Aesthetics, Intuition, and Reference in Fijian Ritual Communication: Modularity in and out of Language

Abstract

The ethnographic interpretation of "meaningless" ritual—ritual in which participants are not able to give verbal accounts of the symbolic meanings involved—poses basic questions about the relationships among language, culture, and meaning. Along with verbal meaning expressible in language, rituals are often observed to have important practical meaning outside of language. Aside from basic how‐to, facilitating dimensions, practical meaning systems can also constitute metaphor and accomplish reference in ways that are parallel to, yet distinct from, verbal and gestural language functions. Techniques of language analysis are useful in interpreting practical meaning in ritual if language meaning is viewed from the perspective of Wittgensteinian use‐based semantics and language is seen in context of a more general multidomain meaning system module that supports the communicative aspects of culture. [Keywords: ritual, aesthetics, communication, ethnography, Fiji]

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