Secrets and Lies : Context, Meaning, and Agency in Mande

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the agency of Mande social actors and the profusion of perspectives at play in the production of meaning through language. It follows the interpretations of Bakhtin, Volosinov, Goody and Douglas in conceptualizing how humans communicate through categories such as truth and falsehood, accuracy and equivocation. Varying interpretations by the same person at different times of a single proverb or a single set of events illustrate significant differences between Western literate and Mande oral ways of thinking about these issues, as well as issues of the categorization of knowledge, and of access to it by Western researchers. The polysemy of Mande languages and the implications for research are explored, taking into consideration issues of veracity and proof in worlds of orality, particularly with regard to research on the speech of griots, for whom "the meaning" of an utterance may be very different from what the Western researcher expects.

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