Speaking with Names Summary

Speaking with Names In the beginning of this article, the first point that is mostly stressed is ethnographers. He tries to emphasize that they’re study points should be more than just a language. He believes that in order to understand they’re custom and traditions they need to take into consideration the land in which they live in. Here are a couple examples of what he says about it.
“In other words, one must acknowledge that local understandings of external realities are fashioned from local cultural materials, and that, knowing little or nothing of the latter, one’s ability to make appropriate sense of “what is” and “what occurs” in another’s environment is bound to be deficient. For better or worse, the ethnographers see, landscape and speech acts do not interpret their own significance”
Then he goes to explain that in contrast, Natives see the outside world and think that it is done in a very non-pleasurable way. So the same idea applies to them, because they don’t live in that society they don’t understand how their location and different situations affect other situations. They wouldn’t be adapted, or at least not until they learned the proper way of doing things while being in a different environment.
Example from the reading:
“Constructions of reality that reflect conceptions of reality, the meanings of landscape and acts of speech are personalized manifestations of a shared perspective on the human condition”

The natives interact with the landscape in three different ways.
1) They observe the landscape
2) They may modify it or make changes to the landscape according to a use in which they want to exercise.
3.) They will discuss about the landscape in social gatherings or such events
In order for an ethnographer to grasps these concepts as a native he suggests to attend a “native place names.” He suggests that the giving of names is associated with emotions, which can help better understand a culture. Speaking with Names: Lola is a mother of eight children who tends for her children, collecting herbs, farming, and “participating in ceremonial activities.” She is well known in the village and is seen to be a very intelligent woman. Then she begins to talk to other women about her sick brother. They tell of story of how he stepped on a snake skin and was warned to cleanse himself for something could happen to him but he refused to without any worry.

Cibecue sees speaking as a way of illustrating. They feel that sometimes children or other people leave out ideas or pictures when they speak, therefore they don not give accurate depictions. On the other hand Western Apache see speaking in different tones an expression of emotions. If you were to speak softly you are expressing kindness.

Example from the reading:
A person who speaks too much- someone who describes too busily, who supplies too many details, who repeats and qualifies too many times- presumes without warrant on the right of hearers to build freely and creatively on the speaker’s own depictions

In other words, persons who speak to much insult the imaginative capabilities of other people….

Then the story continues, in summary, Lola uses names to help her brother feel better. As a different story comes, it is about how a young individual was given advice from the elderly but decided not to take it. So it came to be that the person almost died.