Thursday, January 15, 1998
The code of culture
FACULTY: Professor Duranti
studies dynamics of socialization through Samoan life in
America
By Gregory Mena
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Just a simple class demonstration, Alessandro Duranti had
thought, that’s all. He delivered his best version of a Kava call,
a shout with special significance to those in a Samoan village.
In Samoan culture, the drinking of Kava, which is made from a
dark, dry root native to Polynesia, serves to keep their community
intact.
Expecting that most of his students imagine cultural scenes
outside their own experience as distant and exotic, Duranti was
surprised when, after class, a student stepped forward to comment
on his version.
"Your Kava calls," the Samoan student said. "That was pretty
good."
That was in 1993 and that student, Elia K. Ta’ase, eventually
led Duranti and colleagues into the Samoan community.
Duranti, professor of anthropology, is currently completing a
series of projects on a Samoan-American community in Los Angeles in
an effort to detail the experience of Americanization.
"In the big picture, in this multilingual, multicultural
society," he said, "I am trying to get a better understanding of
what does it mean to grow up in Los Angeles coming from a
bicultural background."
Many students can relate to the bicultural issues because of the
diversity of his classes, he said.
"There are many issues that become general, very much like a
metaphor. One day, the Samoans might all be Americans, and they
might all speak English," Duranti said.
"At the same time there will be something inside of them that
feels different."
Duranti began his work with the Samoan culture when he went to
live nine months in Upola, West Samoa.
He published his research on Upola culture in a book called
"From Grammar to Politics."
"You’ve got to have the passion. There is an impulse, an
intuition that you feel," he said, "that opens up to discover and
to question your own beliefs."
Still, the desire won’t make things easier, he said.
"It can be very frustrating. In a new culture you are different.
It is problem solving all the time. All the time, you think, ‘What
do I do?’" he said.
Never mind the culture shock of going to a foreign, unknown
place. There is also the problem of returning. Duranti, who grew up
in Rome, was very familiar with transportation in a metropolis –
until he lived in West Samoa.
"I got to the freeway, and I was terrified at the idea of six
lanes of traffic going 60 miles per hour," he said. "It seems
strange and crazy that people could live that way."
"It can be very difficult, but it is part of being an
anthropologist. Sometimes you just want to go back. It is a little
crazy; maybe being an anthropologist means to be a little crazy,"
he said.
In his present research, which began in 1993, Duranti entered
the Samoan community, which is concentrated in Long Beach, Carson
and Compton. He videotaped over 50 hours of interaction between
children and adults in four Samoan families.
In one completed study, he examined how children learn the
Samoan alphabet through a community church. He noticed how the
church and the alphabet, originally resisted as symbols of
Westernization, have come to be depended on for cultural strength
and adhesion.
Along with such ironies, Duranti and colleagues are focusing on
the alternation between languages – in this case English and Samoan
– known as "code-switching," for keys to their socialization. In
another paper, already presented at a bilingual convention last
quarter, he and his colleagues (including Elinor Ochs, professor of
Applied Linguistics) have challenged the notion that language is an
accurate indicator of cultural orientation.
"The focus is on which language is being spoken, when, why and
by whom," Duranti said, pointing at a shelf of about a dozen
volumes of transcriptions.
This is the 10th year of Duranti’s Culture and Communication
course, and out of that decade has grown a strong interdisciplinary
cooperation among the anthropology, linguistics and sociology
departments.
With the help of Duranti and faculty members of their respective
departments, they have created the Center for Language, Interaction
and Culture (CLIC). In the future, CLIC may offer a minor for
undergraduates; that proposal is currently going to the curriculum
committee.
DERRICK KUDO
Professor of Anthropology Alessandro Duranti expounds on social
aspects of the Samoan community in his Culture and Communication
course.