, including linear/cyclical,
objective/subjective (Flaherty
199
1
),
cosmic/existential,
quantitative/qualitative,
time-as-
measuredhime-as-experienced (Wood 1989,
p.
13).
Text
and
Temporality
127
Many of the major theories of time-in metaphysics, in philosophy, and in science-
have begun with a critique
of
linear time-consciousness. This “critique” of linearity has
been referred to as “transvaluation” (Nietzsche 1939, pp. 1-39) and as a postmodern
“deconstruction” (Heidegger
[
19271 1962, Derrida 1973). There are two limitations to the
efficacy of this approach to nonlinear temporality. In order
to
successfully deconstruct a
concept, it is ever
so
helpful that the concept in question first be adequately constructed.
Unfortunately, linear time is conceptually underspecified, is incompletely described, and
its embeddedness in the social world is ignored,
so
that any kind of negation of linearity
at best provides an incomplete model of “nonlinear” temporality, which is but a negative
concept.
Thus, in the study of time, the usual procedure is to skip quickly over the notion of
ordinary, linear time in
an
effort to develop understanding of some sort of nonlinear time.
Here, however, this usual procedure is reversed. First, an analysis
of
an archaic
time-consciousness, that of the Australian Aborigines, is developed from ethnographic
and other study of Aboriginal conceptualization of time. The meaning of this nonlinear
time-consciousness was difficult to express with a single word, and is here named
“patterned-cyclical.” The seven-aspect model of nonlinear time is partly “cyclical” but
possesses other characteristics as well. Such a mode of temporality was extensively
developed in the ancient, Western world (e.g., in Homer’s
Iliad).
Currently, it is the main
temporal focus in hunting-and-gathering societies and in many other non-modern,
pre-literate societies. By seeking the
opposites
of the found characteristics of patterned-
cyclical time-consciousness that can be interpreted as features of ordinary-linear time, a
seven-dimensional model of linear time was developed.
Today’s Australian Aborigines are the bearers of the world’s most ancient civilization.
Their thinking patterns do not feature logical-analytic, linear information processing, but
rather a gestalt-synthetic mode of information processing. Numerous studies suggest that
Aborigines have a visuospatial, as opposed to a temporal, orientation in their thinking and
a proficiency in a wide variety of visuoconstructive tasks (Davidson and Klich 1981;
TenHouten 1985). Western desert Aboriginal children, whether living traditionally or not,
were found to have visual memory skills superior to Euro-Australian control subjects
(Kearins 1978). The Aborigines’ thinking process has been shown in empirical studies to
be proficient
in
visuoconstructive tasks, visual memory, spatial exploration and maze
learning, spatial orientation, synthetic perceptual functions, and gestalt-completion. Other
studies point to the extraordinary skills
of
desert-living Aborigines in tracking and
route-finding, which Lewis
(
1976) attributes to a constant cognitive synthesis of spatial
and perceptual information, a mental map. Grey
(
1975, p. 30) also emphasizes the gestalt
summarization character and “globalness” of Aboriginal thought: “[Elach fresh experi-
ence is observed and perceived and whether taken into the previous gestalt or rejected, a
fresh gestalt is built up. The effect
on
their thinking is to create a piecemeal summation
of events.” Based
on
Grey’s description, the modes of thought
of
the Aboriginal and
Euro-Australians were hypothesized to emphasize gestalt-synthetic and logical-analytic
thought, respectively. These hypotheses were supported on the levels of cerebral
hemisphere-dependent, psychometric test performance (TenHouten 1985) and cerebral
hemispheric activation (TenHouten 1986). Gestalt-synthetic information processing char-
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acterizes the functioning of the right cerebral hemisphere (in the right handed adult);
logical-analytic information processing, of the left hemisphere.
