Richard Thurnwald, Nachtrag. Zur Praxis der ethno-psychologischen Ermittlungen besonders durch sprachliche Forschungen (1912)

Richard Thurnwald’s supplementary contribution sets out a practical program for ethnopsychological fieldwork centered on linguistic evidence. Addressing investigators working with an accompanying set of instructions, it moves from the difficulties of cross-cultural communication to the collection of words and texts, then develops procedures for studying how people reproduce narratives. Its central claim is that understanding thought requires more than collecting objects or assigning European equivalents to unfamiliar expressions: researchers must document language in use, its meanings, and the transformations it undergoes in communication.

Die Werke sind die Schlacken der ewig wirkenden geistigen Prozesse. Viel näher kommen wir der Psyche und dem Denken durch die fließenden sprachlichen Äußerungen.

English translation: Works are the slag of perpetually active mental processes. We come much closer to the psyche and to thinking through the flow of linguistic utterances.

The contrast establishes speech as privileged evidence without making it transparent. Thurnwald immediately describes linguistic expressions as awkward symbols for thoughts and affects. Fieldwork compounds that difficulty: local languages may be poorly documented, while contact languages change with their speakers’ purposes. Missionary teaching, plantation labor, and judicial proceedings introduce demands unlike those of local life. Conversely, speakers reshape European expressions around their own concerns. Communication therefore supplies evidence of social relations and conceptual adjustment, not merely a neutral channel through which information passes.

His practical response is to preserve the linguistic route by which information was obtained. When an investigator uses a contact language, the corresponding local expressions should also be recorded, alongside the contact-language rendering and an explanation in the investigator’s European language. This layered documentation guards against mistaking a convenient translation for an adequate account of meaning.

Der Anfang dazu muß gemacht werden zunächst mit einer sorgfältigen Bedeutungsaufnahme der Worte, wenn nicht aller doch einiger.

English translation: A beginning must first be made with a careful recording of the meanings of words, if not of all words, then at least of some.

Semantic investigation precedes more ambitious reconstruction. One or two European equivalents cannot establish the range of a local word; names of people, animals, plants, places, objects, and institutions may disclose otherwise overlooked cultural connections. From meanings, inquiry proceeds to word formation and sentence structure. Grammar matters because it reveals techniques of thinking and expression, but grammars unsupported by texts cannot be checked against actual usage. Thurnwald consequently challenges the disciplinary separation of philology and psychology: reliable textual material serves both, while formal description alone cannot satisfy the study of culture and thought.

The demand for texts also requires discrimination about their production. Bible translations may arrange local words according to European patterns of thought; Thurnwald rejects their psychological evidential value and urges philological caution. He instead privileges locally told narratives, legends, and songs. Yet collecting these requires trust. A missionary may receive a selective repertoire whose objectionable points have been withheld. Researchers should neither encourage such omissions nor solicit sensational material, but record with outward equanimity and critically examine dictated translations.

Wenn ich zusammenfassen soll, möchte ich sagen: möglichste Vermeidung viel umstrittener technischer Ausdrücke auf allen Gebieten, möglichst umfassende Beschreibung, damit verbunden eine eingehende Registrierung der Bezeichnungen und Namen, genaue Aufnahme der Bedeutung der Worte und vor allem Texte.

English translation: If I am to summarize, I would say: the greatest possible avoidance of much-disputed technical expressions in all fields, description as comprehensive as possible, combined with detailed recording of designations and names, precise recording of the meanings of words, and above all texts.

This methodological summary distinguishes field collection from subsequent specialist analysis. What an expedition brings back is raw material, whose usefulness depends on whether it preserves the evidence needed for later questions. Description and linguistic specificity should therefore take precedence over imposing contested technical categories.

The second part turns narrative reproduction into an experimental method. Retellings may reveal accuracy, attention, interests, moral judgments, aspirations, and valuations of life; they may also show how borrowed traditions change. Thurnwald distinguishes individual reproduction from transmission along a chain of speakers. For chain experiments, every intermediate version should be recorded, together with participants’ age, sex, other relevant characteristics, and previously assessed capacity for retelling. Repetition across individuals, groups, and settlements is intended to limit the influence of individual variation.

The proposed sequence begins with precisely worded oral messages delivered to a European acquaintance, who records arrival time and wording. The messenger initially remains unaware of the experiment. Neutral and emotionally charged messages can then be compared. A second exercise uses a relatively neutral narrative containing quantities, locally interesting details, and unfamiliar elements. A third tests the recognition of causal connections through stories with a definite point, followed by questions. Examples concern an unsuccessful hunting return, a marital confrontation ending in killing, and a dispute over a broken traded knife. The last invites a judgment, extending the exercise from recall to practical and moral interpretation. These are proposed procedures, not reported findings.

Finally, comparison and characterization questions probe distinctions between natural objects, social positions, relationships, and moral categories. Their abstraction must remain responsive to participants’ capacities and circumstances.

So muß jeder Forscher entsprechend seinem Gebiet und Volk sich die konkreten Fragen zurechtrichten.

English translation: Thus every researcher must formulate the concrete questions to suit the region and people being studied.

The closing injunction captures the contribution’s productive tension: Thurnwald seeks comparable evidence while rejecting an invariant story or questionnaire detached from local conditions. His program remains embedded in colonial relationships, including reliance on European intermediaries and undisclosed testing. Nevertheless, its methodological force lies in demanding evidence that can be checked: meanings rather than bare equivalents, texts rather than unsupported grammars, and recorded transformations rather than unexamined impressions of thought.