CLIC Speaker Abstracts

Lourdes de León (CIESAS Sureste), April 20, 2001.

"Placing the Soul: Language, Fear and Space in the Socialization of Zinacantec Children."

Zinacantecos describe an infant's development with the phrase chtal/chul xa xch'ulel "his/her soul/understanding is coming/arriving [to here]." It is thought that the souls of young infants are fragile and may become detached from their owners as a result of such diverse causes as satil '[evil] eye' as well as xi`el 'fear.' Toddlers may fall, causing the loss of the 'soul,' which consequently must be re-situated by means of ritual. A complex of beliefs and practices-including fixing the soul, language, fear, and the so called "domestications of space"-are thus brought together in the socialization of a Zinacantec person.

How do Zinacantec theories of the child, it vulnerability, and its development mesh with the actual interactive practices of childrearing, both everyday and extraordinary? Studies of the acquisition of spatial concepts focus on cognitive development, often from a Piagetian perspective. Recent work with a neo-Whorfian flavor evaluates the role of language itself in the infant's representation of space. Nonetheless, little is known about how children learn to inhabit their quotidian spaces. In this paper I examine the semiotic relations among discourse, fear, and space in Zinacantec socialization. I present Zinacantec ethnotheories of the ch'ulel or 'soul,' space, and danger. I then concentrate on two types of communicative events. First, I analyze the microhistory of the construction of a 'space' through ritual discourse designed to restore to Mal, a little girl of 22 months of age, her soul which has been lost due to a fall. I then turn to the intersection of deixis and fear in interactions between Mal (now 4 years old), her younger sister, and the researcher herself. Both types of event illustrate the interactive and situated nature of everyday constructions of domestic space.

The study is based on ethnographic and longitudinal work with two sisters, from their births to age 5, in the Tzotzil speaking township of Zinacantán, Chiapas, Mexico.