Bergson (1912) stands out as the philosopher of time who claimed that there
are
exactly
t~’o
kinds of time-consciousness; subsequently, many other scholars’ work has led them
to a similar result, to what might be called a temporal dualism. The goal of many major
theorists of time has been to transcend ordinary clock time by gaining an understanding
of the existential, ontological, and phenomenological dimensions of primordial temporal-
ity-that is, of the mental experience of time, which Bergson called
dure‘e
and Minkowski
([1933] 1970) called
le temps
i&u
(lived time). The position
of
tempmal dualism
continues to exist as the prominent and largely unchallenged assumption that there is only
a binary opposition in temporal construction-that is, if time is not linear, then, almost by
default, it must be cyclical. Swain (1993, p. 17) suggests that this assumption of time as
a single duality has led many scholars to suppose, wrongly, that the Aboriginal
understanding of time takes the form of cycles and circles. What was found, on the basis
of ethnographic observations by the author and the literature relating time to Aboriginal
culture, were eleven aspects of time-consciousness. Two possible indicators of linear/
cyclical time were discarded (concepts not shown) and two were understood as a second
polarity-of episodic (Heideggerian, future-oriented) and immediate-participatory
(present-oriented) primordial temporalities (TenHouten 1997).
A model of “patterned-cyclical’’ time-consciousness was constructed inductively
through study of the literature on the time-consciousness of Australian Aborigines. This
kind of time-consciousness is defined by seven criteria, which were retained on the
grounds that their opposites, or near-opposites, can be seen as features of one-dimensional,
ordinary, linear time. Patterned-cyclical time-consciousness, which would appear to be
much
in
evidence in Aboriginal mentality, is here only briefly sketched. This form
of
time-consciousness has the following characteristics:
1. It
is
dualistic;
it is split into two levels of reality, the sacred inner reality and the
profane outer reality (Rudder 1993). Durkheim ([1912] 1965, p. 347, emphasis in text)
wrote
of
the tribal-living Aborigine, “He cannot lead a religious life of even a slight
intensity unless he first, and in the context
of
formal ritual, commences by withdrawing
more or less completely from
the temporal life.”
2.
There is
fusion
of
the past and the present;
there is in significant ritual interactions
and in Dreaming Journeys
a
subtle manifestation of the sacred, inner reality from the
creator-being time that creates a fusion of past and present. Entities that are apprehended
in
rituals not previously observed are not seen as having previously been in the future, but
rather
as
having been in the inner reality all along.
3. It is
irregular, discontinuous, and heterogeneous.
Durkheim
([
19121 1965, p.
250)
described Aboriginal cosmology in the following fashion:
How could such [ritual] experiences as these, especially when they are repeated every
day for weeks, fail to leave in him the conviction that there really exist two
heterogeneous and mutually incomparable worlds. One is what this daily life drags
wearily along; but he cannot penetrate into the other without at once entering into
relations with extraordinary powers that excite him to the point of frenzy. The first is
the profane world, the second, that of sacred things.
Text
and Temporality
129
4.
It is event-oriented. In Aboriginal thought, there is nothing beyond events them-
selves. This is entirely apparent in their cosmology, which lacks any reference to ultimate
pre-event origins: “For Aborigines, there is nothing more fundamental than the statement:
events occur” (Swain 1993, p. 19).
5.
It is cyclical and based on overlapping and interdependent patterns and oscillations.
“Cyclicity” pertains to four aspects of life-to cosmology and religious life, to natural and
social cycles, to ceremonial cycles of the year, and to cycles embedded in Aboriginal
social organization (importantly including reincarnation cycles articulated with social
organization).
6. It is qualitative. In their study of Australian Aboriginal religious categorization and
classification, Durkheim ([1912] 1945,
p.
488)
and his followers (Hubert 1905; Hubert and
Mauss 1909) developed a concept of “qualitative time” (see Hassard 1990, pp. 2-31,
emphasizing the rhythmic nature
of
human society, but also acknowledging the necessity
of
understanding time on a multiplicity of levels which are synthesized not by logic or
verbal clarification but rather by qualitative assessment of interdependent social and
natural phenomena. Here, Durkheim was conceptualizing time as a symbolic structure, a
collective representation
of
the organization
of
society through temporal rhythms (see
Isambert 1979; Hassard 1990,
p.
2). He saw the “social time” of extraordinary rituals as
phenomenal experience of the eternal and as
a
product of collective effervescence. In these
rituals, the Aborigine of high degree “is able to re-create his own celestial history without
pinning down its beginning to some arbitrary point in time.”
