Speaking Only Your Own Mind: Reflections on Talk, Gossip and Intentionality in Bosavi (PNG)

While there are many tantalizing claims, few ethnographic accounts provide linguistic, ethnographic, or what Duranti (1994) calls ethnopragmatic analyses that link these practices and attitudes to local language ideologies, speech genres and activities, notions of personhood and evidence, or to ideas about the ownership and exchange of things and ideas, for example, that shape and give meaning to sociality. After outlining some relevant facts about language socialization, I offer material from more recent research trips in Bosavi involving a social drama centering on an accusation of gossip and the avoidance of confession to further explore connections among, and changes in, Bosavi preferences for not speaking another's thoughts.5 My work on language socialization directly addresses issues in discussions about theories of theory of mind, and argues for a cultural perspective, Vygotskian in nature, where language plays a central role (Astington 1996).