CHAPTER ONE

THEORY AND METHOD OF SYMBOLIC FRAMING

by Hugh M. Lewis

The Science of Anthropology has yet to define itself paradigmatically, though some would claim that it is essentially a non-paradigmatic humanity, while many others, especially in the United States, have attempted to fit it into a biological model of Evolution--which from the standpoint of culture is a little like trying to fit the model of biological evolution into the physical model of Einstein's theory of relativity.

Sociobiological and "bio-cultural" studies which attempts to explain social behavior and patterning on the basis of genetic and evolutionary causes while at the same time explaining away or euphemistically "redefining" human culture as biology represents a kind of persistent folk biology which is deeply rooted in nature/nurture dichotomy and in the belief that "blood is thicker than water." These orientations indirectly serve to legitimate very conservative and essentially racist "do nothing" attitudes and structural relations which continue domestically to discriminate and victimize by "benign neglect" certain minority groups--largely blacks, homosexuals, and poor women and children, and internationally to promote "coca cola" policies of aiding the elite while starving the poor.

Not only have no clear cut genetic linkages ever been found to explain complex individual behaviors, but no genetic linkages have ever been clearly proven to underlie complex social patterning. These attempts when applied to cultural explanations of reality represent a kind of pseudo-science which, because they ignore the problem of human history and conflate and fail to clearly discriminate at several levels (early socialization, development, secondary socialization and social sanctioning) the influence of environment and culture in the patterning of individual behavior.

There have been five cornerstones in cultural anthropological research--relativism, cross-cultural comparison, a strong inductive empiricism, participant observation and a quest for universal's of human nature. It has been upon these cornerstones that a genuine science of anthropology must be built.

The concept and study of human ethno-culture has been posed as a viable alternative to implicitly racist biological approaches to the study of human society and culture. Ethnoculture outlines not only an attitude towards the importance of historical relations and events in influencing the patterning of culture, and of the resulting relativities of culture history, but also the intrinsic and unavoidable "historicity" of our hermeneutical and critical interpretations of the evidence, both from a standpoint of internal and external validity, which readers all our models of the other largely reified "constructions" of our own making.

The science of anthropology can move beyond these limitations, but only slowly and carefully and not by committing the majority of its funding to genetic short-cuts or grand leaps of evolutionary faith.

Cultural gestalt is the distinctive pattern of characteristics--including mental attitudes, affective dispositions, perceptions, language, systems of belief, value, knowledge, technology, customs, arts, styles of social interaction, sanctions, roles, behavior, habits of dress, tastes and eating habits, material and symbolic artifacts and relations with an environmental context--shared by an ethnoculture, a corporate community of people existing in a common time and place, that is defined both internally by shared cognitive structures of mind and externally in social relations and reference with other people and groups.

The emphasis upon ethnoculture as a viable theoretical alternative provides a critical emphasis upon the reality of culture--not as an end-product or by-product of other theoretical explanations (as something to be explained away), but as itself a viable social and historical phenomena which causes things to happen to people in the world.

The study of ethnoculture has become particularly important in the post-colonial world where new asymmetrical nationalisms have encompassed diverse cultures and have served to highlight ethnic differences and identities in the struggle for resources and power in the world, even to the point of ethnic schismogenesis.

Symbolic framing constitutes a general theory about human cultural phenomena. Culture from this standpoint is the whole gestalt of symbolic connections between external social-environmental relations and internalized mental representations of these relations, and the consequent behavioral, emotional and social patterning which represent responses to these relations. Culture takes shape, has reference to and is always 'situated' within a larger nexus of historical, social and environmental relations. We cannot consider human identity or social phenomena outside of or apart from this cultural context which serves to relativize cultural orientations and differences between groups.

Socially, culture comes to define itself through processes of interpersonal objectification at several possible levels (familialy, locally, ethnically, regionally, nationally) in terms of a shared corporate sense of community that is larger than life and to some extent has a superorganic life of its own. At the same time, culture comes to express itself psychologically in terms of individual identity and personality, through processes of subjectification involving internalization and identification with group values and norms, a distinctive profile of shared traits or range of behaviors and symbolic orientations, rationalizations, attitudes and motivations. The collective sharing of a suit of traits, and its sanctioning, reinforcement and reification as if natural and given, both socially and psychologically, constitutes the basis of cultural reality.

The general 'Symbolic framing theory' informing this study can be outlined by seven main principles and their corollaries:

1. Culture is causally effective and thus functionally real. Maintaining cultural gestalt is vital both to the functioning of human society as well as to the ordering of human consciousness, and is an expression of the natural cybernetics of culture.

a: Cultural reality is holistically integrated. Cultural Gestalt can be best understood at the level of cultural phenomena itself, within the context of its historical occurrence, and analytical reduction of such patterning is inadequate to the representation of culture, though acceptable and demanded from the standpoint of cross-cultural analysis.

b: Cultural reality is symbolically mediated and subjectively embodied.The implicit cultural gestalt becomes internalized through processes of enculturation and socialization, and humans have evolved explicitly for this process of internalization which is accomplished through the symbolic mediation of language.

b: Human reality is culturally and psychologically relative. The cultural gestalts of different peoples follows different patterning, and these differences are in many ways incommensurable and incompatible with one another.

2. Cultural reality is always ethnoculturally situated in an historical context of asymmetrical acculturation. Cultural Gestalts are the historical consequence of ethnocultural groupings maintaining their distinctive cultural orientation in background relation to other ethnocultural groupings.

a: Ethno-culture is an enduring, corporate institutional form of symbolic expression that is characterized by: 1. a shared sense of identity; 2. a shared sense of community; 3. a shared implicit patterning of gestalt symbolization.

b: Ethno-cultural realities are embedded within larger social historical realities and is but one level of human reality which is itself integrated with other kinds of social, historical and biographical patterning.