7. It is based on the experience
of
long duration. There is, in Aboriginal society, a
premium on likemindedness. Discussions in meetings will typically not be based
on
a
choice between two alternatives, but an effort to patiently inch toward a collective
consensus (Liberman 1985). The experience of long duration was also described by Whorf
(1956), who wrote of the “ceaseless latering of events” in the Hopi Indian language.
Similarly, Flaherty
(
199 1, 1993) describes “subjective” time as involving “protracted
duration,” such that when people are either bored or overstimulated, it feels as if more
time has elapsed with respect to measurable, “objective” time.
The seven-part models of patterned-cyclical and ordinary-linear time-consciousnesses
are shown in Table
1.
Note that the opposites, or near-opposites,
of
patterned-cyclical time
are but features of time as a single dimension, as linear. The line is a single dimension;
it can be partitioned into past, present, and future merely by fixing the now as a point on
a line; the line is continuous; time-measurements are based on steady motion; events can
be ordered on a time-line: quantitative measurements have a natural zero point; and time
can be imagined to be flying by along its single dimension.
A METHOD
FOR
CONTENT ANALYSIS: NEUROCOGNITIVE
H
I
E
RARCH
I
CAL CATEG
0
RlZATl
0
N
AN ALY
S
I
S
(N
H
CA)
Over the last decade, the author has been conducting research into the mentalities and
cognitive structures of the Australian Aborigines. In the earliest stage of this research,
life-historical interviews with Aborigines (and Euro-Australian, white controls) were
130
Symbolic Interaction
Volume
22,
Number
2,
1999
TABLE
1.
of
Ti
me-Consciousness
Conceptual Models
of
Ordinary-Linear and Patterned-Cyclical
Forms
7
Features
of
Ordinary-Linear
Time-Consciousness
7
Aspects
of
Pattern-Cyclical
Time-Consciousness
L1.
Linear, time as a single dimension
L2. Separation of past, present, and future
L3.
Regularity, continuity, and homogeneity
L4.
Clock-orientation and calendar-orientation
L5. Diachronic ordering of evenes: priority,
L6.
Quantitative: numerical measurement; an
L7.
The experience of time
as
a
series of fleeting
P1.
Dualistic, split into two levels of reality
P2.
Fusion of past, present, and future present, and
P3.
Irregular, discontinuity, and heterogeneity
P4.
Event-orientation and nature-based orientation
P5.
Synchronic ordering of events: cyclical,
P6.
Qualitative: non-numerical measurement; now
P7.
The experience of long duration
realities future realities
si m
u
I
taneity, posteriority
invariant anchor
or
zero point
moments
patterned, oscillatory
the anchor point
conducted for purposes of designing an interview schedule that would not superimpose the
investigator’s own categories of reason but rather discover something of the natural
categorization of reality by the Aborigines.
The method that was used for the present analysis is lexical-level (and phrase level)
content analysis of text. To this end, Roget’s ([1852] 1977, pp.
xvii-xxiv) International
Thesaurus
was used. Roget provided a remarkable hierarchical categorization of the
English language. His broadest classification contains eight
classes
of words: abstract
relations, space, physics, matter, sensation, intellect, volition, and affection. Under these
classes, we find
notions
(e.g., under abstract relations: existence, relation, quantity, order,
number, time, change, event, causation, power, and motion). Under the notion, time, we
find five
categories:
absolute time, relative time, time with reference to age, time with
reference to season, and recurrent time. Under these
five
categories, we find varying
numbers of what
I
term
folk-concepts
(keywords), as shown in Table
2.
In his
classification, Roget had a total of 1,042 folk-categories. Under the keywords, we find lists
of
individual words
and phrases. The present analysis selects from the 34 keywords for
time (folk-concepts 105-38). Using Roget (along with several dictionaries) as a guide, a
total of 3,234 words were assigned to these 34 categories.
The method used in wordlist construction was to assign words to concepts on the basis
of their primary denotations, but a great number of words have multiple meanings. The
analysis of every word in terms of its meaning as revealed by surrounding text would be
desirable but at the same time extremely time-consuming and costly.
