Review nº 20

Name: Cristina Soledad Guzmán
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Date of publication: Monday November 10 2008


Review nº 20: Article ‘The power of speech’


Daniel Everett has experienced a radical change in his life as almost any other man or woman has ever experienced. He went to the Amazonia with the intention to convert the Piraha tribe to Cristianity. Instead, he learned to speak their unique language and ended up rejecting his faith, losing his family and picking a fight with Noam Chomsky. This shocking story of life is depicted in the article ‘The power of speech’ published in The Guardian newspaper.
Yet Everett’s life could be a more dramatic example of enlightenment and destruction than any fictional encounter with a drastically different culture. Thirty years living with the Piraha, an Amazonian tribe, destroyed his evangelical faith in God, wrecked his marriage and stranged him from two of his three children. It also dismantled his intellectual framework and set him on a collision course with the reknown linguist Noam Chomsky. Everett first went to live with the Piraha tribe in the late 70’s with the intention of converting them to Christianity. Instead, he learned to speak their language. Everett studied for a doctorate in the 80’s and took advice from Chomsky whose theories he adopted. Gradually, however, as he spent more time with the Piraha, he came to doubt Chomsky’s claims fo “universal grammar”. Chomsky had recently refined his theory to argue that recursion – the linguistic practice of inserting phrases inside others – was the cornerstone of all languages. Everett argued that he could find no evidence of recursion in Piraha. The Piraha exist almost completely in the present, absorved by the daily struggle to survive, they do not plan ahead. This culture of living in the present has shaped their language. Chomskyites rushed to defend universal grammar and academics cast doubt on Everett’s view of the Piraha. After he first arrived in the Amazon, Everett realized Piraha were rarely violent, but intensely rejected any kind of coercion. Crucially, he came to see his religion fundamentally coercive. Everett translated the Book of Luke, read it to the Piraha and they were utterly unmoved. By 1985, he had privately lost his faith. Religion should produce peaceful, strong, secure people who are right with God and right with the world. The Piraha already had all these qualities that he tried to tell them they could have. Only until the late 90’s he was able to communicate his family his loss of faith, as they are all ‘committed’ Christians his marriage broke up, and two of his children cut off all contact. Nowadays Everett has remarried and has not visited the Piraha since January 2007. Everett, however, is worried about the future of the tribe because outsiders try to impose their values and materialism on them.
This incredible story reflects the difficulties that an open-minded person may find when trying to show different perspectives that contradict the thoughts and believes of narrow-minded people. One example of this is provided by Everetts words when he refers to Chomsky’s attitudes towards his discoveries: “I’m not denigrating his intelligence or his honesty but I do think he is wrong about this and he is unprepared to accept that he is worng”. He also says: “If you can find evidence that I am making 19th-century claims, I will be shocked and disappointed in myself”, when referring to his story of his life with the Piraha. In this respect I agree with him when he says: “It’s wrong to try and convert tribal societies”. I think that if the Spanish conquerors would have understood that our history and may be our lifestyles would be different.
In conclusion, the whole article well worth be read and spread around. Everett discoveries should be taken into account and seriously investigated. May be what our develop civilization do not understand is what only his understanding did, life is simple and no matter what religion or believes you have as long as you live it being “right with God and right with the world”.