Mentalisation among Gusii people of western Kenya (MRes/PhD Anthropology)

据报道，肯尼亚西部的Gusii人很少谈论精神状态，他们的当地语言ekegusii在描述独特的精神现象方面词汇量很小。A. LeVine，1984）。她的对话者-七个古西妇女与年幼的孩子- S。莱文指出，他们“习惯的表达方式是描述行动和事件.忽略了他们的个人反应、意见和判断”（1979年，第358页）。R. A.莱文报告说，“正常的古西语对话很少涉及说话者或其他人的个人意图”（1984，第82页），他对人们行为方式的探究往往会引出关于身体健康、经济状况或习惯行为的答案。我建议研究关注和理解内心体验的文化模式可能是这种观察的基础;是否心理化-即，根据潜在的心理状态对公开行为的解释-可能会因上下文而异，以及可能导致这种变化的原因;以及意图在Gusii道德判断中扮演的角色（如果有的话）。在回答这些问题时，我希望能为新兴的心灵人类学研究做出贡献（例如，Luhrmann，2011年，2020年），认知的文化差异，以及关于道德和人格的人类学辩论。

Gusii people of western Kenya have been reported to rarely talk about mental states, and their local language, ekegusii, has a thin vocabulary for describing distinctively mental phenomena (R. A. LeVine, 1984). Of her interlocutors - seven Gusii women with young children - S. LeVine noted that their "habitual mode of expression was to describe actions and events ... leaving out their personal reactions, opinions and judgements" (1979, p. 358). Likewise, R. A. LeVine reported that "normal Gusii conversation contains very little reference to personal intentions on the part of the speaker or others" (1984, p. 82), and that his enquiries into why people behaved the way they did tended to elicit answers about physical health, economic situation, or habitual behaviour of persons. I propose to study what cultural model of attending to and making sense of inner experiences might underlie such observations; whether mentalisation - i.e., the interpretation of overt behaviour in terms of underlying mental states - may vary depending on context, and what might drive such variation; and what role, if any, intentions play in Gusii moral judgement. In answering such questions, I hope to contribute to the burgeoning research on anthropology of mind (e.g., Luhrmann, 2011, 2020), cultural variation in cognition, as well as anthropological debates on morality and personhood.