On Key Symbols (1873)- S. Ortner - 4944 Words

On Key Symbols Author(s): Sherry B. Ortner Reviewed work(s): Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 75, No. 5 (Oct., 1973), pp. 1338-1346 Published by: Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/674036 . Accessed: 05/09/2012 09:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For†¦show more content†¦She did not arriveat this tension throughan analysis of the meanings of chrysanthemums and swords in the culture; she first established the tension in Japanese culture through analysis of various symbolic systems, then chose these two items from the repertoireof Japanesesymbols to sum up the opposition. In the second, more commonly employed approach, the investigator observes something which seems to be an object of cultural interest, and analyzes it for its meanings. The observationthat some symbol is a focus of cultural interest need not be very mysterious or intuitive. I offer here five reasonably reliable indicators of cultural interest, and there are probably more. Most key symbo ls, I venture to suggest, will be signaled by more than one of these indicators: (1) The natives tell us that X is culturally important. (2) The natives seem positively or negatively aroused about X, rather than indifferent. (3) X comes up in many different contexts. These contexts may be behavioral or systemic: X comes up in many different kinds of action situation or conversation,or X comes up in many different symbolic domains (myth, ritual, art, formal rhetoric, etc.). (4) There is greater cultural elaboration surroundingX, e.g., elaboration of vocabulary, or elaboration of details of Xs