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International and Area Studies

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Journal

Ontology

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Vaupés Multilingualism And The Substance Of Language, Stephen Hugh-Jones Nov 2023

Vaupés Multilingualism And The Substance Of Language, Stephen Hugh-Jones

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

By focusing on ordinary conversational language, relying on a notion of “group” derived from unilineal descent theory, and neglecting mythology and ritual, studies of Vaupés Tukanoan multilingualism have inadvertently tended to reproduce a Western ideology of language as marking national identity and concerned with conveying meaning. This paper suggests that attention to musical, ritual, and shamanic contexts reveals multilingualism in a different light, with ritual speech acts as constitutive of social groups, names as vehicles of reproduction, and breath as a substance-like bodily element and source of vitality. The more esoteric, rhetorical, musical, or visual ornamentation is given to breath, …


Metaphoric Recursiveness And Ternary Ontology: Another Look At The Language And Worldview Of The Yaminahua, Carlos A. Segovia Feb 2021

Metaphoric Recursiveness And Ternary Ontology: Another Look At The Language And Worldview Of The Yaminahua, Carlos A. Segovia

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

My purpose in this paper is, first, to explore metaphorical recursiveness in Yaminahua, i.e. the latter’s folding of the common binary structure: {(x) things + (y) words} into the threefold scheme: (A) things + (B) external analogies + (C) internal metaphors, as displaying a multi-iconic semiotic system of the type: A ≈ [B] ≈ C, which is finally reduced to a twofold indexical system: A ← [B], contra Graham Townsley’s dismissal of semiotic theory as being of no relevance in contrast to cognitive construction. And, secondly, to show that within the traditional Yaminahua worldview "animism," "totemism," …


Christianity + Schooling On Nature Versus Culture In Amazonia, Aparecida M. N. Vilaça Dec 2019

Christianity + Schooling On Nature Versus Culture In Amazonia, Aparecida M. N. Vilaça

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Based on the analysis of Evangelical Biblical translations, as well as on the school writing of Wari' (Southwestern Amazonia) students, produced in indigenous secondary school classrooms and at the intercultural university, this article aims to show how, in both church and school, a nature separate from humans is invented with which they should relate in a utilitarian and also contemplative way. Simultaneously nature’s opposite is invented–a culture that excludes animals and subjects them.