Metaphor, metonymy, and cross-cultural translation MICHAL BUCHOWSKI The stimulus for this article can be seen in a long discussion on different modes of thought. Anthropologists and religious experts were initially astonished by the fact that phenomena which Westerners would classify as magical and religious coalesce in tribal societies with practical activities of everyday life. Sacred and profane domains are permanently conflated. Terms such as multistrandedness, multiplicity, and multivocality have been used to portray this phenomena. Some scholars in the British anthropological tradition initiated by Edward E. Evans-Pritchard tried to grasp this marvel in a descriptive way. They assumed that symbolic and practical dimensions are simply integrated aspects of social practices which 'we' in modern European culture distinguish. The reasons given for this dissimilarity differed. Factors such as complexity of social struc- ture, division of labor, pre-literacy, closedness of thought systems, and contrast in idioms of expression were evoked. Those scholars inspired by structuralist theories tried to comprehend the phenomena of merging practical and symbolic aims and means with the help of the concepts of metonymy and metaphor. Structuralists were mostly interested in a mode of reasoning which prompts such behaviors. In what follows I primarily address French structuralist theory; however, some of the insights gained also apply to the British school of symbolic anthropology. Despite the differences in their approaches both schools, I think, have mutually reinforced their claims. The common message has encompassed the view that there are some differences between modes of thought exercised in traditional and modern societies. Views of 'rationalist' anthropologists, such as Gellner's (1974) idea of the Big Ditch, also fortify hypotheses on the distinctive, at least in some respects, nature of mytho-logical and scientific reasonings. The view on the distinctive nature of various modes of thought may be treated as obsolete by many of today's experts. However, I am not concerned with whether or not the issue is in vogue, but with learning from the Semiotica 110-3/4 (1996), 301-310 0037-1998/96/0110-0301 © Walter de Gruyter Brought to you by | provisional accoun Unauthenticated | 128.252.67.66 Download Date | 6/27/14 11:02 AM