Different types of questions

Let us now analyze the practices with respect to the types of questions that are asked. The subjects of the experiment perceive the answers of the coun- sellor as advice to their problems. Garfinkel writes that all of the subjects reported the “advice that they had been given” and addressed their appre- ciation and criticism to that “advice” [4, p.89]. Questions typically start with “should I do” or something equivalent. This can be seen in Dialogue A and Dialogue B of Appendix I. These dialogues contain some factual ques- tions, but most are directly focussed on gaining advice. An example of such a question is “Should I have further discussion with Dad over this subject about dating the Gentile girl?” which can be found in dialogue B. Most of McHugh’s sessions show a similar pattern. The subject of Dialogue C ini- tially asks more factual questions about the future and about his abilities, but towards the end of the conversation his focus shifts towards advice-gaining questions. For example: “Should I go to the library on campus to do my studying?” and “[...] do you recommend that I quit school?”

Mambila spider divination is usually consulted when someone needs ad- vice, for example in case of illness or an upcoming journey. However, as we have seen, Mambila diviners can also be asked to perform spider divination for other purposes, for example to collect evidence in a court case. To make a fair comparison with McHugh’s experiment, I have chosen to focus on spider divination sessions about personal problems of clients.

It turns out to be difficult to draw any conclusion about the type of questions that is asked by the diviners. I have found that different diviners have different ‘styles’. For example, the diviners of Dialogue D (Bi and Wong) ask mostly factual questions (for example: “Will sua end the problem?”) while Table 4 of Appendix II shows that the diviners of Dialogue E (Mbollo and Taran) ask more advice-gaining questions, especially towards the end of the session. An illustrative question of the latter form is posed by Mbollo:

“If we should cut sua, of whatever type and whatever person, choose the stick. No, Taran should just leave it and look for medicine, choose the stone” (question 55B, Table 4 of Appendix II). Studying Dialogue E of Table 4 leaves me with the idea that Mbollo and Taran ask factual questions to get more specific information about the problem and that they ask should-questions to gain direct, clear advice. Other sessions of Mbollo22 show a similar pattern. Most other diviners23 _{have a style of questioning that is more similar to the}

diviners of Dialogue D. Hence, we can cautiously conclude that although there are individual differences, in general the Mambila use more factual questions than the students in the experiment.

Factual divinatory questions can be distinguished with respect to their usage: some questions are concerned with the present or past, they are used for diagnosis, and some questions are concerned with the future, and they are used for prediction. The distinction between diagnostic and predictive divinatory questions has been made by Zeitlyn [21, p.526]. Diagnostic ques- tions are asked to find out what caused a particular situation (in the present or in the past). Predictive questions are asked to find out what will happen if the client does nothing to avoid this (usually bad) outcome. In other words, prediction is hypothetical. As Zeitlyn notices, diagnosis and prediction shade into one another. On the one hand, in order to predict the future one has to diagnose the past. On the other hand, a diagnosis may have predictive implications [21, p.526]. However, he also points out that despite this over- lap, the distinction between diagnostic and predictive use of divination is heuristically useful, since these two uses have different relations to evidence. Diagnostic and predictive statements are evaluated in different ways. Human agency may change the truth value of the divinatory predictions. As Zeitlyn formulates it, “we act to change the world, making some predictions literally false but, by divinatory logic, true for all that” [21, p.528]. Since the truth value of divinatory predictions is changeable, my surmise is that a more tol- erant attitude can be expected regarding contradictory answers to predictive questions than regarding contradictory answers to diagnostic questions. This may explain why divination session D continues, without abandoning the spi- der, even though the answers “sua will solve the problem” and “sua will not solve the problem” contradict each other. I will elaborate on this suggestion

22_{The data gained in September consists of eight sessions, of which three by Mbollo}

Pierre.

23_{Here, I am referring again to the data gained in September which contain two sessions}

later in this chapter. Let us first investigate how the distinction between diagnostic and predictive questions relates to the distinction between factual and advice-gaining questions which I made earlier.

I believe that advice-gaining questions can be seen as predictive. Pre- dictive factual questions can be easily reformulated as should-questions. For example, “Willsua end the problem or do we have to divine further?” (ques- tion D2) can be reformulated as: “Should we perform sua?” Advice-gaining questions can also be easily reformulated as predictive factual questions. For example, “If we should cutsua, of whatever type and whatever person, choose the stick. No, Taran should just leave it and look for medicine, choose the stone.” can be reformulated as “If sua, of whatever type and whatever per- son, will end the problem, choose the stick. No, only medicine will end the problem, choose the stone.” As we have seen above, a more tolerant atti- tude can be expected regarding contradictory answers to predictive questions than regarding contradictory answers to diagnostic questions. Since should- questions are similar to predictive questions, these can also be expected to be treated in a more tolerant way. Before discussing this suggestion, we will study the occurrence of contradictions in both practices.