NHCA
necessarily assumes a concordance of “experience-to-word-sense mapping”
(Alverson
1994,
p. ix) across languages, which is consistent with Alverson’s finding that
while languages vary in the ways they map words (and phrases) onto experience,
meanings can be translated quite exactly from one language to another. Roget proceeded
on a similar assumption, as he believed his 1,042 (folk) concepts were universal across
human languages and understood in the same way by human minds everywhere. From this
perspective, then, we can expect that to the extent that a person’s mentality emphasizes the
logico-analytic mode of information processing of the left hemisphere of the brain, he or
Text
and
Temporality
131
TABLE
2.
Roget’s Five Categories and Their Thirty-Four Associated Folk-
Concepts for the Notion of Time (Number of Words for Keyword). Italicized
Folk-Concepts Are Used More by Aborigines; Boldface Concepts Are Used More
by Eu ro-Aust ral i ans.
A.
ABSOLUTE TIME C. TIME
WITH
REFERENCE
TO
AGE
105.
Time
(52)
106.
Timelessness
(8)
107.
Period
(34)
108.
Spell
(24)
109.
Interim
(29)
1
10.
Durability
(long
duration)
(1 54)
11
1.
Transience
(89)
112.
Perpetuity
(131)
113.
Instantaneousness
(65)
1
14.
Measurement of Time
(1
08)
11 5.
Anachronism
(1
8)
B.
RELATIVE TIME
11
6.
Priority
(1
7)
11 7.
Posteriority
(99)
11
8.
Simultaneity
(73)
11 9.
The past
(87)
120.
The present
(20)
121.
The future
(133)
122.
Newness
(1 55)
123.
Oldness
(213)
124.
Youth
(1
08)
125.
Youngster
(1 97)
126.
Age (time of life)
(1
53)
127.
Old
persons
(41)
D.
TIME
WITH
REF.
TO
SEASON
128.
Season
(80)
129.
Timeliness
(77)
130.
Untimeliness
(73)
13 1
.
Earliness
(98)
132.
Lateness
(244)
133.
Morning,
Noon
(39)
134.
Evening, Night
(46)
E.
RECURRENT TIME
135.
Frequency
(77)
136.
Infrequency
(41)
137.
Regular
(1 77)
138.
lrregularity
(1 19)
Source: Roget
[1852] 1977,
pp. xvii-uviii.
she should make extensive use of words pertaining to cause-and-effect, number, sequence,
quantity, and ordinary-linear time-consciousness. While only words
are
used
in
the
present analysis, Alverson has demonstrated that meaning is conveyed not only by words
in a grammatical context but by collocations-that is, phrases with stereotypical
meanings.
FINDINGS
The data analysis (TenHouten 1995) is based on a corpus
of
168 life-historical interviews,
79
with Aborigines
(42
men,
37
women) and 89 with Euro-Australians
(49
men,
40
women). The variables for each keyword are obtained by dividing the total number of uses
of words in each list by the total number of words produced in the entire interview. On
theoretical grounds,
22
of the
34
keywords were initially used as indicators of linear and
patterned-cyclical time-consciousness. The indices of linear and cylical time were
calculated by taking a sum of standardized scores for the folk-concept wordlists.
The results
of
this measurement procedure are shown in Table
3.
Note that indices were
not found for
L1,
L2,
L7,
and P1, which restricts the content-validity
of
the measurement.
132
Symbolic Interaction
Volume
22,
Number
2,
1999
TABLE
3.
Conceptual Mapping
of
Roget’s Folk-Concepts into Features
of
Linear
Time and Aspects
of
Patterned-Cyclical Time
ORDINARY-LINEAR
L3.
Regularity, continuity
135.
Frequency
136.
Infrequency
L4.
Clock-orientation and calendar-orientation
126.
Age (time
of
life)
129.
Timeliness
130.
Untimeliness
131
.
Earliness
L5.
Diachronic ordering: priority, simultaneity, posteriority
1 16.
Priority
1 17.
Posteriority
11
8.
Simultaneity
L6.
Quantitative: numerical measurement; zero anchor
or zero point
PATTERNED-CYCLICAL
P2.
Fusion of the past, present, and future
107.
Period
1
15.
Measurement of time
11
9.
The past
120.
The present
P3.
Irregular, discontinuity, and homogeneity
138.
irregularity
P5. Synchronic ordering
of
events:
cyclical, patterned, oscillatory
122.
Newness
123.
Oldness
125.
Youngster
12 7.
Old persons
P6.
Qualitative: non-numerical measurement
108.
