Text and Temporality: Patterned‐Cyclical and Ordinary‐Linear Forms of Time‐Consciousness, Inferred from a Corpus of Australian Aboriginal and Euro‐Australian Life‐Historical Interviews

Abstract

It is argued that autobiographical texts, such as life‐historical interviews, provide the richest possible source of information about a person's temporality and a culture's historical past. It is proposed that time‐consciousness can be inferred from such texts. To this end, ethnographic and other studies of Australian Aboriginal time‐consciousness were used to construct a seven‐part model of patterned‐cyclical time‐consciousness. Turning these seven attributes of patterned‐cyclical time‐consciousness into their opposites yields seven features of one‐dimensional, ordinary‐linear time‐consciousness, thereby establishing a structured temporal polarity. A lexical‐level, content‐analytic methodology, Neurocognitive Hierarchical Categorization Analysis (NHCA), is introduced, in which folk‐concepts of time from Roget's International Thesaurus were used to construct wordlist indicators for 9 of the 14 definitional components. Then, using NHCA for a comparative analysis of texts consisting of life‐historical interviews, earlier results of an empirical study were briefly re‐presented. Australian Aborigines, compared to Euro‐Australian controls, used a significantly smaller proportion of words for an index of ordinary‐linear time but a higher proportion of words for an index of patterned‐cyclical time, indicating a time‐consciousness that is primarily patterned‐cyclical rather than linear. Females were less linear and more patterned‐cyclical than males in both cultures. These cross‐cultural results contribute predictive validity to the proposed polarity of time‐consciousness. Implications for the culture‐and‐cognition paradox and its resolution in dual‐brain theory are addressed.

Getting a life: The emergence of the life story in adolescence.

“…In modern Western cultures, life narratives usually follow a linear chronological order (Fromholt & Larsen, 1991; Fromholt, Larsen, & Larsen, 1995; Luborsky, 1990; Robinson & Taylor, 1998). Some cultures (Luborsky, 1990; TenHouten, 1999) and some individuals use a cyclical temporal organization or multiple time lines (Luborsky, 1990; Weisser, 1996). Luborsky (1990) and Rosenthal (1995) both observed that when inconsistencies in temporal order occur in life narratives, the temporal orientation is maintained through explicit temporal realignments (as in flashbacks).…”

Changing Conceptions of Time

“…Hallowell (1937) asserted that entering the temporal reality of the Saulteaux Indian tribe demonstrates the "relativity and provinciality of western time concepts" (p. 651); different time orientations are functions of cultural experience rather than reflections of primitive or backwards mentalities. Additionally, the Aboriginal conceptualization of time has been a focus of many scholars (Dean, 1996;Stanner, 1956;TenHousen, 1999). Coined by anthropologist Frank Gillen, dreamtime refers to the primordial time in Aboriginal mythology, when the ancestral spirits formed the existing world with fixed structures and moral codes (Dean, 1996).…”

“…Because these structures are eternal and unchanging, "man, society, and nature and past, present, and future are at one together within a unitary system" (Stanner, 1956, p. 54). The resulting time sense is patterned-cyclical-discontinuous, event oriented, and experienced as a long duration instead of a series of moments (TenHousen, 1999).…”

Public and Private Priorities in Managing Time in Genetic Research: The Icelandic deCode Case

“…Mead's ideas of time emphasize how actors invoke and define past events in the interest of present continuity toward a desirable future. Interactionists have made productive use of Mead's ideas on the mediation of temporal segments in social action, with their epistemological load and their optimism for social realization of the futures (e.g., Katovich 1987a; Katovich and Couch 1992; Maines, Sugrue, and Katovich 1983; Milligan 1998; Nadesan 1997; TenHouten 1999). Seeking to extend the range of public issues and to expand awareness of the complexity of social issues, interactionists have also studied how interest groups compete over scarce resources (Joas 1982, 1993; Lüscher 1990).…”