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New Mexico Quarterly Volume 37 | Issue 3 Article 1 1967 Full Issue University of New Mexico Press Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq Recommended Citation University of New Mexico Press. "Full Issue." New Mexico Quarterly 37, 3 (1967). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol37/iss3/ 1 This Full Issue is brought to you for free and open access by the University of New Mexico Press at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Mexico Quarterly by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. : Full Issue OF ON,,,, ~fjt~/fTitI:sn~. N~1?J~.. lr l Z IS? . n,f;l::.. rr; .Q , ~O~~ G RELATNISM IN LANGUAGE AND ~fJLTURE BY STANLEY NEWMAN THE NON-FICTION NOVEL BY WILLIAM WIEGAND THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR BY WINFIELD TOWNLEY SCOTT GEN'L WM. WAL~R " BY JOHN HOUGHTON ALLEN r STORIES ,.. BY TONY HILLERMAN AND LINDA T. CASPER ." POETRY JOHN A. ALLEN, GABRIEL FIELDING, EDSEL ~ORD LUCIEN STRYK, HOLLIS SUMMERS, RAMONA WEEKS AUTUMN 196-=1. Published by UNM Digital Repository, 1967 1 New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. 37 [1967], Iss. 3, Art. 1 Volume XXXVII, Number 3 Published by theUniversity of New Mexico MARY E. ADAMS AND Gus BLAISDE~L, Coeditors LEONARD A. PREHN, Production OUIDA NELSON, Circulation Manager © 1967 THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS PUBLISHED QUARTERLY COM;POSED, PRINTED AND BOUND IN TIlE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AT TIlE U RSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRINTING PLANT. ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS POST GE PAID AT ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO 87106. OPINIONS EXPRESSED OR LIED BY CONTRIBUTORS DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT TIlE VIEWS OF TIlE EDIT RS OR OF TIlE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO. SUBSCRIPTIONS: ONE YEAR, $5.00;'TWO YEARS, $9.00; THREE YEARS, $12. SINGLE COPY, $1.25. BACK ISSUES, $1.50. FOREIGN, SAME PRICE AS DOMESTIC. ADDRESS: NEW MEXICO QUARTERLY, THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO 87106, U.S.A. Lhttps://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol37/iss3/1 2 : Full Issue CONTENTS Articles RELATIVISM IN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE. Fourteenth UNM Research Lecture. Stanley Newman. 196 GEN'L WM. WALKER. John Houghton Allen. ,211 THE NON-FICTION NOVEL. William Wiegand. 243 THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR. Winfield Townley Scott. 258 Stories THE REPLACEMENT. Tony Hillennan. 276 THE TRANSPARENT SUN. Linda T. Casper. 281 Poetry CORRIDA IN AzPEITIA~ Gabriel Fielding. 232 NOT AN ELEGY. John A. Allen. 235 SESTINA FOR AFAMILIAR LOBSTER. Edsel Ford. 236 IMAGE. Lucien Stryk. 237 '1, THE VIOLENT COUNTY. Ramona Weeks. 238 ;;• f. THE STUDY OF HISTORY. FLAGSHIP, TOURIST CLASS. Hollis Summers. 240 POETRY CONTRIBUTORS. 242 Published by UNM Digital Repository, 1967 3 New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. 37 [1967], Iss. 3, Art. 1 196 ON MAy 10, 1967, Dr. Stanley ~ewman delivered at the University of New Mexico the Fourteenth Annual r Research Lecture, "Relativism in Language and Culture." Professor Newman, a member of the UNM faculty since 1949, is distinguished for his scholarship in the fields of anthropology and linguistics, and for his interdisciplinary research and publication. After attending the University of Chicago where he received both his i Bachelor of Philosophy and his Master of Arts degrees, he was awarded I the Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by Yale University in '93" 1: From 1932 to 1937, Professor Newm~n was a Research Fellow of the In- •1 stitute of Human Relations at ;Yale and then for two years held a posi­ tion with the General Education Board of New York City. During World War II, he worked for the Information and Education Division of the War Department and, among other duties, gave intensive language training to U.S. Army officers assigned to the Middle East. He also prepared courses for the teaching of English to Brazilian and Mexican technicians and to German and Italian prisoners of war held in this country. After World War II, Professor Newman taught linguistics for the Institute of Social Anthropology at the Escuela Nacional in Mexico City and conduded basic research in ~e Aztec and Otomi tongues. He has also done similar studies for other languages. He has held teaching positions at the University of Texas, Columbia . University and Brooklyn. College-as well as at Yale and the Escuela . Nacional in Mexico-before he joined the faculty of the University of New Mexico. Since 1953 he has been a full professor in the pepartment of Anthropology at UNM. - I Professor Newman is known as a teacher of students from many academic disciplines and as a nationally prominent writer and scholar. He has au­ thored or co-authored more than thirty articles, forty reviews and a number of book-length studies. His' Zuni Dictionary was published by Indiana University in 1958. The University of New Mexico Press published his Zuni Grammar in 1965. Among the professional societies of which he is a fellow or member are the American Anthropological Association, American Association for the ~dvancement of Science, and the American Folklore Society. He has, in the past, been Vice-President of the Linguistic Society of America and President of the New Mexico Phi Beta Kappa Association. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol37/iss3/1 4 : Full Issue 197 RELATIVISM IN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE BY STANLEY NEWMAN One of the most impressive facts about language is its automatic and seemingly instinctive character. When we are in the process of talking, we can come to feel that we are doing something as natural as breathing or walking. We do not neesl to stop and plan the sequence of words. We can have perfect confidence, for example, about plung. ing headlong into the beginning of.a sentence. There seems to be some mechanism inside us;a kind of electronic governor, that will tick off the .sounds and words in their proper form and their proper order, so that we will find our way to the end of the sentence. This will sug· gest the beginning of the next sentence, and a new sequence of words is created by the automatic selection process. The ability to handle sounds and words in this way is the most complex system of skills that the human being acquires during his lifetime. And it is a distinctively human'ability, entirely different from the systems of fixed messages in animal communication. Because speech appears to be a spontaneous activity that comes from somewhere deep inside of him, the human being develops a warmly intimate feeling for his native language. It becomes an essen­ tial part of him. It comes to be associated with emotionally charged ,reactions. He finds some ways of using his language pleasurable, some ugly, some humorous. But unforeseen frustrations arise when a person is learning a foreign language. There comes a time in the learning process when the learner makes his first attempts at talking. He plunges recklessly into a sen­ tence, only to realize in the middle that he cannot find his way to the other end. His inner mechanism does not seem to work automatically I with a foreign language. On a naive level, he will blame the language, feeling that it is not as richly expressive as his own. Or he may be more knowledgeable ~lize t~at, in the case of his own language, he has internalized the linguistic system; he has learned his native language at the optimal age and has practiced it for thousands of man- Published by UNM Digital Repository, 1967 5 New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. 37 [1967], Iss. 3, Art. 1 198 STANLEY NEWMAN hours, through hearing as well as speaking; he has become so habit­ uated to the language patterns that the system of speech seems to flow from him without his thinking about it. In the same way, the , emotional overtones attached to words have also been learned so thoroughly that they become intuitive responses. But, in the case of a foreign language, the experience of internalizing a totally new system of habits and responses is seldom fully realized, especially if the lan­ guage is very different and the culture very remote from his own. There are few individuals who learn a second language with the intimacy that the first was acquired. Most people learn only one language from the inside, just as they learn only one culture. This limitation 'of experience raises a problem, the problem of absolutism versus relativism. Individuals normally perceive other lan­ guages and cultures from the vantage point of their own. They un- J consciously use their native experience as a norm, a source of absolute values for comparison with foreign ways of behaving. With soine expenditure of effort in addition to good will, however, we can escape from our native prison and obtain a glimpse, at least, of how native speakers operate and respond emotionally in a different language sys­ tem. We can achieve some measure of relativism and gain an apprecia­ tion of the insider's view of a system foreign to ours. To illustrate the relativistic approach, I will use examples from my fieldwork with two American Indian languages. Although I will be primarily concerned with linguistic features, it will be necessary for me , to deal with them in their cultural context. The first example is taken from Yokuts, a language spoken by several groups of Indians in south-eentral California. As a standard procedure in fieldwork, the linguist first takes down a vocabulary from the lan­ guage. This provides him with samples of the language that are short enough for him, as a nonnative, to handle. The word list is a practical first step by which the linguist learns to perceive the sounds of the foreign system and to practice pronouncing the forms, with the native speaker as a guide.

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