Spell
P7.
The experience
of
long duration
1
10.
Durability ffong duration)
132.
Lateness
134.
Evening, Night
Again, wordlists used significantly more by Euro-Australians
(p
<
0.05)
are shown in
boldface and those used significantly more by Aborigines
(p
<
0.05)
are shown in italics.
Both cultural groups made disproportionate use of at least one folk-concept under each of
the five categories. Of the 11 folk-concept variables for linear time,
9
were used more
by
Euro-Australians than by Aborigines, the other
2
showing non-significant differences in
the same, predicted direction.
Of
the
11
variables for patterned-cyclical time, 10 were used
significantly more by Aborigines, the remaining one also showing a non-significant
difference in the same, predicted direction.
For an overall analysis,
it
was decided, on theoretical grounds, to weight each indicator
equally. In this analysis, the four indicator variables that did not differ significantly by
group were excluded. The remaining
9
variables were standardized, and then summed, to
form the variables Linear and Patterned-Cyclical. The results of this analysis are shown
in Figure 1. As hypothesized, for both males and females, Euro-Australians appear to be
133
In
-2
-
-3
-4
-
Text
and
Temporality
4r
T
i
3
3
Y
Y
B
z
I
E
Mda
Fnnalo
Malo
Fcmslci
p(C&ne)
<
0.001
p(Scx)
=
0.035
AbL
AM.
Euro.-Au
Em.-&
M.lol
Fado
M.la
Fa~lm
p((lrlturc)
<
0.001
p(SapO.085
FIGURE
1.
(A)
Mean Ordinary-Linear time scores for Aboriginal and Euro-
Australian adults, by culture and sex. Error bars are
2
1
SEM;
(B)
Mean
Patterned-Cyclical time scores for these adults, by culture and sex. Error bars
are
?
1
SEM.
(From TenHouten 1995, Figures
1
and
2.
Reprinted with
permission.)
more specialized for linear time
(p
<
0.001) and Aborigines for patterned-cyclical time
(p
<
0,001).
There were also interesting sex differences: in both cultures, males were
more linear (one-tailed
p
=
0,018) and less patterned-cyclical
Cp
<
0.05)
than were
females.
DISCUSSION
An
effort has been made to show the utility
of
quantitatively analyzing texts for the
purpose of extracting information about cognitive structure. The word-classification
method, NHCA, is neurocognitive insofar as the concepts used to measure mental
proclivities are backed up by neuroscientific theory and concepts. It is hierarchical because
it makes use
of
a hierarchical classification of the English language. Other classifications,
of course, might be more appropriate if texts are studied with other cognitive structures
in
mind. While the method used here has the virtue that it is quantitative and makes possible
numerical measurements
of
texts, it
is
by no means recommended that texts should not be
studied by other, qualitative methods. While the text is "read" by a computer carrying out
lexical-level content analysis, the text itself is not damaged or altered, such that it remains
intact for further analysis of any kind.
Linear time-consciousness, it is proposed here, is an aspect of the logical-analytic mode
of information processing of the left cerebral hemisphere (of the adult right-handed
person); and patterned-cyclical time-consciousness
is
proposed to be an aspect
of
the
gestalt-synthetic information processing that is characteristic
of
the right hemisphere
(Geschwind and Galaburda 1987; Bouma 1990). Just
as
females (possibly due to their
larger and more myelinated corpus callosums connecting the two sides of the brain)
process language with
a
greater participation
of
the right hemisphere, it is reasonable to
134
Symbolic
Interaction
Volume
22,
Number
2,
1999
wonder if they might not also be processing time with a greater participation of the right
hemisphere. This interpretation is consistent with the results, which show that females
were significantly less linear and significantly more patterned-cyclical than were males.
The cross-cultural differences are significant in their own right. A wide variety of studies
suggest that Aborigines are not linear thinkers and are somehow “cyclical” or otherwise
nonlinear
in
their time-consciousness. All of these studies employ only qualitative
methods. It is important in such research into time and temporality not to reify cultural
groups (e.g., as
the
Aborigine), but rather to look for variation
within
cultural groups. As
Cole and Scribner
(
1974, p. 199) write, “Traditional culture in transition would thus seem
to offer an important natural laboratory in which to explore the historical factors (from a
social point of view) and the developmental factors (from an individual point of view)
which contribute to specific cognitive organization.”
