Linguistics without Sociology: Some Notes on the Standard Luganda Dictionary

It is getting to be a commonplace of modern linguistic studies that the method of interpreting one language in terms of another simply by assigning equivalents to isolated words cannot lead to a profitable understanding of systems of speech, each of which is inseparably bound up with the particular culture in which it is used. The work of Ogden and Richards and of A. H. Gardiner on civilized and of Malinowski on primitive language has shown conclusively that meaning cannot be regarded as something inherent in words and possessing an independent existence, but must be sought for in the context, if not of an actual situation, of the associations which form the experience of the speaker and hearer. In regard to primitive language, Malinowski has shown how the most apparently simple phrases, of which only one rendering might seem possible, can be misinterpreted by failure to recognize the special reference which they have to the native speaker.