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Loose Talk: Linguistic Competence and Recognition Ability
Author(s) -
GATEWOOD JOHN B.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1983.85.2.02a00100
Subject(s) - citation , ethnography , context (archaeology) , linguistics , sociology , history , anthropology , library science , computer science , philosophy , archaeology
Most every day, I have occasion to indulge in loose talk. I tell someone about something I have never seen and could not recognize were I to bump into it. On the other hand, some portions of my world are quite familiar, but I am hard pressed to talk about them for lack of their names. Considering the number of named categories I cannot recognize and the number of familiar objects I cannot properly name, it is almost a surprise to find that I routinely name and recognize a vast portion of my world. Not everything I say is loose talk. Yet, it is clear that the ability to talk about and the ability to recognize are independent skills. This paper considers the significance of the fact that one may know and use a word without being able to recognize its empirical referent. The first section presents some data collected from urban American college students concerning kinds of trees. At least within this limited domain, the average American knows the names for more kinds of trees than he or she is