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Hieber, Daniel W. 2014. Primitivism in linguistics: The Americanist tradition after Boas. Term
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Primitivism in linguistics: The Americanist tradition after Boas
Daniel W. Hieber
University of California, Santa Barbara
Abstract
This paper examines the sociocultural construct of primitivism as used in the
academic discourse of linguists in the Americanist tradition from Franz Boas
applied to languages, races, or cultures, sparking a discourse that eventually
resulted in the practice among linguists and anthropologists of abandoning the
visible in the academic writing of anthropologists and linguists over time, with
several articles explicitly contesting the notion of primitivism along the way.
The discourse on primitivism did not end there, however, but merely shifted
walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting Savage
(Sapir 1921:131)
books targeted at popular audiences). The result has been an effective ban, until
recently, on a related but distinct topic, that of linguistic simplicity. Linguists are
now challenging this practice by suggesting that the notion of linguistic simplicity
can be decoupled from the concept of primitivism, and that differences between
languages in terms of linguistic complexity can be studied in an objective, non-
evaluative way (Sampson, Gil & Trudgill 2009). They question the
principle of
invariance of linguistic complexity
(Sampson 2009) by providing evidence for
the various ways in which some languages are more or less complex than others.
These linguists have reshaped the discussion of primitivism to focus on the
opposition between simple and complex rather than primitive and civilized.
This paper examines the ways in which the system of oppositions in the
discussion of primitivism has changed over time in this fashion. Linguists and
arguing for and using different conceptions of the term over time, adopted various
stances in opposition to this term, and ultimately restructured the entire system of
oppositions from an evaluative, normative approach to a value-free, objective one.
1 Introduction: Pre-Boasian Primitivism
When Franz Boas published his famous book,
The mind of primitive man
in 1911, it was in
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
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Judging by the frequency of term
(Michel et al. 2011), this interest seems to
have started around 1860 and grown until its apex in the 1930s, at which point the use of the
until today. This Pre-Boasian era saw an
accompanying drastic increase in the documentation of Native American languages and
cultures, and the founding of the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879, which coordinated
much of the anthropological work that took place in the United States in that time period.
Embedded in much of this outpouring of research, however, was a fundamental belief in
European racial superiority. This lens shaped the research questions of the early ethnographers,
so that the study of culture was an attempt to account for the primitivism of non-European
peoples (Duranti 1997:23).
The mind of primitive man
as practiced by the ethnographers of his time, and in particular evolutionary anthropology. Boas
identifies the core of the issue in the opening pages of his work, questioning the justification
for the racism inherent in earlier ethnographic research. His profound discussion is worth
quoting at length, because it nicely elucidates the ideology and practice of earlier researchers in
regards to primitivism:
accustomed to speak both of primitive races and primitive cultures as though the two were
necessarily related. We believe not only in a close association between race and culture; we are
judgments are not, by any means, primarily rational in character.
Nevertheless, we like to support our emotional attitude toward the so-called inferior races by
reasoning. The superiority of our inventions, the extent of our scientific knowledge, the
complexity of our social institutions, our attempts to promote the welfare of all members of the
social body, create the impression that we, the civilized people, have advanced far beyond the
stages on which other groups linger, and the assumption has arisen of an innate superiority of
the European nations and of their descendants. The basis of our reasoning is obvious: the higher
a civilization, the higher must be the aptitude for civilization; and as aptitude presumably
depends upon the perfection of the mechanism of body and mind, we infer that the White race
represents the highest type. The tacit assumption is made that achievement depends solely, or at
least primarily, upon innate racial ability. Since the intellectual development of the White race is
the highest, it is assumed that its intellectuality is supreme and that its mind has the most subtle
organization.
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
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The object of our inquiry is therefore an attempt to clear up the racial and cultural problems
involved in these questions. Our globe is inhabited by many races, and a great diversity of
build and to culture as though both belonged together by necessity. It is rather one of the
fundamental questions to be investigated whether the cultural character of a race is determined
by its physical characteristics. The term race itself should be clearly understood before this
question can be answered. If a close relation between race and culture should be shown to exist
it would be necessary to study for each racial group separately the interaction between bodily
build and mental and social life. If it should be proved not to exist, it will be permissible to treat
mankind as a whole and to study cultural types regardless of race. (Boas:34, 1718)
2 Boasian Primitivism
It is important to note that what Boas did
not
suggest in his work was a wholesale rejection
of the concept of primitivism. His major aim instead was to show that race, culture, and
language are not inherently linked, and were analytically distinct entities. In adopting this
approach, the term
a people to be viewed as primitive along one dimension but civilized, sophisticated, or complex
along another. it would
the origin of the deeply entrenched idea that there is no such thing as a primitive language.
