The Evolution of Inclusive Folk-Biological Labels and the Cultural Maintenance of Meaning

How is word meaning established, and how do individuals acquire it? What ensures the uniform understanding of word meaning in a linguistic community? In this paper I draw from cultural attraction theory and use folk biology as an example domain and address these questions by treating meaning acquisition as an inferential process. I show that significant variation exists in how individuals understand the meaning of inclusive biological labels such as plant and animal due to variation in their salience in contemporary ethnic minority groups in southwest China, and I present historical textual evidence that the meaning of inclusive terms is often unstable but can be sustained by such cultural institutions as religion and education, which provide situations in which the meaning of linguistic labels can be unambiguously inferred.

Automated summary

This paper explores the establishment and acquisition of word meaning, as well as the factors that ensure a uniform understanding of word meaning in a linguistic community. Drawing from cultural attraction theory, the author uses folk biology as an example domain to address these questions by treating meaning acquisition as an inferential process. The study reveals significant variation in how individuals understand inclusive biological labels such as plant and animal, which can be attributed to the salience of these labels in contemporary ethnic minority groups in southwest China. Historical evidence also demonstrates that the meaning of inclusive terms is often unstable, but can be sustained through cultural institutions such as religion and education, which provide situations for unambiguous inference of linguistic labels.