3. Cultural change due to historical influence is inevitable. Cultural realities are always changing historically and are part consequence of inter-cultural contacts or patterns of acculturation from alternative cultural realities which become the primary source of discordance and change for a cultural grouping.

a: For a variety of different reasons, cultures may change at different and variable rates.

b: Acculturation is the primary source of cultural change. Though cultural change may be both endogenous and exogenous, extraneous acculturative influences have been historically preponderant and are usually the independent variable while endogenous changes remain the dependent variable.

c: Cultural reality is contextualized and relativized within a multicultural continuum. All cultures exist within a larger socio-historical continuum which serves to contextualize inter-cultural relations. We can speak of an historically defined, multi-cultural continuum which constitutes the larger social realities of humankind and which always serve to contextualize and relativize the realities of any single culture.

4: All cultural groupings face a common and chronic existential challenge of adaptive integration in relation to change. Because of the inevitability of cultural change, groups always face the existential problem of adaptive integration. The problem of cultural integration is the chronic consequence of change, of always being only partially and incompletely integrated.

a: Cultural Gestalt is cybernetically structured on the basis of the functional need to always maximize cultural coherence and minimize cultural chaos.

b: All cultural groupings are preoccupied with the problem of reconstruction, defined as the reciprocal problems of primary production and secondary reproduction of the predominant cultural patterning. Production concerns the utilization of basic resources vital to the survival of the population. Reproduction concerns the replacement of the population and the symbolic continuation of the cultural gestalt. In order for a culture to adapt in the long run, reproductive strategies must be consonant with productive strategies.

c: All cultures are inherently conservative, some more than others. The conservativeness of cultural orientations, usually expressed as tradition and the resistance to innovation, is a natural and normal predisposition of all cultural orientations, and is the principle expression of the cultural interests in the priority of cultural reproduction.

d: All cultures are minimally shared. Culture is mostly a social phenomena, and cultural integration is mostly achieved through sharing of cultural traits and the minimal achievement of cultural consensus.

e: Cultural reproduction depends upon primary enculturation and socialization, i.e. direct and indirect sanctioning of appropriate traits, ideals, patterns, habits, tastes, models, roles, interpersonal relations and symbolic and institutional forms of culture. Cultures are transmitted through time and conserved principally by the means of enculturation and subsequent sanctioning of appropriate behavior by adults.

f: Cultural reconstruction is reinforced by its positive valuation, its social sanctioning, symbolic reification and its focal elaboration in patterns of secondary socialization and enculturation.

5 The challenge of cultural integration results in the construction of cultural reality structured in terms of the gestalt patterning of human symbolization. Cultural reality is symbolic and the symbolic organization of cultural reality forms a "gestalt" patterning. Symbolization is a pattern-matching process in which externally framed figure-ground relationships are perceived as isomorphic or disconsonant with internalized information about such relationships. The cultural construction of human reality is primarily symbolic, and this symbolic basis of human culture underlies the mental, emotional, linguistic, relational, behavioral and even material organization of human existence.

a: Cultural reproduction involves the dialectical processes of social externalization and psycho-social internalization of symbolic forms. Humans have externalized as a part of their objective environments elements which are both natural and cultural in origin, and have simultaneously internalized the same elements, and there is a constant feedback between these internal and external realities. The results of this dialectical process can be referred to as the cultural construction of human reality.

b: The human capacity and evolutionary possibility of cultural reality is cognitively embedded in the organization of the brain and has its origins in human evolution. The cognitive foundation of cultural organization is primarily symbolic, built upon the gestalt pattern-matching competence of the human brain, and we can properly speak of the symbolic organization of cultural realities and of its many aspects--its language, art, religion, technology and practical or "reality culture" as well.

The symbolic organization of human reality has its foundation in the neuro-physiological organization of the human brain, and in the developmental ontogeny of the individual as a culture-bearer.

6. The reconstruction of cultural reality becomes symbolically reified as a unique and distinctive "gestalt" of adaptive integration and expression of individual and cultural identity. The human reconstruction of cultural reality is an adaptive response that becomes symbolically reified. Human nature and culture are dialectically intertwined, such that culture defines and is defined by human nature. The symbolic reification of the cultural construction of reality depends upon the perceived and recognized isomorphism between internalized and externalized versions of that reality.

a: The principle consequences of cultural integration and reproduction become expressed primarily in symbolic forms of contradiction and consonance affecting the organization of everyday life. These contradictions and consonances are manifest upon several levels of cultural reality, in the dialectical problems of symbolic boundary maintenance both within and outside of the cultural grouping of people, and in terms of status-role identification of the individual within the group, and in the existential dilemmas which are commonly shared in the life-worlds of its members.

b: Culture is socially externalized in interpersonal relations and institutional organization and psychologically internalized in the status-role identity of the individual. The realities of culture are mostly subjective and socially expressed by its members via their values, beliefs, attitudes, emotions, knowledge, language, behavior, external and material representations, and social institutional forms, in relation with one another. The internalization and externalization processes are mutually and dialectically reinforcing, and are necessary in the reification of cultural reconstructions of reality.

c: Inconsistencies in social-psychological identification, interpersonal relations and boundary maintenance are the principle forms of symbolic expression of the contradictions and disconsonance of cultural realties. This proposition is more of an hypothesis that some forms of illness and social pathology will be symbolic expressions symptomatic of deeper and broader psycho-cultural dilemmas and conflicts.

d: Language is the principle means of the symbolic mediation, communication and expression of cultural reification. Language is the central symbolic mechanism mediating between external patterns of culture and internalized maps of culture. Linguistic analysis must ultimately be framed in terms of this symbolic function--i.e., language is symbolically structured.

