SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

196 I Notes to pages 63-J35
Notes to pages 140—70 I 197
18. Neither of these patterns is referred to as omerodel "adoption."
19. Barnett (1949:137) states that the term badek is extended to cover the funeral goods
given to the spouses of men. I never heard this usage in Ngeremlengui.
20. These expressions of kinship solidarity contrast sharply with the extreme division
between affinal sides described for the Dobuans (Fortune 1932:10-11).
11. See, e.g., Barton 1946:169-202; Blackwood 1935:487-502; Counts 1976-77;
Fortune 1932:10-16; Furness 1910; Hudson 1966; Kaeppler 1978; Keesing 1982:143-67;
Metcalf 1982; Poole 1984; Traube i986':2O0-235; Volkman 1985:142-52; Weiner 1976:61-
120.
4. The Political Function of Reported Speech
I. For comparative ethnographic data, see the papers collected in Bloch 1975; Brenneis
and Myers 1984; and Paine 1981.
5. Tropical Semiotics
1. J. F. MacCannell (1981:296), writing about early modern Europe, notes that this
process may have a third phase, the "revolution" that reinstates as arbitrary the fixed or naturalized
metaphors of a society.
2. weiner does not relate his analysis to the proposal by Schwimmer (1974:217) that
there is an important difference between metaphoric and métonymie exchange objects.
3. This concentration on moral stories rather than charter myths might account for
Weiner's failure to articulate his argument with recent work in the semiotics of myth. For examples
of studies of myth with a semiotic focus see Barthes 1982; Casalis 1976; Drummond
1981; Greimas 1987; Ivanov and Toporov 1976; Liszka 1983, 1989; Lotman and Uspensky
1978; Ogibenin 1968; Schwimmer 1986; Semeka-Pankratov 1979; Shapiro and Shapiro 1988;
Toporov 1974; Urban 1986; Zilberman 1984.
4. It is not clear whether to classify "The Hornbill Husband" as a moral story or as a
serious myth. Williams points out that the Kutubu Foi version he collected suppresses the
names of the characters and that the narrative serves as a charter for the "foundation" clan;
Weiner, on the other hand, treats the Hegeso Foi version he recorded as a moral story without
cultic relevance and without an associated magical spell.
5. Wagner has argued for one additional context, namely, the historical unfolding of
epochal stages in the symbolism of a single cultural tradition. His analysis (1986^96-125) of
the transition from medieval to Reformation Christianity in terms of eucharistie ritual argues
for the "temporal development of the Western core symbol as a process of tropic expansion
and obviation."
6. Gurevich (1988:178—80) provides a brilliant critique of Bakhtin in suggesting that
the medieval grotesque stands as a constant countertheme at both popular and high cultural
levels rather than as a differentiating sign of that division.
6. The Semiotic Regimentation of Social Life
1. The argument here about "hyperstructure" is an extension of the aesthetic theory of
Jan Mukafovsky and Roman Jakobson.
2. My research has more recently expanded to include Old Sturbridge Village, Hancock
Shaker Village, Old Deerfield, and Mystic Seaport, all constructed along the model of historical
restoration pioneered at Colonial Williamsburg (Ainslie 1984:163). For the purpose of illustrating
how a specific contextual arrangement of interprétants regiments tourists' experience
in ways that actually run counter to assorted textual forms of metasemiotic intent I will confine
the discussion here to Colonial Williamsburg.
3. In the late 1980s, when officials of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation realized
that the "black experience" needed to be given more explicit attention, a grant from AT&T
provided funds for tours and entertainment focused on Black History. And, conveniently, renewed
excavation yielded additional artifacts to reflect the life of slaves.
4. Not content with the re-creation of the past, the Rockefellers were also the force behind
the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which "promoted an image of glamorous modernity
and liberalism that contrasted sharply with older types of museums and their
nineteenth-century ideologies" (Duncan and Wallach 1978:33). And, as these authors demonstrate,
the spatial organization of this museum regiments the visitor' experience of the enshrined
objects.
5. See Fjellman's (1992:400) comments on "commodity fetishism" at Walt Disney World.
6. My argument here can be taken as an indirect criticism of Olson's (1987) more general
discussion of "meta-television." Olson contends that television programming about television
serves to undermine the conventions of "naturalness" as an arbitrary artifice. I would
suggest, in contrast, that meta-television, like meta-advertising, reinforces the dominant rules
of interpretation by including representations of them in the content of media messages.
7. Comparison, Pragmatics, and Interpretation
1. As the final presentation in the multiyear conference series, my discussant's task was
to provide a general summary perspective on the issues of comparison and interpretation that
would link the papers presented at this and at earlier conferences.
2. Taylor (1990:47) notes that the presence in the West of rational discourse about the
equal value of other traditions seems to be an argument for the West's claim to cultural superiority,
since this spirit of equality is missing in many other cultures.
3. For a record of penetrating discussions of the typology of comparison see Bantly
1990:3-21 (summary by Robert F. Campany), 123-44 (summary by Laurie L. Patton).
4. J. Z. Smith (1982:22) even postulates a typology of comparative thinking, in which
various writers on religion are positioned relative to four types: ethnographic, encyclopedic,
morphological, and evolutionary.
5. Cf. Gadamer's notion of "alienation," in Schweiker 1990:42.
6. This distinction comes from Silverstein's many lectures and papers on pragmatics and
metapragmatics; see especially Silverstein 1993.
7. Two excellent recent demonstrations of the pragmatic background to comparative analytic
work are J. Z. Smith 1990 and Eilberg-Schwartz 1990.
8. Several scholars have noted that comparison at the level of practical reason might help
avoid the generalization that the more developed a philosophical theory is the more remote the
chance of finding suitable comparative parallels in other theories (Kasulis 1982:403; Yearley
1990:179).
9. In the discussion of the conference paper in this and the following paragraphs I am
primarily interested in drawing out material relevant to the joint theme of comparison and
interpretation, which in several cases misses the authors' central concerns. Also, space restriction
precludes dealing fully with all the conference papers here.
10. The argument proposed by Maclntyre (1988:357) that traditions are rational to the
degree that they engage in historically layered self-criticism overlooks the important role of
cross-cultural engagement.