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.