The difficulty in approaching the problem of cultural reality is its 'non-reflexive transparency'--an inherent invisibility of the facets of one's own culture that is the consequence of its deep internalization and contextualization in the background of everyday life, and thus its tendency to become 'naturalized' as a taken-for-granted aspect of human nature that is usually out of awareness.

The theory of symbolic framing in the formation of cultural gestalt brings us to the central problem of the "integration" of human reality simultaneously at several levels of its psychological articulation and differentiation. Symbolisms allow the integration of diverse and eclectic elements into a coherent and otherwise unnatural order--this is the power of symbolization to merge and fill in gaps and to overcome the contrasts represented by contradictory or incompatible elements.

Cultural gestalt, moreover, is more than just a "predominant patterning" of a culture as defined by the average or modal personality. It is a set of consistent relationships between variables which is both externalized in the cultural landscape and internalized as a cognitive map in the brain of the culture-bearer.

Cultural Gestalt is a mosaic of traits and affinities, except that individual patterning varies markedly--more like a variable cultural moire'. Though the individual components and relationships of the gestalt may vary, there are consistent patterns within these relationships--frequencies of occurrence, marked salience of certain objects, remarkable lack of salience for others--which remain unvaried and which give a distinctive form to the gestalt. Though individual components of the mosaic may be continuously juxtaposed with one another, these broader relationships remain stable.

The external stimuli of a symbol can be thought of as only a single tile of the cultural mosaic, but it should not be construed as just an artifact or objective entity. A symbol is more of an expression of a relationship and a process of interaction between the external and internal worlds, and can be thought of rather as a mediator or "interface" between these worlds. It is more precise to speak of symbolization than of symbols per se.

Symbolizations as human percepto-cognitive constructs "fill" in and "repair" gaps in the cognized field of environmental relations, thus smoothing out and rendering this field coherent and apparently integrated.

All symbolizations share a number of common features rooted to the symbolic psychology of the mind, one that underlies the psychology of culture. Anything can be symbolic and most things have a symbolic aspect. Symbols are composite constructs. All symbols have an external reference--a perceptual "stimuli" configured against an expected context of relations with other stimuli. All symbols have a multifaceted, emblematic structure composed of multiple signs, multi-modal percepts and alternative associations. All symbols also have an internal reference--a set of semantic, affective, linguistic and evaluative relations or associations which define the internal locus that is rooted in the memory. Symbols thus 'chunk' the landscape of cultural knowledge in distinct ways.

There are several important characteristics of cultural knowledge:

1. Cultural knowledge is historically influenced, principally by processes of acculturation.

2. Cultural knowledge is materially embedded in or 'situated' in a local social and environmental context.

3. Cultural knowledge is psychologically embodied within the mental and behavioral constructions and response of the individual as a culture bearer.

4. Cultural knowledge is primarily symbolic, comprising both internal and external components of symbolization.

5. Symbolic functioning of the human mind is organized on the basis of gestalt pattern recognition, therefore cultural knowledge is deposited in the human mind as such gestalt patterning.

6.. Cultural knowledge is linguistically encoded and is linguistically relative to the group in which it is situated.

7.. Cultural knowledge is unevenly distributed across a group, hence we may speak of different levels and orientations of cultural competence within any group.

8. The patterning, function and organization of cultural knowledge is mostly implicit, unconscious and contextual to human awareness, both psychologically in the mind of the cultural informant and culturally in the arrangement and patterning of the socio-cultural context.

9. The patterning of cultural knowledge is therefore normally transparent and invisible to the cultural informant.

Gestalt symbolization thus describes a complex cultural psychology--an understanding of how cultural knowledge becomes embedded in the mind of the culture bearer as a distinct set of psychological affinities and processes that are shared within a community.

Symbolization may occur in a fairly discrete number of steps--each representing a distinct psychological process. These steps are ordered along a single continuum ranging from gestalt perception to conception and, though discrete, seem to share in many of the same fundamental cognitive processes of the brain.

It is evident that language intrudes upon and is implicated in these processes as early as the stage of focal attention. But language identification is clearly present in the process of objectification and all subsequent processes, and language can be seen as inherent to the indexical functioning of the cognitive mapping of the external world. The internal cognitive 'map' of reality is mediated by language and linked to the function of the memory as well as to the development of passive 'pattern recognition' of an internalized semantic field.

Memory is stratified on at least four or five levels of functions: short-term memory, working memory, daily memory, medium-term memory, weekly, long-term memory--life-long. Memory is symbolically structured and mediated via linguistic indexing. Memory provides a mental map of symbolic reality. This map is constantly being tested against the perception and interaction with the external world.

It is also evident that there may be clearly divergent alternative cognitive styles of problem solving and cognitive task performance as well as of personality orientation, that may be adequately encompassed within any single cultural orientation. Any cultural orientation is inherently flexible enough, and the processes of human symbolization so complex, as to allow for the coexistence and mutual functioning of a virtual infinity of alternate psychological orientations and profiles to coexist.

The cybernetics of culture are that the internal patterning of the map and the external construction of the cultural environment are mutually reinforcing but not entirely symmetrical or exactly isomorphic. The mind is not the perfect mirror of the world. It is more an anagram that distorts the stimuli received from the world in different ways. Culture is, therefore, the overall gestalt which results from this cybernetic interaction and integration of a shared symbolic field.

