Componential Analysis and the Study of Meaning

That the methods of componential analysis as they have been developed for analyzing linguistic forms are applicable in principle for analyzing other types of cultural forms is a proposition toward whose demonstration I have for some time sought to orient my ethnographic researches. The results of some exploratory work toward this end have already been published. Included among them is an analysis of Truk kinship terminology, in which it proved possible to apply some of the principles of linguistic analysis to the problem of deriving the significata of kinship terms and of determining which terms went together in what I called semantic systems. I am taking up this material again in order to present a fuller discussion of the method and of its implications for developing an empirical science of meaning.