However, the very title of book,
The mind of primitive man
, suggests that he did see
primitivism as an apposite description of many indigenous societies if not languages. When
one can, by virtue of observing cultural primitivism among a people, therefore assume that
people exhibits racial/physiological or linguistic primitivism as well; his objection is not to the
use of the term in general. Boas continued to use the term unquestioningly in phrases like
until at least as late as his 1940 book,
Race, language and culture
.
Thus it should hardly come as a surprise that the notion of cultural primitivism still features
prominently in the earliest issues of the
International Journal of American Linguistics
(
IJAL
),
co-founded by Boas and Pliny Earle Goddard in 1917, with contributions from like-minded
contemporaries and students including Leo J. Frachtenberg, Alfred L. Kroeber, Edward Sapir,
was this sociocultural construct defined in the wa
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
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Two uses predominate in the first decade of articles in
IJAL
original, historic In the case of grammatical
primitivism, it is clear from the context that no implications regarding the general primitivity of
the language or culture are intended:
1
classification and as to the historical drifts inferred from comparative linguistic research, it is
premature to talk of certain features as primitive(Sapir 1917:85)
these roots belong to the most primitive (de Jong 1920:311)
Both of these examples are in fact marginally ambiguous with the second sense of
the first decade of
IJAL
, and typically the least ambiguous, as the contrast w
first example shows:
The conditions favoring such phonetic influence must have been much more numerous in
primitive America than they were in the later development of European languages.(Boas
1917:3)
in the present state of our knowledge of primitive languages, it is not safe to disregard the
possibility of a complex origin of linguistic groups(Boas 1917:4)
belonging to a particularly primitive stage of linguistic evolution
believes that the passive verb as fundamental concept belongs to the same group of antique
linguistic phenomena (Sapir 1917:82)
cette souche très primitive des langues considérées comme formant des familles isolées.[It is
to be hoped that with the new documents that we publish here, we will tie together this very
primitive strain of languages [formerly] considered to be isolated families
translation] (Rivet, Kok & Tastevin 1925:143)
-
Blackfoot, in most cases, seems to have preserved Primitive-Algonquian t (Uhlenbeck
1925:236)
1
In all the quotations given in this paper, any use of bold is my added emphasis, while
italics
is that of the
original.
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
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Finally, this passage by Speck (1918:187) makes it clear that these uses of the term
ed to be derogatory:
In the versions of eastern Indian myths given by the authors, there is, however, an undertone of
untrue if not inferior reconception, which takes away the smack of originality that every reader
feels the true examples of native oral literature should possess. This is unfortunately the case
with all the hitherto published material from this region. Without exception, it has been
interpreted and rendered in an altered form. Irresponsibility for the intrinsic worth of the
original must pass by before primitive literature is free to make its own appeal to the interest of
students.
as part of an appeal to let such literature speak for itself, as something that has worth, rather
being used in what writers intended to be a technical, non-derogatory sense.
Embedded in this conception of primitivism is a vestige of the earlier evolutionary
anthropology approach that views some cultures as more evolved than others. This is most
clearly illustrated in the following passage by de Angulo & Freeland (1930:78).
One point which is of interest in the relation of language in general to culture is that the
Achumawi represent one of the most primitive stages of human culture, - fully as low as any
that have yet been recorded. As will be shown in the present study, their language is fully as
complex in forms as Latin is.
This passage is also an excellent example of how primitivism in one area (technological
complexity) could now be divorced from primitivism in another (linguistic complexity).
This evolutionary the most common use among
academics of the time. All of the above uses were ensconced in the then-recently released
second e(Porter 1913:1138):
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
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(1) Primitive, a.
1. Of or pertaining to the beginning or origin, or to early times; primordial; first
2. Of or pertaining to a former time; old-fashioned; characterized by simplicity
3. Original; primary; radical; not derived; as, primitive verb in grammar.
Syn. -- First; original; radical; pristine; ancient; primeval; antiquated; old-
fashioned.
Primitive, n.
An original or primary word; a word not derived from another; -- opposed to
derivative
This entry does an excellent job capturing the range of uses in practice at the time, and
moreover provides clues as to the connotational meaning of the term as well. Along with the
. It was this sense of
associated with being savage or uncivilized. In fact, this sense is attributed specifically to its
use among anthropologists. Dictionary.com, for example, contains this sense definition:
(2) 3.
