Although Malinowski had long since rejected the metaphysical "dualism" between ideas and words of traditional linguistic theory, and our association of Malinowski with modern behaviorist positions, many of the theories he expounds here are in fact nakedly mentalist. As a linguist, of course, the author studied language "as part of the act", in the "context of situation" directly interrelated with bodily activity and other modes of behavior.[x] The epistomological E.R. Leach refers to Malinowski's realism as "obsessional empiricism". Basically, Malinowski's study of language among the Trobrianders is useful as a tool for finding out how we live. Curiously, he assigns "meaning" to a central place in this study.

This is one of a set of separate volumes, with Parts 4, 5 and 6. He begins with his ethnographic theory of language, discussing Language as tool, translations of the untranslatable, pragmatic context, meaning as a "function" of words, infant babble, and "gaps, gluts and vagaries". He then turns to the corpus inscriptionum agriculturae, including the magic of harvest and plenty with its economic and legal terminology. His third part is devoted to a theory of magical words--"meaningless" words, with a "coefficiency of wierdness" [218]. Well, if "spells" were intelligible they would not be magical -- how functional would mundane magic be? (!).

This is the book that begins your descent into that wooly reality that words have "no meaning", although that is their only "function". No definitions or translations are possible (all words are untranslatable), but each word is a collective "concerted activity" clearly independent of thought (which is personal).

Malinowski demonstrated the continuity, the pragmatism, the necessity within the community, of magical spells, ceremony, and legal utterances. ( )