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Bronisław Malinowski: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Bronisław Malinowski, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• Islanders paddle for miles in a ceremonial gift loop that never actually stops moving

  Across a ring of islands near Papua New Guinea, the Kula exchange circulates two kinds of ceremonial valuables endlessly: red shell necklaces travel one direction around the ring, …

  — Bronisław Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific

• 'How are you?' isn't a question — linguists have a name for talk that isn't about anything

  In 1923, anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski coined 'phatic communion' for speech whose function isn't to exchange information, but simply to establish a social bond: small talk ab…

  — Bronisław Malinowski, The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages

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