The cultural landscape is nothing other than the embedded field of symbols situated in time and place--in the effective cultural environment--within a specific ethnocultural community. The relative coherence and integration of this field is a measure and product of the degree of fit between external and internalized realities.

There are a set of centrally important hypothesis to be tested by this research. These are:

1. All human symbolization depends upon and involves basic processes of human perception and cognition that are fundamentally gestalt in structure and organization, therefore all human symbolization is also gestalt in design and function.

2. Basic cognitive processes of memory, cognitive mapping, reason, are indexically organized by linguistic symbols, therefore language is also symbolically structured in both the mind and as spoken discourse.

3. Cultural and psychological realities are integrated principally by means of gestalt symbolization, therefore cultural reality is also symbolically organized and its patterning follows the gestalt of human symbolization.

4. Cultural symbolization is minimally shared and this sharing constitutes the basis of predominant cultural patterning, therefore, for any given community or sample, we may hypothesize an 'average level of cultural competence' defined by the degree of sharing manifest.

5. Cultural symbolisms are emically salient and subjectively available to the average member of a culture, therefore patterns of cultural symbolization, cultural sharing and cultural-based cognition are etically available by the elicitation of shared patterns of response to similar symbolic stimuli.

6. While anything may be symbolic, at any one time some symbols are more salient than others, and different cultures pick and choose focal and peripheral symbols from among a wider field, therefore, generally speaking, the more salient a symbol from among a field of alternative objects; 1. the more focal is that symbol to the cultural orientation; 2. the greater number of psychological processes are involved in the definition of the symbol.

The objective of this study has been nothing less than a systematic description of Malaysian Chinese cultural gestalts in terms of the correlations and relationships manifest between a number of discrete variables--colors, objects, words, phrases, symbols, shapes, values-- as indicated by response patterns to a series of symbolic frame tests. The patterning of interrelationships defined between these kinds of variables can be said to characterize the community upon a distinctive cultural symbolic landscape.

The basic design of symbolic frame tasks is rooted in the empirical efficacy of several basic principles of gestalt perception. Human perception is held to be consistent with the psychological integration of information as well as behavioral or symbolic response associated with such perception. Problems with perception are held to be primarily a problem of the interaction of the figure-ground or part-whole relationship, and are indirect indications of deeper seated problems tied to the percepto-cognitive pathway of the integration of perceptual information.

The central principles of gestalt perception are:

1. The principle of inhomogeneousness--the figure must be in some way incongruent with the ground in order to be readily recognized as such.

2. The principle of interaction of figure-ground--different backgrounds influence the perception of the figure. The more congruent are figure and ground, the more stable is perception--the more incongruent, the less stable the perception.

3. The principle of the laws of grouping--each figure has its own separate properties aside from those of its ground such that when certain conditions are achieved between the parts, namely proximity, similarity or common fate (i.e. same rotation or relative position to the frame) the more cohesive and unitary the figure appears to be. The less the proximity, similarity or fate are achieved, the greater the internal ambiguity and less stable is the perception of the figure.

4. the principle of the law of Pragnanz--the tendency to get a decisive structuration of the perceived object with true orientation, such that a perceived "gestalt" tends to become sharply, correctly defined, more precise and stable as conditions permit.

According to these principles, there is a greater cohesiveness and stability of the figure-ground relationship as these principles hold, and inversely, greater ambiguity and instability of the figure-ground relationship as these principles fail to pertain to the perception. Between these there is a continuum of more to less ordered or integrated gestalt perception. The failure to achieve gestalt or to achieve only a poor gestalt in perception may be credited to the application, or lack of realization, of these principles.

"Psychologically, an organizing process occurs in perception which involves both internalization of objects and externalization of a subject's differentiation in this regard. Thus, adaptive behavior depends upon the quality and direction of a person's response to perceived objects in terms of inner needs and outer realities." (Fuller, 1982: 85)

Other gestalt principles also play in the operation of perceptual response to symbolic frame tasks. It became evident that there is a constancy of perceptual field that may be carried over from one gestalt to another and that may influence the perception of gestalt. The need to control the local, immediate ground in the elicitation of the tasks points out the influence of this tendency towards perceptual constancy.

Another principle that appears to hold across samples is that certain basic forms are inherently "good to think" and are implicated at the early stages of perception and influence the ability to achieve gestalt recognition. To the extent that the perceived figure-ground relationship appears to resemble such basic forms, the prestructuring of such forms may facilitate the gestalt perception. Related to such basic forms are also what appear to be culturally defined 'stereotypical' forms which are "cartoonish" and which prefigure in the perception of the gestalt. An extension of this principle is to hypothesize that more basic and regular shapes, forms, figures and things will tend to be preferred over more elaborated, irregular forms, and that to some unknown extent, culture will dictate the preference for and selection of some kinds of things over others.

Another principle which emerged strongly in at least one pattern recognition task was that in at least visual stimuli, asymmetrical objects are perceived earlier, more correctly and more easily than symmetrical objects. The rational is that asymmetrical objects show greater incongruency with the ground, and provide a "handle" for the laws of grouping and pragnanz to be achieved in the gestalt perception of the figure. We might hypothetically extend this hypothesis to conclude that intrinsically imbalanced forms are more readily perceived than balanced forms.

Finally, and most importantly for the understanding of symbolic frame tasks, it can be said that the context of the ground has a significant influence over the perception of the gestalt of the figure or of the figure-ground relationship, such that the greater the complexity, ambiguity and interference of the ground, the less stable and more imprecise is the perception and configuration of the figure in relation to the ground.

