HY4101

The linguistic turn of the narrative has had a big impact in the way in which History is being written and the studies of Culture have also been affected significantly by the turn of the narrative. It allowed the multiple perspectives of many other disciplines to be utilised in history writing to recover the events of the past and to provide perspectives from historical actors that may have been glossed over in our previous modes of historical writing. Culture has always been an area of interest for scholars because the diversity in meaning and seemingly intriguing practices of natives captures the imagination of scholars writing to expand their knowledge.

Culture has been studied in various modes. One of the earliest models would have been the classical model. This model placed an emphasis upon the arts, literature as well as symbolic representations and was conceived during the early modern period. In conjunction with the ‘spirit of the times’- a term espoused by Hegel, the writings of culture was synthesized over all other cultural boundaries to create a homogeneous entity in studying culture. However, such a model does pose several weaknesses with regards to writing about culture.

- the emphasis upon the arts meant that other themes such as the political, social and economical were largely ignored

- There was too much focus in trying to conceive a cultural homogeneity which is something that is very difficult to justify. This was because divisions amongst groups of people are inherent in society thus unity was difficult to pin down in a definite manner.

- The generational perspective was also not tackled. While Culture has been understood from one generation passing down its traditions to another. However tradition is also subjected to the inner conflict from one generation to another in the changing situations in which it was applied. In short, contextualisation of culture gives rise to different understanding and hence new perspectives to write about.

Another model used would be the anthropological model. Anthropology defines culture as the attitudes and values of a given society. In short, it refers to the practices of a community. This model is much more pervasive today rather than in the past because its discipline views each culture as being unique. This is exactly why history writing makes use of this anthropological model in its discipline. The past is regarded as a foreign country whereby each location and theme needs to be dissected individually rather than compartmentalising it into the grand schemata of things. Edward Pritchard utilised in his discipline of cultural concepts as a translation into our own context. Kenneth pike also mentions of culture needing to be viewed from the perspective of the natives as well as those seeking to understand it. An interaction is thus needed. With the linguistic turn, language becomes the prerogative of the native culture thus interaction between the two is necessary to arrive to a certain understanding regarding a certain subject.

Throughout the passage of time, the writing of culture has undergone several changes in methods. Among them would be the mode of ‘translation studii’. (The successive dominance of different regional cultures as the main beacon of culture.) Separation of elite as well as mass culture is another mode of writing about culture. The Marxist manner of understanding focuses mainly upon the economic factors using base and superstructure to dissect the issues concerning each group in the community. Nevertheless, this was not enough because its focus, despite changing over time still emphasises upon a certain model of dissecting cultural studies and the writing of history. Hence, there is always a trend in how History was supposed to be written and the historians who do not conform to such a methodology would not have his work regarded highly or even acknowledged.

Before the Linguistic turn, History was written in mainly a modernist style i.e. empiricism and scientific rationality. It meant a reliance of documents and written evidences. Nevertheless, in writing about culture, this was mainly done by the colonial powers who would document rites and rituals of the natives and making sense of it through their own perceptions and their discourses eventually became the blueprints or the understanding of native culture. (This poses certain fallacies because the study of culture needs a form of interaction to understand the differing perspectives.) Language as well as the rites of the natives becomes something difficult to comprehend since language would always favour the natives in the dissection and clarification of meaning.

With the linguistic turn, the interdisciplinary methods of writing history become increasingly accepted as a way to understand the past. This is in line with the main functions of history, which is to examine the past and making sense of it in the present context. Hence the recovery of meaning becomes important to the historian in catering to the modern context of attempting to place everyone into the historical discourses. If only a single mode of writing history is used in historical discourses, certain areas would not be recovered by History.

One other factor that has influenced the writing of culture would be power. This mainly refers to who holds the influence in terms of writing history and what can be considered as a valid understanding of the past. Thus, the writing of culture is influenced by the context of the times (eg, USA and British culture have been viewed very differently before and after the linguistic turn). Communities and individuals which had initially been marginalised in History have now been brought back into the mainstream. In doing so, new interpretations can be gained when writing of the past since these different communities and individuals can now be placed within the mainstream discourses; something which was not possible at one point due to the predominance of a single mode of writing.