Conventional wisdom: Imagination, obedience and intersubjectivity

• 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
• ISSN: 0271-5309; 1873-3395
• DOI: 10.1016/j.langcom.2013.06.002

•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.