Arthur Maurice Hocart's The Life Giving Myth

In Arthur Maurice Hocarts article “The Life Giving Myth” published in 1953, Hocart gives evidence for his criticisms against the established “kinship extension” that persisted in the 20th century. In comparing the meanings of established “extensions” of non-native kinship terms made between a number of languages, he demonstrates that these “kinship extensions” not only serve to muddle the meaning of the original word but can have disastrous, widespread, effects on our understanding of other cultures. In the article Hocart calls for a solution to the issue of kinship extensions and offers the solution of “neutral notation” which would be similar to phonetic nomenclature. Precisely why this neutral nomenclature is so uncommon is also answered in the article; native words …show more content…
Evans-Pritchard’s paper is that it gives us the Azande point of view in their own words and actions, an does not romance about white is going on inside their minds.” – Hocart in “The Life Giving Myth” (pg.180) We could use symbolic nomenclature to describe ideas but it becomes so complex that any clarity it offers could be quickly overrun with confusion. If an author is seeking to neutrally convey a linguistically foreign idea (whether it be for kinship systems or other) which preserves the original meaning and is clear and differential to other potential meanings in the same language, there already exists a term for it: that foreign term. To say “wati” as opposed to a formula is not confusing. Wati has no connotations in the English language and so if one is diligent in its description it will preserve its meaning and, as opposed to any translations of it, will not carry any pre-existing linguistic biases. More than this, it removes confusion that arises from such formulas as exist in neutral nomenclature. Wati would simply mean Wati, and could be understood as such without converting it to formulas and needing to know each of its components to derive meaning from