Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 11:36:05 -0500

From: Ron Butters RonButters[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM

Subject: Re: Re[2]: vernacular



Larry Rosenwld writes:

. . . the desire of Boasian anthropologists,

in studying Native American tribes, to

describe the culture and language of

those tribes as if they'd never been

in contact with European American society



Both this notion and the idea of the primacy (and, for that matter, reified

existence) of the uncorrupted vernacular have their roots in

late-18th-century romanticism: the Noble Redskin, the Blue Lagoon State of

Nature, the superiority of "the ordinary language of men talking to other

men" that led Wordsworth to such marvelously poetic lines as the place in his

poem "Michael" where he talks about "plain homemade cheese." And lets not

forget WW's noble leechgather on the moor, either, whose means of living was

to walk around in muddy ponds until leeches gathered on his feet, which he

then plucked off and sold for medical use.