Within symbolic frame tasks, it is possible to distinguish several distinct types of part-whole relationships--a figure-ground, a figure-frame and a figure-field relationship.

A figure ground relationship is a simple figure against a neutral or unconfigured background--usually a white or blank piece of paper or the neutral tan of a task elicitation board.

A figure frame relationship is a more complex presentation of a central figure oriented around either an explicit or implicit frame, both of which appear against a background--thus figure-frame relationship by design are inherently more complex and tend to be more interesting and provocative than simpler figure-ground relationships. A rod and frame relationship is a typical figure-frame relationship--the perception of a figure through a window, or in relation to the implicit frame of the edge of the paper or outline of a card, are forms of such figure-frame relationships.

A figure-field relationship consists of a presentation of a central figure in relation to a surrounding field of other similar or different figures, or an array or arrangement of figures, as a "+" in an array of "-"'s.

We may also specify a specific form of a part-whole relationship which consists of a marked part of some structure against a shared background, as an alternative form of such relationship.

All or some combination of these relationships may pertain and be controlled for in the construction and elicitation of different types of tasks. We can thus manipulate these constraints to systematically vary the degree to which they interfere with or intrude upon the perception of the figure or part-whole relationship, with significant consequences for patterns of response. In general, the greater the complexity of the figure-ground/frame or field relationship, the greater the interference of the background to the perception of the gestalt, and the greater the likelihood of error and ambiguity in the perceptual integration of the figure background relationship.

Tasks also vary along a continuum to the extent to which they response can be evaluated by some criteria of "correct" performance, or the achievement of a "true" gestalt, versus tasks which lack a "correct" or even a normal standard, but aim at eliciting a variety of different responses. In general, a more "performance" type tasks is one in which the individual learns through systematic error, and will, over time, "improve" performance upon repeated elicitations. The distinctions between these types of tasks may not always be as clear-cut as we may think them to be--standards of what is correct or "better" or preferable may be culturally implicit in the context of the elicitation of the task.

Since the central set of hypothesis of this methodology depends critically upon establishing such significant patterns, the empirical efficacy, validity, reliability and inductive interpretability of the symbolic frame task remains the methodological cynch-pin of this entire study.

In general, the design of the various symbolic frame tasks share the following features:

1. A general, controlled local background defining the frame, field or ground of perception.

2. A partial, incomplete or otherwise ambiguous focal "structure", stimuli or object of attention defining the figure of perception.

3. A standard protocol of instructions and an instrument for the "filling" in of the frame in a more or less constrained manner.

The symbolic frame can be regarded as an incomplete visual or oral stimuli to which the interviewee must respond by completion of the frame. Such frames vary considerably in the amount to which they are both internally constrained--the degree of completeness of the inherent structure of the frame--and externally constrained--the degree to which specific protocols or instructions inform the completion of the task. The resulting elicitations and patterns of response to such tasks have semantic, cultural and projective content. The "completion" of the frame, whether partial or total, minimal or exhaustive, is sought and is regarded as leading to the full contextualization of the frame.

All frames share a basic, hypothetical attribute, in that they are:

1. somehow minimally constrained in terms of the figure-ground perception of the symbolic frame and the manner of elicitation.

2. somehow have a minimally controlled local context and ground.

3. a somehow incomplete in the part-whole relations, creating a "gap" in the phenomenal field which becomes the task of the subject to fill in to complete the frame.

4. are provocative of some kind or level of ambiguity of part-whole relationship and alternative response which creates room for variability of response pattern and for "incorrect" type responses--i.e., controlled error of response.

The boundary where one kind of task ends and another kind begins is often unclear, as many of the perceptual and ethno-symbolic tasks certainly involve an amount of apperceptive and projective response, while many of the originally projective types of techniques also involved definite perceptual and cognitive and symbolic identification. Rather than obfuscating the linkages and distinctions between these types of tasks, the considerable overlap between them is an important source of information and reinforcement for the response patterns that emerged from them.

In general, a distinction can be made between linguistic type tasks or linguistic components of task design, and non-linguistic components. It is hypothesized that the linguistic components of tasks primarily elicit information which is conscious, which functions at the level of conscious awareness, and thus secondarily and only indirectly at the level of unconscious awareness. On the other hand, non-linguistic components of tasks, for instance, the selection of colors, drawing, recognition of form and pattern in inkblots, function largely and more directly on the unconscious level, which, while rendering them perhaps more directly insightful of the background of cultural knowledge, at the same time render their analysis interpretation inherently more problematic.

The types of symbolic and cognitive processes the informant is using to perform the tasks are the same that the informant will use everyday within a cultural context, thus the consistent patterns of response to these types of tests and the correlations between them will provide insight into the cultural gestalt of the informants--insights which will yield understanding to be confirmed by more emic forms of analysis and description of the ethnocultural context.

However personally idiosyncratic the overall patterning of response by any one informant, there is hypothesized a minimum amount of overlap which constitutes the basis of culture in context--the sharing of cultural traits and attitudes. Sharing is rooted in consensus theory and hypothetical agreement--the greater the agreement the greater the level of sharing that can be hypothesized, while the greater the level of sharing hypothesized, the greater the degree of agreement can be expected. Those traits which are most shared should also be those which are more salient, more central and more contextual, and are also those traits which are more consistently reinforced and valued within the cultural context.

