146 Book reviews

Joachim Knuf and H. Walter Schmitz, Ritualisierte Kommunikation und Sozialstruktur. Mit einem Beitrag von Peter Masson. IKP-Forschungsberichte Reihe 1, Band 72. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 1980. 350 pp. DM 76.00.

The aim of this study is an analysis of greeting processes among the indigenas

of Saraguro, Ecuador, and a description of the relation between greeting processes and social relationships.

In their introduction, Knuf and Schmitz (K&S) present their study as “the result of interdisciplinary cooperation in the fields of communications re- search, social anthropology, and sociolinguistics” (p.x). They hereby point to the wide range of the research object rather than to any process of “interdisci- plinary cooperation”, whatever that may be. This impression is corroborated by the fact that “communications research”, at least in the sense of informa- tion research, has not made any specific contribution here, as well as by the circumstance that “social anthropology” and “sociolinguistics” are tradition- ally neighboring research areas: social anthropology has always been interested in language and language use, and sociolinguistics has generally been oriented towards the socio-cultural framework as far as expressed in language use.

In my opinion, the most interesting aspect in K&S’s research - besides the detailed way in which the findings are presented - is their sociolinguistic approach, relying on recent developments in the area of conversational analy- sis, in which aspects of language and language use are not only related to social relationships, but attention is also paid to the way participants organize and realize their greeting processes. I will emphasize this point in the following brief introduction to their work.

K&S’s extensive study (about 350 pages, plus an Appendix) is divided into four parts.

In the first part, which is rather theoretically oriented, K&S try to arrive at a definition of ‘ritual communication’, by means of a critical survey of relevant discussions. Traditionally, as K&S state, ‘rite’ and ‘ritual’ are related to the sacred and the magic, or to religion: acts are ritual in so far as they are oriented, as standardized patterns of behavior, towards the sacred, and interre- lated with, or incorporated into religion or worship. The language used in such ritual practices contains a small number of fixed language or speech acts, like prayers, blessings, requests and the like. The same standardized patterns of speech acts, however, are also found outside the scope of religion in its strict sense: in many cultures, greetings and leave-takings contain the same set of categories, including prayers and blessings.

After an extensive discussion, K&S opt for a so-called ‘integrative’ ap- proach: ordinary and non-religious acts like greeting and leave-taking can, in their opinion, also be characterized as ‘ritual communication’, if and when _ a socio-cultural action plan exists, _ the way of realizing this action plan is highly fixed, and

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_ the action plan is a normative one, i.e. normative to the actors; and, as far as language use is concerned, if and when _ the language used is highly predictable, _ the language used has archaic features, _ the language is non-informative and non-expressive, and _ a fixed relationship exists between verbal and non-verbal behavior.

K&S found these features to exist in the way the indigenas of Saraguro (an area in the south of Ecuador) great each other and discuss their well-being. The authors also point to the fact that comparable ritual features can be found in request dialogues. However, it is not perfectly clear what the subject is: the common and ordinary request, or the specific request to become ‘compadre ‘, a request which is a specific move in the socio-cultural life of the indigenas, and which may derive its ritual aspects from that context. Moreover, the descrip- tion of the greeting processes is the central part: request dialogues are not dealt with.

This first part of the book contains a great many clear formulations on interesting points of discussion. I only mention, without discussion: _ the process of learning routine language, and the subsequent consequences

for the semantic interpretation and interpretation possibilities of routine formulas;

_ the pragmatic irrelevance of a defective realization of routine formulas; _ the relation between ritual behavior and the expression of emotions; all of these offer the reader a sound introduction to the approach of ritual language.

In the second part, K&S come to the heart of the matter: the detailed description of ritual interaction, i.e. the way the indigenas greet each other in relation to their positions in the social and cultural network.

After a brief explanation of the socio-geographical situation in their re- search area, K&S present an ample discussion of their research design. The way the indigenas greet each other depends on a great many features, such as age, sex, social status, mutual acquaintance, kinship, and also place and time, and the state of the weather. In order to more or less control these features, K&S have opted for a standard situation: the process of greeting in the context of a public encounter in the street. Information about these greeting processes was obtained from interviews with selected informants. In these interviews, the informants were asked about underlying norms in the greeting processes, within the framework of different social relationships. K&S present their findings in minute detail, so the reader feels fully informed about the role of the various features, especially about the role of the relationship between the participants in the refined social network.

