Pirahã in the media

my google alerts today brought my attention to what i think is the pirahã and everett's biggest media attention since the new yorker profile on everett in 2007 (check it out here)

the article in the nation "lingo and then some" is an interesting account of the pirahã language as a contrast to the ever expanding english language/vocabulary, attributing the pirahã's content and positive view of life, to their simplistic language. the author ange mlinko ends with the proposal: "Maybe the search for natural medicines in the Amazon should be redirected from its flora to its languages". my main criticism is the portrayal of the pirahã language as "simple". it is only a simple language in the sense that it contains fewer phenomes and significantly smaller vocabulary. the language itself is actually very complex and it takes many many years for a non-native pirahã to learn it (only a few westerners have learned it at all to date). mlinko also fails to recognize an important distinction made by everett and gordon, that the pirahã have shown no cognitive differences. mlinko writes: "Language may well decide what we are able to think." this implies some sort of difference in the ability to think, as opposed to the act of thinking.

mlinko also writes, "however, Piraha encodes perceptions that are indigenous to life in the Amazon", alluding to everett's explanation for the development of pirahã, in that it expresses what the pirahã people need to express. but when we look at the other peoples and languages in the amazon, they are also extremely based in the amazonian life and environment, but have not served as forms of resistance against westernization and evangelism.