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An Outline of Individual Study
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Historical SummaryWe have seen that Laura Bridgman, while she had no spoken language, had begun to develop prejudices and prepossessions, to make personality ratings and define social distance among her companions, and we find also that in any spoken language the words expressing positive and negative appreciations of persons and things—the reflections of emotional tones and appraisals—will run into high numbers. Thus, a class in psychology compiled for Professor Partridge a list of words reflecting mental and emotional qualities of which the following are listed under the first letter of the alphabet:
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Abandoned, abject, abnormal, abrupt, absorbed, accomplished, accommodating, accurate, active, acute, acrimonious, adventurous, affable, affected, affectionate, aesthetic, agile, agitated, aggressive, agreeable, airy, alert, altruistic, ambitious, angular, angelic, animated, anxious, appreciative, apprehensive, apathetic, apologetic, ardent, argumentative, artful, artificial, artless, aristocratic, ascetic, aspiring, assertive, assuming, assiduous, attentive, attractive, audacious, avaricious, awkward.2
The list is by no means complete ("asinine," for example, is not included) but it amounts to about twelve hundred words, and we may be sure that the voicing of each of them has an emotional accompaniment.
This is a language registration of personality ratings, and there is a concomitant registration of attitudes and ratings expressed in forms of etiquette, in naming and forms of address, in the classification of populations by age levels, by degrees and kinds
of kinship and affinity proximity and distance, by degrees and kinds of social and functional status, etc., and in primitive societies there is often a far-going particularization in the ranking of relationships in one or several of these respects.
The institutionalized forms of spacing social relationships will be discussed in later chapters, but expressions of agitation which are equivalents of language and the relation of personality to naming will be indicated at this point.
2Partridge, G.E.n/an/an/an/a, , 106.
Chicago: An Outline of Individual Study in Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, ed. Thomas, William I. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937), Original Sources, accessed April 20, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=MMWN57HA8MQC6CR.
MLA: . An Outline of Individual Study, in Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, edited by Thomas, William I., New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937, Original Sources. 20 Apr. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=MMWN57HA8MQC6CR.
Harvard: , An Outline of Individual Study. cited in 1937, Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, ed. , McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York. Original Sources, retrieved 20 April 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=MMWN57HA8MQC6CR.
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