Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse by Edmund Leach Review

Animal Categories and Verbal Corruption

byEdmund Leach

[Leach, Edmund. 2000. "Animal Categories and Exact Corruption." In The Essential Edmund Leach Volume 1: Anthropology and Society, 322–43. Yale University Press.]

Points

1. Every bit humans, nosotros take the natural earth (a continuum) and break it into pieces past naming things.
2. We become trained to only see the named things, thus creating definitive separations between things.
3. The areas between named things problem these distinctions, so they become taboo.

• One way we do this is through altitude from oureselves (ego)
  • Self….Sister….Cousin….Neighbor….Stranger
  • Self….House….Farm……..Field………Far (remote)
  • Self….Pet……Livestock…Game……..Wild Animal

• seen down the list metaphorically cousin=farm=livestock
  • people rated by sexual availability—animals by edibility
  • cousins can have sex, but cannot marry—just Livestock that have been rendered non-sexual can be eaten
  • Sisters=no sex: pets=no eating
  • Neighbors=sexually available: Game Animals=totally edible
  • 

• Not merely an English phenomenon (meet beneath)

• "The problem then is this. The English treat certain animals as taboo – sacred. This sacredness is manifested in various ways, partly behavioural, as when we are forbidden to eat mankind of the beast concerned, partly linguistic, as when a phonemic pattern penumbral to that of the brute category itself is establish to be a focus of obscenity, profanity, etc. Can we get any insight into why certain creatures should be created this way?" (327).
• "The thesis is that we make binary distinctions and then mediate the distinction past creating an cryptic (and taboo-loaded) intermediate cat­egory" (334).
  • 

Ends with a shout-out/critique of Lévi-Strauss:

• "Those who wish to take my statement seriously might well consider its rele­vance to C. Lévi-Strauss's well-nigh remarkable book La Penée Sauvage (1962). Though fascinated by that piece of work I take also felt that some dimension to the argu­ment is missing. We need to consider non just that things in the world can exist classified as sacred and not sacred, merely besides as more sacred and less sacred. And so also in social classification it is not sufficient to have a discrimination me/it, we/they; we as well need a graduated scale close/far, more-similar-me/less-like-me. If this essay is found to accept a permanent value it will exist considering it represents an expansion of Levi-Strauss'south thesis in the direction I accept indicated" (342).
  • *drops the mic

Note Summary for: Leach – Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse

Page 1, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Creature Categories and Verbal Abuse (1964) The fundamental theme of my essay is the classical anthropological topic of 'taboo!"

Page 1, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "When psychologists argue about the machinery of 'forgcuing' they often introduce che concept of 'interference', che idea that there is a tendency to repress concepts chat have some kind of semantic overlap. ane The thesis which l presenc depends upon a antipodal hypothesis, namel)'• u1ar we tin can only go far ar semantically cliscincc verbal concepcs if we repress rhe boundary preceprs chac prevarication berween chem."

Page i, Postage stamp (Star (Frame, Red))

Page 1, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "For the anthropologist, linguistic communication is"

Page 2, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "a part of culmre, noc a ching in itself."

Page two, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Language and taboo"

Page 2, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Instead of discussing rhings char arc said and done, I want to talk most things chac are not said and done. My theme is rhat of taboo, expression which is inhibited."

Folio 2, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Linguistic taboos and behavioural taboos are not only sanctioned in the sameway, they are very much muddled up: sex activity behaviour and sex words, for instance."

Page 2, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "The pun seems funny or shocking because it challenges a taboo which usually forbids us to recognise chat the sound design is cryptic."

Page 2, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Queen is the consort of King or even a female sovereign in her ain correct; quean which formerly meant a prosti­ tute now normally denotes a homosexual male."

Page two, Highlight (Cyan): Content: " Although chese two words pretend co be different, indeed oppo­sites, they actually denote the same thought. A queen is a female of abnormal status in a positive virtuous sense; a qucan is a person of depraved characcer or uncertain sex, a female person of aberrant stams in a negative sinful sense. "

Page 2, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "In this case, then, the taboo which allows the states to carve up the ii ambiguous concepts, so that nosotros can"

Page iii, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "talk of queens without thinking of queans, and vice versa, is simultaneously both linguistic and social."

Page 3, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Taboo is simulcaneouslyboth behavioural and linguistic, both social and psychological. As an anthropol­ogist, I am particularly concerned with the social aspeccs of taboo."

Folio iii, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Creature categories and verbal obscenities"

Page 3, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "I shall be discussingthe connexion between animal categories and exact obscenicies. Obviously information technology is much easier to calk about the animals than about the obscenities! The lauer will moscly exist just off stage. "

Folio 4, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "I can find that when exact taboos are cleaved the resuk is a specific social phenomenon which affeccs both the player and his hearers in a specific describable fashion."

