Rethinking Symbolism

Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology #11

by Dan Sperber

Foxing to the page edges. Orders received by 3pm Sent from the UK that weekday.

Genres: Anthropology, Social Science, Philosophy, Research, Cultural

166 pages, Paperback

First published September 25, 1975

About the author

Dan Sperber is a French social and cognitive scientist. His most influential work has been in the fields of cognitive anthropology and linguistic pragmatics: developing, with British psychologist Deirdre Wilson, relevance theory in the latter; and an approach to cultural evolution known as the 'epidemiology of representations' in the former. Sperber currently holds the positions of Directeur de Recherche émérite at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Director of the International Cognition and Culture Institute.

Reviews

[Samuel Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the parts of this book that I understood, which was maybe 40%. Thesis is that the use of symbols in a culture are not accurately described by semiotics. This is admittedly not terribly important now, but in developing his argument Sperber analyzes the use of symbolism in culture (both among the Dorze people of Ethiopia and in contemporary western culture) and provides some interesting takes on symbols and their uses.

One of his points is that symbols in themselves are meaningless but are used primarily to show group affiliation (I think). To illustrate this he shows how most people in the west do not know what 'e=mc^2' means but are able to say with confidence 'e=mc^2 is true'.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The conclusion is: Symbolism is a memory scaffold: when memory fails to connect incoming information to conceptual representations (mental files) in the long-term memory, it is helped by the evocative aspect of the information, or the way in which the information is culturally, i.e. symbolically coded. (my gloss) Because the information itself has failed to bring up the relevant representation, the mind shifts its focus to the meta-representational level, putting the information ‘in quotes’, to trigger the “evocational field” (Sperber, 122). Instead of archetypes, Sperber suggests individuals are gifted with a symbolic mechanism and a learning strategy. Together, they create “a shared orientation among the members of a given society.” “… cultural symbolism… determines parallel evocational fields….”(137) “Evocational field” should replace “meaning” in the study of symbolism (because the interpretation of symbols, it is argued earlier in the book, doesn’t fulfill the requisites of semantic theory).