Thirty years ago the leitmotif of ethnology and linguistics was militant relativism. It was emphasized that each culture and each language is a world of its own with its own elements and arrangements, its own standards, and its own laws. It was often, though not always, clearly recognized that, running across the differences, there were points of agreement among different systems. In the effort to avoid ethnocentrically based errors, the principle of generalization itself was sometimes atrophied.

In the matter of research technique, openmindedness was emphasized. The field-worker was urged to gather plentiful evidence before drawing any conclusions. In matters of phonology it was recommended that one write exactly what one heard. Now, one of the positive fruits of the relativist epoch was the development of the idea of structure, the gestalt principle, and, in the study of sounds, phonemics. This means that not until one has discovered the system is he in a position to perceive sounds adequately. And something of the same kind is applicable in other phases of language. In dropping the illusion of objective non-phonemic recording there was opened up a short-cut to the laborious collection of unorganized facts.