Primary symbolizations which are more basic in the cultural context and more fundamental in human personality are reinforced by secondary systems of symbolization which modify, reinforce, manipulate primary symbolizations and which annihilate or rehabilitate alternate symbolizations. These secondary symbolizations involve ego-defense mechanisms and culturally shared rationalizations which are highly schematized, formalized, and stylized.

All significant, intentional behavior has symbolic components, and many of these symbolic components are culturally organized. It is in terms of both the psychological and cultural organization of these components that they have significance--within the context in which they occur.

Though no single test or technique is adequate or sufficient for either the diagnosis of personality or the analysis of the internalization of cultural symbolisms, all tasks together elicit to some degree two kinds of "psycho-cultural" information at two levels of analysis:

Direct, manifest symbolisms are externalized and projected onto the stimuli of the technique. These are usually culturally sanctioned and defined, even if anti-structural in character, and they are primarily indicated by content of response: "what" it is, and by marked "positive" or "negative" valuations or judgement as to the basic "goodness" or "badness" or a stimuli--whether "pretty" or "ugly", nice or bad, etc.

Indirect, latent symbolisms which are repressed and internalized and which constitute the motivational basis for: 1. the strength of response as indicated by salience and attention; 2. the direction of response as indicated by choice and focality of attention; 3. avoidance or blocking of stimuli which evokes threatening feelings, or by rationalization, in the explanation of "why", 4. what can be referred to as "apperceptive" or "self-descriptive" elaboration.

The challenge in such task construction is the effective combination of ethnosemantic-type elicitations of indigenous cultural knowledge with the use of "contextualized" projective stimuli which enable the elicitation and clear demarcation of response patterns at both levels of analysis:

The stimuli of any symbolic frame tasks must minimally:

1. be symbolically effective--they must be evocative if not provocative of response; 2. be culturally relevant--available to the normal, everyday awareness and perceptions of the average informant;

3. have some kind of 'contextual incompleteness' either in terms of a figure-ground relation or in terms of the internal design of the object;

4. provide space for the filling in of the frame in a non-leading manner; and

5. be constructed with as little structure as possible to allow a distinguishing between alternative response patterns.

In terms of the symbolic response expected to be elicited by all such symbolic frame tasks, we may hypothesize that all such tasks are more or less symbolic, according to the extent to which they are internally ordered, consistent and culturally shared. As such, all responses contain some minimal manifestation of cognitive and affective associations and content--and as such can be evaluated both in terms of cognitive dimensions and affective components. Response patterns will also likely contain some level of terminological definition and secondary rationalization--both of which are critical to the full understanding of the pattern of response a frame elicits.

Symbolic frame tasks can serve a number of purposes simultaneously--to get at different levels and units of analysis in the symbolic stratification of meaning, to assess the individual in depth, the individual and group nomothetically in cross-reference to other individuals, to assess the small group or family unit, and to get at broader shared cultural or national meanings and associations.

A system of classification of symbolisms can be constructed according to the following dimensions--basic versus elaborated symbols, and simple versus complex symbolisms--such that we may refer to the location of any particular symbolic response to a simple two-by-two matrix according to the features which it shares--simple/basic, complex/basic, simple/elaborate, complex elaborate.

simple simple-basic simple-elaborated

complex complex-basic complex-elaborated

According to this corelation table, we may categorize and analyze symbolic response patterns according to a variety of criteria into one or another of the designated classes. We may also non-parametrically analysis the statistical pattern of the occurrence of different kinds of symbolisms within frame tasks and across samples.

We might hypothesize the following criteria for the classification and analysis of patterns of response according to the above table:

1. simple-basic symbolisms consist of simple single associations which, when terminologically recognized, elicit linguistic codifications which are short and prototypical. They are recognized by their generality and lack of specificity of detail--a "vagueness" which nevertheless is belied by their "concreteness". In a drawing task, a example of simple basic symbolism is the drawing of a circle, or a heart shape, or a simple smiling face.

2. a complex-basic symbolism consists of a set of associations which are in themselves single and simply aggregated, or which form a larger gestalt which is itself basic and general or nonspecific in nature. The drawing of an unadorned, simple figure with only the rudimentary components of limbs, torso, minimal indications of clothes or features, etc. is an example of a complex-basic symbolisms.

3. simple-elaborated symbolisms consist of derivative single associations which elicit non-basic terminological designations and which are subject to a wider variety of paradigmatic alternation, or, in terms of consensus, a lack of agreement or variability. The overt aspectual marking of the symbolism in terms of specific dimensions or characteristics is also greater. Hair that is braided, with zig-zag bangs and a ribbon, is an example of an elaborated but simple symbolisms which may be brought into association with an otherwise unadorned happy face.

4. complex-elaborated symbolisms consist of a concatenation of elaborated or elaborated-basic symbolisms into some larger configuration which are never merely an "aggregation" but form some larger gestalt. The figure of a girl with bangs, ribbons, pony tails in a dress that has pockets, buttons, frills, elaborated patterns, and a simple face with dimples and eyelashes is a clear cut example of an complexly elaborated symbolism that may be readily compared to more "primitive" drawings which lack such elaborate marking of specific details or characteristics.

We may say that the principle difference between the two sets of dimensions is that between the iconographic function of a symbol that is composed of objective signs, and the emblematic function of the symbolism that is composed of subjective associations. The iconograpic function of the symbol is that it points referentially to something, or to a category of things. The emblematic function of a symbolism is that it integrates diverse internalized significations into a coherent and holistic unity of meaning. All symbolisms are emblematic in that they integrate more than a single kind of sign into a coherent unity that is synergistically more than the signs which compose it and thus incorporates them.