However, some discussion about the possible gap between normative state- ments and factual interactional behavior would have been welcome. K&S only account for their decision to use interviews and to select informants - and

148 Book reviews

their arguments are rather convincing -, but they neither discuss nor mention the general problem of the reliability of normative statements on behavior. Normative statements in this study are amplified, however, with detailed descriptions of ritual greeting performances recorded on film, and with com- ments on spontaneous greetings. A discussion of interdependency and mutual complementary information is postponed until part four.

In presenting the data, K&S have made a welcome distinction with respect to the degree of fixedness or variability of ritual formulations: interactionally, the ‘half-ritualized’ elements are of special importance. They can be treated by the participants as ‘full-ritualized’ elements, incorporated into the fixed pro- cess of greeting; and they can, as ‘non-ritualized’ elements, be explored, more or less, in the ongoing process of interaction, linking the ritual process of greeting and the non-ritual or less ritual conversation.

After the verbal elements, the non-verbal ritual elements are presented. Next, the ways of greeting and the distinct features are related to the positions of the participants in the social or socio-cultural network. K&S pay special attention to the implications of the ‘compadrinismo’ (godfathership), and the ‘cargo’-system (the organizational network within which social and religious festivities are organized).

In the third part, written by Peter Masson, the greeting formulas in Quichua - more specifically the local variant in the research area - are pre- sented. The data were obtained from filmed performances and from interview data. The general conclusion is: in using greeting formulas and address terms, and in providing information about well-being in Quichua, the indigenas follow roughly the same rules as in Spanish. From a sociolinguistic point of view, however, the differences and interferences are more interesting.

In the fourth part, K&S describe in a very detailed way a set of greeting performances within the frameworks of given social relationships, as recorded on film. Verbal as well as non-verbal elements are minutely described (pre- sented in the Appendix). More important than the detailed description itself is the question what kind of information such an approach adds to the informa- tion already available from preceding interviews. The authors point to the following (pp. 298-299): _ support of the information gained previously; _ more insight into the relation between verbal and non-verbal features in the

greeting processes; _ more insight into the organizing activities of the participants, especially in

handling optional elements, whereby ritual greetings may be transformed into non-ritual conversations. These considerations give rise to the question why the authors have not

aimed at such an analysis from the very beginning. Here, i.e. in the fourth part, this analysis comes more or less as an ‘addition’, whereas the authors argue the desirability, even the necessity of combining the different approaches used in

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their study: filmed records as such are not sufficient to determine the underly- ing norms in the greeting processes, because optional elements cannot be distinguished prima facie from obligatory ones, neither can breaches of rules be ‘seen’. Therefore, additional information from members is required. On the other hand, information given by members is in itself not sufficient to get informed about detailed acts and activities, especially in the case of culturally determined interpretations of descriptions such as ‘shaking hands’, nor about the way the process of greeting is actually organized. This is, therefore, a truly methodological point. In my opinion, the formation and argumentation could have been more elaborate. Moreover, to have such a methodological discussion in the fourth part goes against the global structure of this study; it would have been better to present this discussion in the second part.

Notwithstanding these critical remarks, the analysis presented in part four is worth reading carefully. K&S present their data through an original, detailed description of the distinct verbal and non-verbal elements in greeting se- quences, and in patterns within these sequences. In particular, they attempt to specify the way people organize the process of interaction, handling turntaking devices. K&S extensively discuss the ways greeting sequences are presented, explored, and elaborated into question-answer sequences and subsequently into non-ritual conversations, following recent developments in the area of interactional sociolinguistics.

This study is to be strongly recommended to those students who regard language as the form, or at least as one of the forms of human interaction.

Dick Springorum Dutch Institute

Catholic University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Dick Springorum studied linguistics at Nijmegen. He is currently working on conversational

interaction: story telling, dialogue structure, interaction in institutions (hospitals, social service

centers). Among his publications: 1981, Spreken in gesprekken. Inleiding in de structuurbeschrijuing uan gesprekken (Speech in conversations. Introduction to the description of structure in conversa-

tions; Groningen); 1982, Dialoogstructuur. Een onderzoek nnar structuuraspecten uan directiefdialo- gen. (Dialogue structure. An inquiry into the structure of directive dialogues; Diss., Amsterdam).

W. Klein and W. Levelt, eds., Crossing the boundaries in linguistics. Studies presented to M. Bierwisch. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981. 292 pp. $ 47.50.

This book is intended to honor the 50th birthday of Manfred Bierwisch. As such, it is but a natural acknowledgment of the merits of this original and versatile scientist, whose widely varying linguistic interests are reflected in the