Folio 4, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Broadly speaking, the language of obscenity falls imo chree cace­ gories: (1) dircy words – usuaJly referring co sex and excretion, (2) irreverence and profanity, and (iii) beast abuse – in which a human heing is equated with an animate being of another species."

Page iv, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Psychologists have adequate and per­ suasive explanations of why the cencral focus or the crudest obscenity should usually prevarication in sex activity and excretion. Whatsoever theory almost the sacredness of supernamral beings is likely to imply a concept of sacrilege which in turn explains the emotions aroused by profanity and blasphemy. Only animate being abuse seems much less easily accounted for."

Page iv, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "for an anchropologisc, beast abuse is part of a wide field of srudy which includes animal sacrifice and totemism."

Page iv, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Relation of edibility and social valuation of animals"

Folio 4, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "One hypothesis which underlies the rest of this paper is that animal abuse is in some manner linked with what Radcliffe-Brown called the ritual value of the fauna category concerned."

Page 4, Underline (Red): Content: "Radcliffe-Brown"

Folio 4, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "concerned. I furcher presume that this ritual value is linked in some as yec underermined manner with taboos and rules concerning the kilJing and eating of chese and ocher animals."

Page 5, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "I shall use Lhe concept of food taboo in a more full general sense, so that information technology covers all classes of food prohibition, explicit and implicit, witting and unconscious."

Page 5, Highlight (Yellow): Content: "food taboo"

Page 5, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Cultural and linguiscic determination of food values"

Page five, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "The concrete environment of any human being guild concains a vast range of materials which are both edible and nourishing, but, in about cases, but a small pan of this edible environs will really exist classified as potential food. Such classification is a matter of language and civilisation, not of nature."

Page 5, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "As a consequence of such cultural discriminations, the edible pan of the cnvi­ ronmenc usually faJls into three main categories: (1) Edible substances that arc recognised equally food and consumed as office of the normal diet. (two) Edible substances that are recognised equally possible food, buc chat are pro­ hibited or else allowed to be eaten only under special (ritual) weather. These are substances which are consciously tabooed (3) Edible substances conversation by culture and language are not recognised as food at all. These substances are uncomciously tabooed"

Page v, Highlight (Yellow): Content: "consciously tabooed uncomciously tabooed"

Page 5, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "The Jewish prohibition against pork is a ritual matter and explicit. It says, in consequence, 'pork is a food, simply Jews must not eat it.' The Englishman's objection to eating domestic dog is quite equally potent"

Folio half-dozen, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "but rests on a different premise. It depends on a chiselled assumption: 4dog is not food.'"

Folio 6, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Evidently all such rules, prejudices, and conventions are of social origin; however the social taboos accept their linguisdc counterparts and, as I shall presently show, these accidents of etymological history fit together in a quite surprising fashion."

Folio vi, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "The trouble then is this. The English treat certain animals every bit taboo – sacred. This sacredness is manifested in various means, partly behavioural, as when we are forbidden to eat flesh of the beast concerned, partly linguistic, as when a phonemic paccern penumbra) to that of the beast category itself is found to exist a focus of obscenity, profanity, etc. Can we get any insight into why certain creatures should be created this way?"

Page six, Stamp (Star (Frame, Blood-red))

Folio 6, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Taboo and the distinctiveness of nameable categories"

Page vii, Underline (Red): Content: "Mary Douglas'south"

Folio 7, Underline (Red): Content: "Levi­ Strauss,due south"

Folio 7, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "I postulate that the physical and social environment of a immature child is per­ ceived as a continuum. It does not concain whatsoever intrinsically separate 'things'. The kid, in due course, is taught to impose upon this environment a kind of dis­ criminating filigree which serves to distinguish the globe equally existence composed of a large number of divide things, each labelled with a name."

Folio 7, Note (Orange): Sapir-Worff?

Page 7, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "This world is a rep­ resentation of our language categories, non vice versa. Because my mother tongue is English language, it seems cocky-evident ~hat bushes and trees are different kiu

Folio 8, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "The same kind of argument may also be represented by a simplified Venn diagram employing two circles just. Let chere be a circle p representing a par­ ticular verbal category. Let this be intersected past another circumvolve -p representing the 'environment' of p, from which it is desired to distinguish p. If by a fiction we impose a taboo upon any consideration of the overlap area that is common to both circles, so we shall be able to persuade ourselves chat p and -p ~due east wholly distinct, and the logic of binary bigotry will exist satisfied (Fig. 4)."

Page 8, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Language then does more than than provide united states with a classification of things; it accually moulds our environment; it places each individual at che centre of a social infinite which is ordered in a logical and reassuring mode."

Page 9, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "The child's get-go and continuing problem is co decermine the initial boundary. 'What am I, as against the globe?' 'Where is the edge of me?' In this cardinal sense, faeces, urine, semen, and then forch, are borh me and noc me. And so strong is the resulting taboo chat, even as an adult addressing an developed audience, I cannoc refer to these 'substances by the monosyllabic words which I used as a child buc must mention chem simply in Latin."

