In this chapter we examine some other developments in US cultural anthropology, sociology and linguistics that are relevant to the construction of the MMF. We will consider two main groups of social scientists. The first consists of cultural anthropologists active at the University of Pennsylvania, in particular Anthony Wallace and Ward Goodenough. The second is a more diverse group of sociologists, sociolinguists and other scholars including Erving Goffman, Albert Scheflen, Dell Hymes, John Gumperz, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Both groups of scholars worked in various ways on the description of cultural processes, and their approaches are worth considering both as prefiguring the MMF and in order to clarify where the MMF goes beyond and contrasts with their approaches.

Wallace and Goodenough

We begin with Anthony Wallace and Ward Goodenough. The contrast between interpretive anthropology and the kind of anthropology represented by these scholars emerges clearly in Goodenough's distinction between ‘culture’ and ‘cultural artefacts’ (Goodenough 1963: 265ff., 1981: 50), and in his associated rejection of Geertz's approach to culture in terms of symbols and their meaning: