Conventional wisdom: Imagination, obedience and intersubjectivity

•Virtuous Mopan faithfully obey elders, regardless of listeners’ mental states.•I propose “Acceptor” as the listener counterpart to Goffman’s Principal.•Mayan doctrine of the Opacity of Other Minds is different from that of the Pacific.•“Intersubjectivity” has a cultural dimension. Under the Opacity...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language & communication 2013-07, Vol.33 (3), p.251-262
Main Author: Danziger, Eve
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Communication
Culture
Mayan
Mutual Knowledge
Older people
Opacity Doctrine
Participant Structure
Risk assessment
Ritual Speech
Self interest
Speakers and Hearers
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Summary:•Virtuous Mopan faithfully obey elders, regardless of listeners’ mental states.•I propose “Acceptor” as the listener counterpart to Goffman’s Principal.•Mayan doctrine of the Opacity of Other Minds is different from that of the Pacific.•“Intersubjectivity” has a cultural dimension. Under the Opacity doctrines of the Pacific, wise listeners are skeptical about taking others’ speech at face value. But among the Mopan Maya, who also espouse a version of Opacity, this is exactly what the wisest listeners are expected to do. When receiving the instructions of elders, virtuous Mopan listeners (here dubbed “Acceptors”) act as counterparts to Goffman’s Principal, assuming the risks of faithful obedience regardless of their own momentary mental states, which are considered vulnerable to error and self-interest. A degree of cross-cultural variation is thus found in the domain most globally characterizable as “intersubjectivity”. We should be cautious in appealing to universal attributes of human nature as we chart this domain.
ISSN:0271-5309
1873-3395
DOI:10.1016/j.langcom.2013.06.002