ABSTRACT
The contemporary marginalising of interpersonal features is hardly surprising given the negative value assigned to the emotions, the realm of feeling, in contemporary Western culture and the primacy of the referential within linguistics itself. The effects have been unfortunate, most significantly in imposing arbitrary limits on notions of ‘language’ as a human phenomenon and of ‘linguistics’ as the study of that phenomenon. Infants develop repertoires of signs for expressing interest, pleasure, displeasure and a desire for interaction itself, as well as for getting people to do things for them, well before they start using language more referentially by learning ‘words’ as ‘labels’. The primary groups whose linguistic practices have been systematically devalued by attitudes which assume the validity of such a dichotomy, between talk ‘for talk’s sake’ and talk for ‘getting things done’, have been so-called ‘primitive’ peoples, those in whose societies a central role of language lies in its interactive role and its role in ritual and myth.