Anthropology
. of or pertaining to a preliterate or tribal people having cultural or
physical similarities with their early ancestors: no longer in technical use.
4. unaffected or little affected by civilizing influences; savage; primitive passions.
What this entry, and especially sense 3, suggests is that there has been a modern
reinterpretation of early-20th Century writings on primitivism, based on the contemporary
understanding of the term with its highly derogatory connotations. Thus modern readers come
across
substitute While today we
know that some or all of these senses are misguided (e.g. modern indigenous peoples are not
coequal with their ancestors, but have continued evolving culturally in response to the pressures
of the time in which they live and so are as modern as any other society), they were and in
some cases still are treated as objective and legitimate areas of investigation for modern
research, rather than evaluative statements.
It is easy to see how this historicist tendency arose among modern readers to perceive all
The term
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
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participates in a number of oppositions to other sociocultural constructs all at once.
The construct of primitivism can and is at various times opposed to complexity, modernity,
civilization, and compositionality. One can see this ambiguity at work in
(Goddard 1923:79f).
3 Challenging Primitivism
Because of the ambiguity that the system of oppositions for the notion of primitivism
invites, in the mid-1900s scholars began to challenge the notion, adopting a (sometimes
explicit) moralizing practice that pressured other scholars to reject the term. One much-utilized
affordance that scholars have for enacting normative practices is the academic book review, so
it is no surprise that it was in such reviews that the practice of criticizing uses of the term
IJAL
.
The concluding statement of the morphological section indicates that the author's intention is to
convince the reader that in Papago "there is none of the poverty of expression that is so often
popularly ascribed to the languages of the so-called primitive peoples." In the reviewer's
opinion, a more likely result will be to leave the casual reader with the impression that Papago
speech habits are so unpredictably variable that they cannot be said to be subject to "rules."
(Halpern 1946:44)
This case is interesting because the author of the reviewed book takes no small pains to
show that the language under study is not primitive in any sense of the term. This was another
emerging practice of the time scholars devoting space in their research specifically to
showing that the language they
however, chastises the author for failing to make this point in a convincing manner. In other
words, the reviewer's criticism is that the author didn't dispel the notion of primitivism well
enough. This is the beginning of a normative practice where linguists exercise their authority as
academics to force acknowledgement of the practices in a culture of respect for indigenous
peoples.
Another method of distancing oneself from the connotations of the
-
Lope and his contemporaries have given us some examples of this "Indian language", purely
conventionalized utterances of supposedly primitive and barbaric nature. The phonemes and
their distributions are purely Spanish. No serious attempt is made at imitating Indian linguistic
structure. (Wolff 1947:201)
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
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This same author also makes a number of obvious though not explicitly stated normative
statements about the inappropriateness of primitivism when applied to indigenous peoples and
languages:
The attitude of the average adult is not very different. The Indian is dirty, ignorant, and
incredibly primitive. Indeed, there are serious linguists, who will speak about, and look for,
traces and evidence of the intrinsically primitive in the languages of the aboriginal peoples.
(Wolff 1947:202)
arose mid-century now required acknowledgement. A new cultural practice emerged in which
indigenous communities were not to be criticized, especially on grounds of primitivism, and as
this practice grew, other scholars were forced to take notice of and respond to it, and failure to
do so could have social consequences.
The most salient and common example of the way that this new cultural practice compelled
attenwhose first
appearance in
IJAL
, by Roman Jakobson, is shown below.
In itself every grammatical pattern one is in permanent
conflict with logical reasoning, and nevertheless every language is at the same time sufficiently
pliable to any termito more
which "give a value to new, fo(Jakobson 1944:191192)
This is the first time that the dichotomy between civilized and primitive is problematized in
IJAL
, and an early expression of the mantra that there is no such thing as a primitive language.
intended to distance himself from the notion of primitivism.
These three practices moralizing discourse, distancing oneself from primitivism through
scare quotes, and devoting research time and textual space to arguing for the non-primitivism
of indigenous languages helped to constitute, and were constituted by, an emerging culture of
respect for indigenous communities. In fact this culture was nothing new, arguably beginning
practices now strengthened this cultural ideology, adding to the range of practices already in
common currency following Boas. At the same time, as is always the case when considering
culture and cultural practices, there was a bidirectional interaction between the two. While the
newer practices helped shape a culture of respect, they also arose largely because this culture of
respect was already in place, leading scholars to question their own use of terminology and
other practices that might be in conflict with this idea.