While within-culture differences were not presented here, analysis is
in
progress
comparing Aborigines and Euro-Australians in three ecological settings: outbackltribal,
fringe/rural, and suburbatdurban. Results to date suggest that as Aborigines move from
tribal, to rural, and then to urban settings, their use of linear time increases; for
Euro-Australians, the highest level of patterned-cyclical times was found in the outback
setting. This suggests that the two kinds of time-consciousness are not choices in a
zero-sum game.
On
the surface, the present
Aboriginal-AustralianEuro-Australian,
patterned-cyclical-
timeflinear-time model appears to exhibit what Paredes and Hepburn
(
1976) have referred
to as “the culture-and-cognition paradox.” This putative paradox refers
to
two theoretical
presuppositions that appear to anthropologists to be contradictory. On the one hand, they
have been able to find radical differences in thought processes between members of
modern and pre-literate societies. There is, Paredes and Hepburn maintain, prestige-value
associated with research showing how far removed the “native thinker” is from the way
people tend to think in modern, Western cultures.
On
the other hand, anthropologists have
insisted that, regardless of culture, human brains operate
on
common neurological
principles and are equal in their general intellectual capability.
The solution to this paradox, Paredes and Hepburn maintain, is to be found in dual-brain
theory, which argues that there are two neurophysiologically distinct ways of processing
information within each individual. That is, each person contains not one but two basic
modes of information processing. Which of these two modes will be given emphasis
depends
on
culture, situation, social relations, and socioecological environment. Individ-
ual hemisphericity, a tendency to rely
on
the resources of one hemisphere or the other
(Bogen et al. 1972), is hypothesized to be, in part, structured by social factors such as
culture, social inequality, gender, social solidarity, and racial or ethnic membership
(TenHouten 1980, 1985). Active membership in a modern or postmodern, Western society
involves participating in activities that require cognitive skills which are logical, analytic,
systematic, and linear. These tasks require the use of the left hemisphere and its
logical-analytic, propositional mode of information processing. Active membership in a
non-modern, archaic, aboriginal culture, in contrast, emphasizes activities such as
gathering, hunting, route finding, and participating in a wide range of ceremonies and
rituals. These activities contribute to a reliance
on,
and relatively high performance in, the
Text and Temporality
135
gestalt-synthetic mode of thought of the right hemisphere. Thus, Aborigines are able to
develop elaborated linear time-consciousness because they possess left hemispheres, and
Euro-Australians are able to develop elaborated patterned-cyclical time-consciousness
because they possess right hemispheres.
Flaherty (1987) has pointed out that temporality has been a neglected topic in social
psychology. The ,present conceptualization of the linearkyclical polarity is an effort to
develop the social psychology of time. The emphasis on text-as-data found here is an
approach consistent with Heidegger ([1927] 1962, p. 68), who saw the importance of
social existence for temporality. Indeed, his ontology stressed
essentia
over
existensia.
As
Flaherty
(
1987, p. 150) more specifically explains, “Temporality is manufactured from
utterances and gestures-from our being here in the world with others.” Flaherty’s
(
1987,
p.
154,
emphasized in text) lesson is that
“we require
a
method which pushes
us
into direct
contact with the objects
of
our inquiries.”
While there is a paucity of conceptualization
and theory in the sociology and social psychology of time, there
is
also a need for
empirical research, with testable hypotheses positing effects of social positions and social
practices on participation in the two kinds of time-consciousness studied here, in the
episodic-futural and immediate-participatory temporalities, and in other conceptual
models of time-consciousness and temporality (TenHouten
1g97).
It is proposed here that
life-history interviews-where temporality
is
not only revealed but also created or
“manufactured”-represents the kind
of
data that permits measurement of time-conscious-
ness, however indirect,
so
that sociocultural variations in time-consciousness and in the
experience of temporality can be predicted and explored.
Acknowledgment:
This paper is a revision of one presented at the Ninety-first
Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Toronto, Canada, August
12,
1997. Appreciation is extended to Barbara La1 for her thoughtful commentary on an earlier
draft, and to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive remarks and suggestions
on
the submitted draft of this paper.
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