Another dimension of symbolic constructs is the presupposition percept-concept isomorphism such that a symbol is simultaneously an object situated in an effective external context in meaningful relation to other objects, and also an affective, linguistic, behavioral, noetic or visual-auditory association, or set of associations or combination of such associations, which psychologically represents or stands cognitively in place of the object itself. It is important to reaffirm that the necessary connection between the external object and its internal associations are fundamentally, and critically, culturally arbitrary, except for some basic patterns which maybe more-or-less pan-human. It is the cultural arbitrariness of symbolisms which allows for their great productivity, creation and destruction.

Analysis and interpretation of symbolic frame tasks rests upon certain presuppositions of inferable levels of cultural competence in domains of knowledge or cultural understanding, in consensus patterns in the sharing of cultural knowledge, values, and symbolisms as represented by nonrandom frequencies of consistency of response to the same task, and in the finite distribution of cultural competence and knowledge as elicited by a frame task across a sample. Any given task can be expected, if it is effective in its design and implementation, to elicit for any given sample a limited range of alternate response patterns, within which a nonrandom pattern of frequency saliency will emerge which confers on this range a central foci. Consensus theory that allows us to presuppose an average level of cultural competency upon which we can presume sharing to occur, entails that sample sizes do not have to be very large in order for significant patterns to emerge. These patterns will reemerge and remain consistent over a number of small sub-samples.

There are a plethora of ways of analyzing the data from various symbolic frame tasks, but no single "correct" way for approaching such analysis. Data may be analyzed both across a sample of the same task, and across different tasks of the same individual, and across the different tasks for the same or different samples, and across the samples for the different tasks. Analysis of each task can proceed on the in-depth interpretation of the individual pattern of response, or the statistical analysis of the average or conflated patterns of response for different individuals within or between samples. Analysis of each task can also proceed at several levels and in several ways, with different consequences.

There is some debate as to whether the consensus theoretic approach to the analysis of the data does not effectively conflate important individual differences of patterning, and, in effect, construct a reified and hypostatized structure which does not in fact exist. The alternative has been to investigate and compare the patternings of individuals within the sample, and to find common or alternate pathways. But from a statistical standpoint, there is a law of averages which states that, whatever the individual variation, the average does not lie, even if no single individual is represented by the average. Thus, the comparison of average scores between tasks or between samples or sub-samples serves to precipitate and concretize basic underlying dimensions of difference between individuals and samples. This statistical description of response patterning among and between populations cannot be ignored.

The fact that symbolic frame tasks are united under the aegis of a common theory, allows us to hypothesize some degree of relationship and comparability of response pattern between different types of tasks, and that when we find such relationship, especially if it is found to be highly significant, then we may posit this as at least circumstantial evidence in the partial validation of the theory.

The type of analysis involved in these tasks was largely corelational and what I have referred to as "inter-corelational"--involving the construction of derivative correlation matrices from primary correlations, and the emergence of basic underlying dimensions of inter-corelation. Whether or not correlation matrices can be correlated is a moot point, but it appears to be the case that comparable correlation matrices appear to move in ways which are frequently similar or markedly different--it may be impossible to figure out the statistical significances of these inter-corelations--but the resulting composite correlations are often significant and suggestive.

We might only speculate as to the meaning or appropriate labels of the underlying inter-corelational dimensions which allow us to link together different samples and different tasks in complex space, but they permit a form of scatter-plot and tree representation that enables us to recognize and possibly interpret such dimensions in a non-relative way. The problem with a direct approach in inter-corelational representation is that the inherent relative structure or dimensionality of the corelational matrices become squashed into the principle axis along which the inter-corelational structure is plotted--hence the inherent relative structure of these matrices becomes lost in the process of their trans-positioning in inter-corelational space.

Nevertheless, such inter-correlation graphing appears to bring out a certain kind of multi-dimensional structure which pertains grossly between the matrices and their categories. Furthermore, these representations are ordered in an absolute sense about the origin and permit a variety of statistical manipulations--in terms of non-parametric, rank order and ordinal data--of the resulting plotted points. It is possible to see at a glance of such graphs the extent to which the corelational matrices themselves are strong or significant according to their relative proximity to the origin. Furthermore, regression relationships become apparent in these representations, and it allows us to postulate that a high inter-correlation score at one level is indicative of some form of regression functional relationship at the lower level between corelational matrices. The extent to which these aspects of this form of representation are useful or productive remains to be determined, but they are definitely apparent and suggestive.

The inter-positioning of multidimensional scaling of the corelational matrices and the inter-corelational graphing of the transformed MDS scores along contraposed axis may allow us to plot the underlying "relative structure" of the correlations in a manner which enables us to preserve this structure in its transposition and inter-dimensional comparison of different matrices, or even of derivative matrices. One way of doing this would be to inter-correlation the dimensional scores of the different matrices--the number of rows or columns being equal and the same, and then either directly plotting these inter-corelations of the different MDS matrices, or correlating them and then running a multidimensional scaling of this composite matrix.

There is a sense that different matrices of variables and relationships in the response patterns of scores can be plotted in the same hypothetical space that is absolutely oriented around the same origin. The orientation and rotation of dimensions around the origin in two or three dimensional space may not be fixed, but the coexistence of different matrices within the same space is suggestive of the representation of implicit dimensions of the symbolically mediated phenomenal field itself--dimensions which may be in a fundamental sense basic and even universal to human symbolization and the organization of experience.

This manner of graphically representing the latent structure of correlations of symbolic response patterns may only go so far in resolving the problematics of comparing and usefully analyzing such patterns for their underlying structures and unities, but they and the symbolic framing techniques on which the corelational matrices are based open a door upon an alternative mode of analysis which may offer many productive techniques toward the resolution of the theoretical problematics of symbolic framing.

