[Xmca-l] Re: kinship

Sun Jan 7 16:43:20 PST 2018

I don’t think grammar or semantics can enable us to resolve the question of whether snow is important to Eskimos. We have to visit them!

It would be very interesting if the Chinese word that gets translated as ‘family’ could be applied to an childless couple because they have a ‘household’ even though they don’t have a child. We shall await James’ reply.

Martin

> On Jan 7, 2018, at 7:14 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> Sure, Martin. But I don't know the answer; I defer to James. Anybody can
> use "jia", because it refers to a house as well as to the people who live
> there. So for example if I live alone, I come "home" to my "jia" whether I
> have a wife and child or a pig or only a potted plant. So...does "jia" mean
> "family" or not?
> 
> My question was also a serious one, Martin. If, for example, Eskimos have
> lots of names for snow, does it suggest that snow is important or not
> important? Suppose they have NO word for snow at all, but only thousands of
> different kinds of snow which they see as unrelated to each other?
> 
> I think that these questions are so serious they cannot be answered by
> referring to dictionaries, not even etymological dictionaries, because
> these give us only a lexical analysis. Hence the necessity of grammar and
> of semantics.
> 
> 
> 
> David Kellogg
> 
> Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
> Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
> Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
> 
> Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
> 
> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full <http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full>
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 8:45 AM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
> 
>> David,
>> 
>> My question was a serious one: in Chinese (I’m not sure which language
>> we’re discussing) can a childless couple be called a family?
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
>> "I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr. Lowie or discuss
>> matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware that my
>> partner does not understand anything in the matter, and I end usually with
>> the feeling that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 7, 2018, at 6:37 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> James not only calls the use of the "room" radical and the "pig" in the
>>> Chinese character etymology but also refers to the Chinese oracle (yes,
>> the
>>> Book of Changes and oracle bones, the very earliest forms of writing on
>>> sheep shoulder blades and tortoise shells that are cast in the fire in
>>> order to observe their cracking). If James is warning us not to make too
>>> much of this historical detail, he's right: it's a little like reminding
>>> people that the word "family" in English derives from a Latin term for
>>> household servants.
>>> 
>>> I agree that we can't use this as evidence to explain, for example, the
>>> fact that when a Korean child comes home from school, the usual response
>> of
>>> the mother is something like "You're here" (even when the child is
>> actually
>>> returning from years of overseas study!). I can't use the fact that the
>>> Chinese word for "family" refers to rooms and livestock to explain why my
>>> mother-in-law and even my wife always avoided the kind of mushy talk that
>>> constitutes family celebrations in the West and much prefered to complain
>>> about housing problems, food and television programming on the rare
>>> occasions we reunited at Spring Festival. It's not etymological.
>>> 
>>> It is cultural, though. So for example both Chinese and Korean have
>> family
>>> naming systems that make distinctions between maternal and paternal aunts
>>> and uncles in a way that is impossible in English, and in Korean the word
>>> for an older brother has nothing to do with the word for a younger
>> brother,
>>> but the word for younger brother doesn't distinguish gender, as the
>> English
>>> word does. In Korean, to say "cousin", you have to say exactly what
>> degree
>>> of separation you have ("three degrees"); I don't think anybody but an
>>> anthropologist or a literature major can explain exactly what "second
>>> cousin twice removed" means in English. Which suggests inattention to
>>> kinship--making the relationship between housing and kinship explicit or
>>> leaving it implicit?
>>> 
>>> I think that what Rod is really asking about is words like 익숙한
>> ("familiar",
>>> i.e. "easily recognizable") and 熟悉 ("familiar", i.e. "practiced"). They
>>> have nothing to do with either housing or kinship, and in fact the idea
>>> that there might be some inner connection that has nothing to do with the
>>> context of situation seems rather puzzling to my learned (and hence
>> rather
>>> feeble) Sino-Korean sensibilities. But maybe James can correct me here.
>>> 
>>> David
>>> 
>>> PS: There is this story on the BBC about a girl baby from Suzhou who was
>>> left in the street during the one-child policy with a Chinese poem in her
>>> swaddling clothes. She was adopted and brought up as an American, but
>> when
>>> she was in her twenties, her parents had the poem translated, and
>>> discovered that the parents could not afford the fines and the lack of
>>> housing that having an extra child would mean but that they would go and
>>> wait in Hangzhou on the child's birthday for the rest of their lives, in
>>> the hope that some day she would have the poem translated and come and
>> meet
>>> her "family" on the Duanqiao there. Duanqiao is the "broken bridge"; it's
>>> actually quite beautiful and completely undamaged, but it is the scene of
>>> a heartbreak scene in the opera "The White Snake", and inspired the
>> couplet:
>>> 
>>> "断桥桥不断，残雪雪未残"
>>> 
>>> "The broken bridge is a bridge unbroken, and the lingering snow (i.e.
>> White
>>> Snake, who is a snake spirit in love with an unworthy mortal) is snow
>> that
>>> won't linger."
>>> 
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHUGHRBmg2o
>>> 
>>> Of course, the BBC made a reality show out of this, insisting on
>> following
>>> both the girl and her Chinese parents with a movie camera during their
>>> reunion. There was a lot of shrieking and screaming and crying on the
>>> Chinese side; on the American side not so much (but the daughter said she
>>> felt overwhelmed by the love). What the mother kept saying to her
>> daughter,
>>> over and over again, was "You cannot understand what I am saying!"
>>> 
>>> dk
>>> 
>>> David Kellogg
>>> 
>>> Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
>>> Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
>>> Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
>>> 
>>> Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
>>> 
>>> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 7:45 AM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Just to add an etymological aspect that you might be interested to know
>>>> (this is because Chines is logographical).
>>>> 
>>>> According to the Chinese Oracle, family 家 has two parts: the upper
>>>> part 宀 refers
>>>> to "room"; the lower part 豕 refers to "pig". In the ancient times,
>> people
>>>> raised pigs in their houses, so having pigs in a house was a hallmark of
>>>> living. In modern Chinese, family also indicates "relationship", e.g.
>> 亲如一家
>>>> as close as a family.
>>>> 
>>>> James
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> *_____________________________________*
>>>> 
>>>> *James Ma*  *https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
>>>> <https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>   *
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 7 January 2018 at 21:30, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> In Chinese and in Korean, the word "family" is related to housing
>> rather
>>>>> than to kinship. In European languages it is the other way around. This
>>>>> does suggest something semantic, no?
>>>>> 
>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>> 
>>>>> Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
>>>>> Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
>>>>> Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
>>>>> 
>>>>> Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
>>>>> 
>>>>> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 6:22 AM, Greg Thompson <
>> greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
>>>>> 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Martin,
>>>>>> Well that is a difficult question to answer without knowing what you
>>>> mean
>>>>>> by "family"?
>>>>>> What in the world do you mean by "family"?
>>>>>> -greg
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 12:59 PM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I am struggling with the way ‘family’ and ‘kinship’ have been
>>>> defined,
>>>>> or
>>>>>>> not defined, in psychology and anthropology. One question that has
>>>>>> occurred
>>>>>>> to me is whether a word equivalent to ‘family’ exists in every
>>>>> language.
>>>>>>> When I Google this, Google responds ‘Ask Siri’…  :(
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Anyone have an idea?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>>>>>> Assistant Professor
>>>>>> Department of Anthropology
>>>>>> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>>>>>> Brigham Young University
>>>>>> Provo, UT 84602
>>>>>> WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
>>>>>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
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>>>> 
>> 
>> 

Martin

"I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr. Lowie or discuss matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware that my partner does not understand anything in the matter, and I end usually with the feeling that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)