Folio ix, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "This world is inhabiced by imperfect morcal men; the other world is inhabited by immortal non-men (gods). The gap is bridged by supernatural beings of a highly ambiguous kind – incarnate deities, virgin mothers, supernatural monsters which are one-half homo/half beast. These marginal, ambiguous creatures are specifically credited with the power of mediating between gods and men. They are the object of che most intense taboos, more than sacred than the gods rhemselves."

Page 10, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Animal and food names in English"

Page xi, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Construction of food and kinship terminologies"

Page xi, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "From the poim of view of any male Self, che young women of hjs social world will fall into f~ur major classes: (1) Those who are very close – 'true sisters', e'er a strongly incescuous category. (ii) Those who are kin only not very dose – 'first cousins• in English gild, 'clan sisters' in many types of systems having unilineal descent and a segmenrary"

Page 12, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "lineage system. As a dominion, marriage with chis category is either prohibited or strongly disapproved, but premaricaJ sex relations may be tolerated or even expected. (three) Neighbours (friends) who are noc kin, potential affines. This is the cat­ egory from which Self will ordinarily expect to obtain a wife. This category con­ tains too potential enemies, friendship and enmity being alternacrng aspects of the same structural relationship. (4) Disrant strangers – who are known to be but with whom no social rela­ cions of any kind are possible."

Page 12, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "At present the English put almost of their animals into four very comparable categories: (I) Those who are very shut – 'pets'; always strongly inedible. (2) Those who are tame only not very dose – 'subcontract animals', mostly edible but only if immacure or casuated. We seldom eat a sexually intact, mature farm beast.7 (3) Field animals, 'game' – a category toward which we alternate friendship and hostility. Game animals alive under man protection but they are not tame. They are edible in sexually intact course, but are killed only at set seasons of the year in accord with fix hunting rituals. (4) Rcmocc wild animals – non field of study to homo control, inedible."

Page 12, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Thus presented, there appears to be a set of equivalents: inedible incest prohibilion castration coupled with edibilily marriage prohibition coupled with premarital sexual practice relations edible in sexually intact form; union alliance. friend/enemy ambiguity allernating friendship/hostility remote wild animals are inedible no sex activity relations with remote strangers"

Page 12, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "The archaic legal expression for game was beasts of venery. The term venery had the alternative meanings, hunting and sexual indul­ gence."

Folio 12, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "A fifth major category of English language animals which cuts across the others, and is significantly taboo-loaded, is vermin."

Page 13, Postage stamp (Star (Frame, Ruby))

Folio xiii, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "The thesis is th~t we brand binary distinctions and and then mediate the discinction by creating an ambiguous (and taboo-loaded) intermediate cat­ egory."

Folio thirteen, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "p both pand -p -p man 'human-animal' non man (not animal) ('pets'} (brute) TAME GAME WILD (friendly} (friendly/hostile) (hoslile)"

Page 13, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "If sex discrimination muse be made among pets, one tin say 'birch' and 'com true cat.' This implies that a dog is otherwise presumed male person and a car female. Indeed true cat and domestic dog are paired terms, and seem to serve as a paradigm for quarrelling husband and wife."

Page 15, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Animal abuse and earing habits"

Folio 17, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "I believe that this kind of analysis is more than just an intellectual game; information technology tin can help usa to sympathize a broad variety of our not-rational behaviour."

Page 17, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "A not-European example"

Folio 17, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "If this kind of analysis were applicable but to the categories of the English language lan­ guage it would amount co no more a parlour game. Scientifically speaking, che analysis is interesting only in so far every bit it opens upward the possibility that other languages analysed co-ordinate to similar procedures might yield comparable pat­ terns."

Page 20, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "che paucrn is quice consistent. The more remote animals are the more than edible, and che homonym meanings of the associated words become less taboo­ loaded as the social distance is increased."

Page 21, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Perhaps all this is coo good to be rrue, but I retrieve that information technology deserves furcher investigation."

Page 21, Highlight (Cyan): Content: "Those who wish to rake my argument seriously mighc well consider its rele­ vance co C. Levi-Scrauss's nearly remar.kable book la Pemee st11111nge (1962). Though fascinaced by chat work I have also folt rhat some dimension to the argu­ menc is missing. We need to consider not simply that things in the world can be classified as sacred ~medico not sacred, but also equally more sacred and less sacred. So also in social classification it is non sufficient to have a discriminarion me/information technology, we/they; we also need a graduated scale close/far, more-like-me/less-like-me. If rhis. essay is constitute to have a permanent value it will be considering it represents an expansion of Levi-Strauss'southward thesis in rhe direction I have indicated."

Folio 21, Underline (Cerise): Content: "C. Levi-Scrauss's "

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