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edders 's review for:
Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle
by Daniel L. Everett
If you are willing to submit to some technical linguistic jargon it is accompanied in this book by a fascinating description of a language and culture so different to those established in the West that it is hard to believe. The Pirahas are simple, proud, pragmatic people who make a stark contrast to the redheaded missionary living among them and trying to learn their language in order to translate the Bible to them and convert them to the Judeo-Christian god.
Daniel Everett presents central ideas around the primacy and immediacy of life with this group, and how this represents a real force in their culture and their language. On the subject of language and culture, he denies previously held ideas of universal grammar popularised by Noam Chomsky and instead puts forward that a culture can, in this instance, shape a language. Indeed the two halves of the book are first a culture and then a language, albeit closely woven together as they were experienced.
Ultimately the conclusions the author reaches are very interesting and very compelling and though the cynic in me says this will have almost no impact on many people I think it is a valid and useful reflection on current Western culture as much as it is an investigation of that of 400 people living on a riverbank in the Amazon rainforest.
Some of this is almost unbelievable, but not because of the style. Matter-of-fact and engaging - though with more linguistics than the average person expected in their reading - this is worth pursuing.
Daniel Everett presents central ideas around the primacy and immediacy of life with this group, and how this represents a real force in their culture and their language. On the subject of language and culture, he denies previously held ideas of universal grammar popularised by Noam Chomsky and instead puts forward that a culture can, in this instance, shape a language. Indeed the two halves of the book are first a culture and then a language, albeit closely woven together as they were experienced.
Ultimately the conclusions the author reaches are very interesting and very compelling and though the cynic in me says this will have almost no impact on many people I think it is a valid and useful reflection on current Western culture as much as it is an investigation of that of 400 people living on a riverbank in the Amazon rainforest.
Some of this is almost unbelievable, but not because of the style. Matter-of-fact and engaging - though with more linguistics than the average person expected in their reading - this is worth pursuing.