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
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This discourse surrounding primitivism fixated on one issue in particular in the mid-1900s
whether indigenous languages either over-differentiated or under-differentiated semantic
distinctions thought to be basic among contemporary linguists. Often languages were believed
to lack abstract concepts, and this was taken to be indicative of a lack of abstract thinking on
the part of its speakers.
this way the term took on yet another sense, i.e. an inability to think abstractly. It is from this
discourse that we get
words for snow. In this discourse, too, the effects of the new moralizing practices are clearly
visible, with some linguists even retracting their earlier position on the primitivism of
languages:
When in 1903, Thalbitzer first discussed Eskimo as a linguistic type, he applied to it a
cIn 1936, he reviews his statement,
showing that his earlier position is untenable, and admits that he employed the term carelessly.
By examples from the Eskimo he demonstrates that the
simple, regular, uniform, childish are not applicable. [Sebeok 1945:126]
This passage also shows a historiographic awareness of the
associating it with earlier evolutionary anthropology of the Pre-Boasian type, and its various
demeaning connotations.
The moralizing discourse regarding primitivism, particularly in relation to scholars arguing
that semantic under-/over-differentiation in indigenous languages was indicative of primitivism
of thought, culminated in an explicit attack on the entire notion of primitivism and the
arguments underlying it in an article published in
IJAL
in 1952 titled
, by Archibald Hill, which opens as follows:
Most modern linguists who have had experience of preliterate languages would reject the idea
of inefficiency, formlessness, and over-particularity of primitive speech, which once seemed so
well grounded in the evolutionary anthropology characteristic of the 19th century. Yet there are
many who still hold such views; namely that primitive tongues have a multiplicity of forms, fail
to generalize, and are almost exclusively concrete. (Hill 1952:172)
but no general term for it, which scholars saw as stemming from a lack of capacity for abstract
thought. After presenting strong and convincing evidence that Cherokee in fact only has a few
It is clear that Cherokee, so far from being hopelessly over-specific, is a language like other
languages, possessed of order and system, no matter if that system is different from our own.
Commented [DWH1]: This whole section needs referenes
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
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As to the supposed lack of generalizing power, it is ironical that the list of [words for
extremities in Cherokee] generalizes in one instance more than does English. We can not
content ourselves with a general term like extremity, but must specify hand or foot. I can cite
still other forms which are constructed in a sufficiently generalized fashion so that Jespersen
would have had to call them civilized, had he known them. (Hill 1952:176177).
The growing culture of respect for indigenous peoples and its associated practices therefore
clearly demanded acknowledgement, to the point where Thalbitzer even felt the need to take a
strong position against his earlier statements, rather than simply doing nothing letting them
stand. This is a trend that continues today: the need to establish a stance in relation to the
notion of primitivism (usually to reject it), in acknowledgement of these moralizing practices.
We will see more of this pattern in §[XX].
IJAL
istanced in some other way.
, except in two articles that are historiographic in
nature (Scancarelli 1994; Sadock 1999).
4 Repackaging Primitivism
The moralizing in relation to primitivism and the general rejection of the concept resulted
rejection of primitivism by linguists also had the effect of temporarily banning discussions of
linguistic complexity. It is only recently that discussions of linguistic complexity have become
acceptable in academic discourse, as Trudgill notes in his book
Sociolinguistic typology
:
The issue at hand for sociolinguistic typology is whether it is possible to suggest that certain
linguistic features are more commonly associated with certain types of society or social
structures than others. Of course, these are not new questions, as mentioned earlier; and they are
also questions which linguists have, quite rightly, treated with a certain amount of suspicion in
the past, because of their links with mistaken notions to do
primitive societies. However, after many decades of academic linguists agreeing, and
asserting, that there is very definitely no such thing anywhere as a primitive language, it now
seems safe to consider this issue in print without this suspicion arising. (Trudgill 2011:xvi)
Interestingly, David Gil believes that the lack of research into linguistic complexity is due
to more mundane reasons:
[S]ome people seem to think that if one language were shown to be more complex than another,
then it would follow that the latter language is in some sense inferior, which in turn would
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
11
ne short step to
ethnic cleansing. But there were probably other, less extraneous reasons for the spread of this
dogma: linguistics over the course of the last century has simply chosen to concern itself with a
different range of issues, and besides, perhaps most importantly, complexity of linguistic
structure is a notion that is extremely difficult to formalize in an explicit and quantitative
manner.
We have seen, however, that there was in fact an explicitly normative set of practices in the
mid-19th Century that had the effect of discouraging research into the linguistic correlates of
primitivism and, incidentally, complexity.