Beyond the problematics of analysis and representation of the patterns with the aim of elucidating the underlying patterns within the data, exists the problem of interpreting the data in a manner which lends itself to a propositionally explicit explanation of the pattern, without a priori presuppositions of universal dimensions or categories of significance which frequently accompany and bias such interpretations.

Interpretation of the symbolic frame tasks is made problematic not only by the inherently inferential and implicit nature of the patterning of response to the tasks, but by the fact that such response patterns themselves are not occurring within a locally, immediate natural context, but in a contrived local context which is rigidly controlled. This control permits the comparison of scores between individuals and across samples to the same and different tasks, but they leave unaddressed either the question of the larger relationship and relevance of these elicited patterns to the cultural context or life-world of the individual, or possibly other important but unelicited forms of response patterning which may be critical to the understanding of the psycho-cultural patterning.

Part of this problematic is resolved in the development of normative, controlled samples among clinical populations with known characteristics--or alternatively the anchoring and cross-references of such tasks with comparable related tasks that do have such norms empirically established. The other partial resolution of this problematic stems from the inferential interpretability of the tasks on a number of levels, and from a premise that at least a part of these tasks are in fact eliciting underlying patterns of response which are in some sense basic, primary and possibly even universal in the structure of their symbolic patterning. Inkblots do seem to consistently elicit patterns of response which seem to be drawn symbolically deeply from the psyche, and this appears to be more or less the case with almost any individual or population sample.

Related to this problem is the related dilemma of the reliability of any particular symbolic frame task to actually do the job, consistently and repeatedly, for which it is designed, and whether the response pattern itself is a reliable response. There appears to be a great amount of variability of both individual and inter-individual patterns of response to the same tasks--this free play within the task elicitation and response process opens the door to a variety of problematics inherent to symbolic framing. Related to this is the weakness of any single symbolic frame to decisively point to or indicate any definite pattern of response or underlying inference. Thus, high scores on an MPDT task may or may not be related to organic dysfunction of the brain, though within a sample and average high scores is within a norm definitive of such a condition. In other words, an individual who is organically impaired is bound to score highly on the task, but these high scores alone will fail to differentiate between this organic response and the response pattern of an individual who scores abnormally high due to extreme "task anxiety" or to having "a bad day."

Again, a partial resolution to these problematics of interpretation lies in the "triangulation" between different scores, tasks and types of tasks which appear by definite indicators to point in the same direction. But this is also only a partial solution, because the same nervousness which led a normal person to score highly upon the MPDT task might lead the same individual to prefer dark colors over the primaries, or to block or see pathognomic responses in the inkblots--though it can be expected that an individual over a variety of tasks will tend towards an average, individually normative performance.

But the triangulation and implicit comparison of tasks--itself a problematic project--does allow us to make plausible inferences about relationships and patterns of response which may otherwise be absent from a superficial analysis of separate scores of individual tasks, and many of these inferences may allow us to partially and predictively fill in gaps between the tasks which may be filled in by subsequent tasks or by extensive reference to ethnographic or other forms of data.

Related to the empirical efficacy and possibility of linguistic frame tasks is a theoretical understanding of human language as an "oral-aural" symbolic codification of reality. Symbolic linguistics has as its principle object of understanding the function and processes of language in this symbolic codification of reality, both psychologically and socially in terms of the collective objectification of knowledge and understanding.It also seeks to understand how these functions and processes influence the "structure" and patterning which language and language changes take on several levels of analysis, especially when expressed and reiterated in "key" terms which may be symbolically central to the understanding of the cultural patterning. Linguistic frame devices, the normal cultural use of such devices in naturalistic sociolinguistic settings, and their analysis have yet to be fully explored.

The inferable coherence of cultural gestalt as an inherent sense of nonrandom order and "structure" implies to some extent a semi-hierarchical and non-random, constrained network of relations at several levels of analysis which may implicitly embody a "rule system" the explicit representation of which would allow a summary, concise understanding of the cultural gestalt. This possibility exists in the translation of the frequency patterns of responses to frame tasks into probabilistic "discrimination networks" from which decision trees and "rule-based" knowledge systems can be inferred. Such a rule system would serve as a means of representing and modeling the cultural gestalt.

To claim that implicit rule structures may underlie cultural gestalt, and by deduction, linguistic and cognitive patterning, is to insert a claim that cultural systems may, in their integration, be ultimately semi-structured "rule-based" systems of knowledge and interaction which guide and make predictable behavior and response. Such rules which underlie cultural gestalt must be considered as relational "linking devices" in the integration of reality--they stipulate a given direction and order of relation in this pattern of integration. Such rule systems may be more directly worked out and elaborated in some areas of cultural patterning than others. While some such rules may actually be explicitly, formally codified within institutions or records of a culture, they are mostly latent, a posteriori and implicit in the patterning itself, and function as indirect constraints upon behavior. Thus we come to know and learn about these rules not so much from bringing them into clear direct awareness, but from the history of their violations and contradiction which temporarily make them visible until the condition of their violation is somehow reversed.

We may also learn these rules not so much from their codification or being made explicit or taught, but from their repeated performance by which we become adept in their practice. We may never be able to clearly explain why or even what it is we are doing in objective, anthropological terms, but we can clearly demonstrate their efficacy through their reiteration. Explaining them objectively in anthropological terms does not necessarily mean that we understand them or have acquired them in any implicit sense. The task of the objective anthropologist is therefore to be distinguished from the interests of the participant.