Classification and Distinctive Feature Analysis

Social and cultural phenomena are not simply events or objects but have meaning. These are meaningful only with respect to a set of institutionalized conventions. ‘particular actions of individuals are never symbolic in themselves; they are the elements out of which is constructed a symbolic system, which must be collective’. (Lévi-Strauss. Introduction to the work of Marcel Mauss p. xvi.)

Cultural meaning is determined by a system of constitutive rules. These rules do not regulate behaviour but create the possibility of particular forms of behaviour. It is possible to score a goal in football, to adopt a child, to go bankrupt, because of particular sets of constitutive rules in a specific society.

We can contrast:

a goal in football	an adopted child
a run in baseball	an illegitimate child
a basket in basketball	a foster child
	a child

Classification renders classes of things as equivalent: this is the achievement of categorization. This has some important consequences:

1. By categorizing as equivalent disciminably different events, persons or things in the natural, supernatural and social world, the organism reduces the complexity of the environment.
2. Categorization allows us to identify objects in the world around us.
3. When a category based on a set of defining attributes is established, the necessity of constant learning is reduced.
4. Categorizing channels activity. Knowing that a man is a priest or a brother or a judge is to know in advance what actions are appropriate.
5. Categorizing allows the organism to order and relate classes of events. (Buchler & Selby: 1968, 216)

Examining classifications and the establishment of categories in a society is one way of examining jural rules and constraints on behavior.

How to establish categories?

Jakobson and Halle - Fundamentals of Language (1956) introduced the notion of ‘distinctive features.’ Rather than treating sounds as chunks, Jakobson and Halle proposed that each sound be decomposed into ‘features’ which distinguishes it from every other sound.

feature [phonetic] The smallest unit of analysis of phonological structure.

distinctive feature: A feature that is able to signal a difference in meaning by changing its plus or minus value (e.g. the feature [voice] in the words peer and beer or pat and bat.

The difference between the two pairs of words is solely that of voice- /p/ is voiceless, /b/ is voiced. This is called a minimal pair. The phonemic inventory of a language is established by using minimal pairs. What distinctions in a given language signal a difference in meaning?

Articulatory phonetics studies the mechanism of producing speech. The class of possible speech sounds is finite, and a portion of these sounds will be found in any human language. These sounds are widely transcribed by means of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

When we establish the phonemic inventory of a specified language, we begin with a phonetic grid of possible distinctions, then try to establish minimal pairs to see which distinctions in articulation are meaningful in that language. Aspiration, for example, is a phonemic distinction in Hindi. It is not in English.

We begin with a list of possible distinctive features in a language, and establish which distinctive features actually make a difference in meaning in that language.

Kenneth Pike, in 1967, proposed that the distinction between phonemic and phonetic, the same concepts and procedures, could be used to investigate other cultural materials. He proposed the term emic and etic to label this distinction. This does not mean “viewed by an outsider” and “view within the culture” or anything of the sort.

To carry out an emic analysis, one begins with a set of possible categories established by the researcher (an etic grid). One then sees which of these categories makes a difference to the way the native observer--which substitution of categories brings about a difference in meaning to the native observer.

One of the first things that you will notice in looking at a list of distinctive features in phonetics is that is expressed as a set of binary features, present or absent. You will also note that this may involve reducing the continuous to the discrete. This expression of everything in terms of binary oppositions is methodologically extremely useful but, when we leave phonetics and look at cultural material, has some dangers. The main problem is that is permits one to classify anything. Given two items, you can always find some respect in which they differ and place them in a relationship of binary opposition. When two things are set in opposition, the reader is forced to make a connection and create a meaning from the disjunction. Binary oppositions organize qualitative differences and if these are in fact irrelevant to the matter at hand then the binary oppositions can be very misleading. You have to resist the temptation to create elegant structures.

Feature analysis has been extremely important in the analysis of kinship terminology. Lounsbury and Goodenough developed a method to analyze the structure of a kin term system. It was called componential analysis, now more commonly called feature analysis.

The first step in feature analysis of a kinship system is to construct a chart of kin terms using a geneological grid. We use geneology and the relationships of affinity, consanguinity and descent to establish an etic grid. Then, using kin terms used in the language, we establish contrasting features that are relevant to the kin terminology in question.

Techniques to establish features:

Frames and slots

______________ is a kind of fruit. [A pear is a kind of fruit. true sentence A flowerpot is a kind of fruit. false sentence.]

The technique was developed by Metzger and Williams in investigating kinds of firewood. They wanted an interpretation free way of developing a taxonomy.

Establishing Domains and Features (Each of these is a technique to be used after a general model of domain and feature has been proposed. This is not an end in itself, but a means.)

1. Frame analysis

2. Questions

3. Similarity Judgements:

1. Present a number of terms within a domain and ask informants to rate the similarity of pairs of terms. (red/blue - sim. scale 1-5)
2. present a series of three terms and have informants decide which two are most similar. (f,b,m: informants could decide that male is the crucial criteria, and rank f,b as more similar or informants could decide that lineality is more important and rank f,m as more similar.)

After collecting informants judgements, analyse the scores to discover something about the structure of these terms.