Even in these recent discussions of complexity where such research is supposedly
considered safe from criticism, authors still go to great pains to avoid connotations of
primitivism in their work, so strong was the moralizing effect of that earlier generation of
linguists. These earlier practices still demand notice lest the author be criticized for endorsing
primitivism, even today. Notice for example that a discussion of primitivism was necessary to
s paper. Either could have merely explained why they find linguistic
complexity to be an interesting research question and continued from there. Yet both authors,
and most of those writing on linguistic complexity, use a not insignificant amount of textual
space to distance themselves from the notion of primitivism, and scare quotes abound. Sampson
(2009) goes even further and calls the previous moralizing practices into question, calling them
ideologically motivated rather than based on an objectively-based scientific rejection of
primitivism or simplicity.
earlier linguists the ability to engage in normative discourse regarding primitivism.
Despite the insistent rejection of primitivism in the modern literature on complexity, it is
interesting to note that several scholars working in this area have been criticized for engaging
in some of the same assumptions of cultural primitivism that Boasians and Pre-Boasians had.
(2001)
example, has been thoroughly criticized by DeGraff (2001) for precisely this reason. One of
accretion of irregularity and layers of change. But in cases of intense second language learning
simplest languages.
DeGraff rightly points out that this exactly mirrors the position of earlier evolutionary
anthropologists who saw indigenous peoples as modern representations of their prehistoric
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
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Ursprachen
[proto-
creolis-century notions of language evolution.
Indeed, creolistics is perhaps the only field where the search for a genealogical and typological
Glottik
with creole languages as the new
class of youngest, thus structurally simplest, linguistic species. In this modern
Glottik
, creole
languages are living specimens of
Ursprachen
, i.e., contemporary proto-languages
(Section 2.3) evangelical phrase. (DeGraff 2001:223)
In terms of how he means to use the term, then, McWhorter is saying the same thing as
many of the early anthropological linguis
original, , McWhorter is sidestepping the
connotations that accompany the word and its other senses.
5 Conclusions
What we have seen in the discourse and practices surrounding primitivism is a change in
the meaningful oppositions that constituted it over time. [Figure 1] represents these changes as
a series of oppositions representing the practices of linguists in each period.
Pre-Boas
Primitive
Civilized
Modern
Complex
Abstract / Higher-Order
More Evolved
Boas
Primitive
Civilized
Modern
Complex
(Abstract / Higher-Order)
Late 20th C
Primitive
Modern
Today
Simple
Complex
Modern
At the beginning of the Boasian era, primitivism encompassed notions of simplicity, history,
civilization / lack of technological sophistication, and lack of complex or higher-order thinking.
be put
Daniel W. Hieber University of California, Santa Barbara
13
to grew smaller. And though Boas also
debunked the idea that primitive peoples were incapable of abstract or higher-order thought,
this remained relevant to the semantic oppositions involved, as
discussions that continued into the 1950s.
entirely, along with its various oppositions, and the idea that people could exist with a lack of
abstract / higher-order thinking was criticized and abandoned. Also rejected during this period
was the idea that any language could be more or less complex than any other, likely due to the
conflation of linguistic simplicity and cognitive / cultural simplicity that were both seen as
belonging to the concept of primitivism. In problematizing the latter, the Post-Boasian linguists
also problematized the former, because at the time nobody was making the conceptual
This remained the state of affairs for several decades, until McWhorte(2001)
controversial claim that creole languages are the most simple languages. What emerged from
this was, on its surface, a new dichotomy between complexity and simplicity, but which upon
closer examination can be shown to retain vestiges of the earlier opposition between primeval
and modern, only couched in new terminology. This newer discourse, then, while meant to
extract just a single opposition from the original Pre-Boasian oppositions regarding primitivism
for more objective study, while abandoning those oppositions now seen to be outmoded, in fact
retained some of the other oppositions as well, especially the fundamental one to evolutionary
anthropology, that of primeval versus modern. It is this erroneous conception of contemporary
phenomena races, languages, cultures as representative of some deep point in history that
linguists have been attempting to escape since the time of Boas, by way of moralizing
discourses that reshaped the oppositions involved, and therefore changed the ways that linguists
positioned themselves in relation to primitivism. While linguists have been successful at
expunging many of the assumptions of the evolutionary anthropologists, it seems there still
remains work to be done to rid themselves its final vestiges.
Hieber, Daniel W. 2014. Primitivism in linguistics: The Americanist tradition after Boas. Term
14
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