The Folk Biology of the Tobelo People - Smithsonian Institution ...

NUMBER 34
Even if we were to limit our description to a single Tobelo
dialect, we would not solve die problem of variation among
speakers, because variation among individuals also occurs.
Neither a complete description of "the" Tobelo language nor a
complete description of "the" domain of BIOTIC FORMS
among die Tobelo would describe any particular individual's
knowledge or competence. Not only are many plants and
animals unidentifiable by, and their names unfamiliar to, most
Tobelo, but there is also considerable apparent disagreement
over the correct names for specimens shown them (less often
for those seen in their natural context), despite die widespread
Tobelo cultural presumption (see 2.3) that each plant and
fair-sized animal should have (or should have formerly had) a
name.
From die ethnographic fieldworker's point of view, tiiere are
two kinds of causes for tiiis disagreement: the "exasperating"
and the "interesting." "Exasperating" causes of informant
disagreement include the methodological problems of identifying
plant classes from parts of plants when specimens must be
removed from context, or of informants who proffer names
without conviction but with misleading certainty. Social
conventions also play a role, such as those that dictate that
younger Tobelo should concede to tiieir elders' opinions in
public, just as hosts should defer to guests; or that most
medicinal uses of plants (including tiiose that can be inferred
from names for some plant types) are not freely discussed.
Though exasperating, these sources of the vast majority of
cases of apparent disagreement are not insurmountable. Many
social conventions can be overcome in private, and names
mistakenly assigned are often entiiusiastically corrected when
new possibilities are presented. Corrections by the more expert
are accepted by otiiers (even in private) as "learning something
new."
The disagreement that remains is "interesting," and may lead
to discoveries of synonymy, of dialectal differences, of marked
and unmarked senses of terms, or of polysemous terms tiiat
include plant or animal names among tiieir senses. All these
possibilities, however, can be investigated only if we continue
to posit, just as a working hypothesis, that a single structural
description of die domain under investigation can be derived,
and then try to determine if and how both of two terms applied
to the same object (or even class) might be predictable with
reference to the same structural description.
Perhaps Hays (1976:489) is arguing against such an
approach when he writes:
.. .the descriptive problem raised by informants' disagreements has more often
been sidestepped by adopting either of two models of die culture (or a limited
domain of it) to be described. One is that which views a culture as "the common
element which all members share, or the set theoretical INTERSECTION of
individual competences" (Werner, 1969:333), or ...the "shared" model.
According to a second view, an ethnographic description is "an attempt to
characterize the set theoretical UNION of all individual competences" (Werner,
1969:333), an approach commonly used in folk biology .. .where the notion of
an -omniscient informant" is employed; this model of a culture I will refer to as
a "composite."
Uncritical adoption of either approach can lead to descriptions which are
incomplete, misleading, or simply reifications
Hays has instead (1976, 1979) commendably attempted to
document the degree of intra-cultural variation in plant
classification among a sample of Ndumba informants. Aside
from some methodological problems (particularly that study's
complete reliance on a controlled naming response using only
pressed herbarium vouchers as stimuli), it still appears from his
discussion of the Ndumba data that at least one point about
documenting such variation remains to be considered: either all
informants do share a single system of classification or they do
not. If they do, then we may adequately describe it with a single
model. If tiiey do not, we still need a model witiiin which
individual, dialectal, or otiier variation can be described (or
more ideally, "predicted"). If "composite model" is meant to
imply a model tiiat fails to predict variation wherever it occurs,
then I join in rejecting it; but if it could provide a structural
explanation for and an adequate description of dialectal (and,
ideally, even individual) variation, I would see no choice but to
adopt it.
Of course, one might instead try to document die knowledge
of each individual, treating that as his own system of
classification. Though there are methodological difficulties,
such an effort among Tobelo would undoubtedly produce
interesting results; however, to leave the description there
seems to deny many facts of language in general and of Tobelo
language and culture in particular.
1. In every specialized area of language some native speakers
must rely on others for terms in that specialized domain, about
which tiiey can inquire for "correct" terms much as we might
search for them in an encyclopedia.
2. Speakers of a language themselves generally have a
definite idea that some terms are correctly and others
incorrectly applied to objects, including the various BIOTIC
FORMS. Witiiin die restraints of local etiquette (which frowns
upon correcting hosts, guests, or those older than oneself),
Tobelo generally appear wdling to (and frequendy do) discuss
die "proper" terms for particular organisms. There are also
certain cultural presumptions about the existence of "proper"
terms (see 2.3).
3. Finally, despite these cultural presumptions about die
existence of an already established system of folk classification
laid down by ancestors, there is considerable evidence that
when individuals or groups of individuals do revise die
classification system, tiiey do so by productively applying to
new situations the classificatory relations used throughout the
system. This shared system is the source of die particular
"appropriateness" of such revisions, though they may be made
by an individual or a small group, and may in fact be "esoteric"
or idiosyncratic (see 5.2.2.4 below). Revisions tiiat are
"esoteric" or "idiosyncratic" (see 2.3 and 5.2.2.4) are such
precisely because tiiey are recognized, even by tiiose who use
them, to be variations within the context of a more generally
accepted non-"esoteric" folk classification (though of course