308 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



SOCIOCULTUKAL CONSIDERATIONS 

 ABOKIGINAI, CONDITIONS 



Expressions denoting suicide. — It is psychologically interesting that 

 no language (so far as I know) has a special root- word denoting sui- 

 cide.^" This suggests that, both historically and psychologically, the, 

 concept of self-killing is derived from the concept of killing someone 

 else — a rather telling argument against the reality of a genuine "pri- 

 mary self -aggression," first postulated by Freud (1922) and then 

 carried to an extreme by K. A. Menninger (1938) . 



In Mohave, real suicide cannot be designated in less than two words, 

 and vicarious suicide in less than three words. Hiweyk ma :tapu'yem 

 ( = self kill) denotes nonvicarious suicide; vicarious suicide may be re- 

 ferred to by saying either hiweyk aa:rum tupu'ytcitc (self wants 

 killed) or else hiweyk tapu:yum hauytcum (self kill wants-it-done). 

 From the metalinguistic point of view these two sets of expressions do 

 not really differ from each other. Thus, although the expression de- 

 noting vicarious suicide consists of three words, while the one denoting 

 active suicide consists of only two, both expressions are descriptive and 

 declarative statements, rather than nouns in the sense in which the 

 modern term "suicide" (which was originally also a descriptive state- 

 ment) is now a genuine noun. This finding is quite compatible with 

 the purely anthropological observation that the Mohave consider 

 vicarious suicide quite as genuine a form of self-destruction as real 

 suicide. However, while this observation is not without interest, it 

 would be hazardous indeed to do more than mention it. All we can do 

 is to note in passing that a comparative study of terms applied to kill- 

 ing, self-killing, and vicarious self-destruction in a variety of lan- 

 guages would be of considerable value to students of psychopathology, 

 as well as to the student of the cultural history of suicide. 



Attitudes toward suicide. — Generally speaking, the Mohave condemn 

 suicide, and seek to prevent it by all means at their disposal. On the 

 other hand, they do not disapprove to the same extent of all forms 

 of suicide, the intensity of their disapproval being, to a large extent, 

 determined by the actual or imputed causes of the suicidal act. More- 

 over, even though the Mohave disapprove wholeheartedly of suicide 

 per se, they are quite capable of being lenient toward those individuals 

 whose suicidal motivation seems more or less "adequate" and "reason- 

 able" to them — i.e., toward those with whose despair they are able 



^^ The English (and French) word "suicide" resulted from a combination of two roots: 

 sui and -cide, which lonj; usage alone causes the nonphilologist to apprehend as a single, 

 self-contained word. In the German "Sellistmord" and in the Hungarian "fingyilkossap" 

 the composite nature of the technical term Is still quite clear ; hoth of these terms conjoin, 

 without any modification whatsoever, the words "self" and "murder." In the Mon Khmer 

 Sedung language the idea of suicide can only be expressed In two words : to-lcill self 

 (kinde :e clh), etc. 



