Arno has identified a key factor of communication causation “In communication, a moral dimension is inevitable. The fact of human responsibility is unavoidable when the cause in question is a message. An agent is responsible for the message, whatever effects might have been intended or foreseen,, and at the same time, the effect takes places though the reading of the message, and another agent is responsible for that reading” (Arno, 1993, p. 29).
Communicative causation is separated into three different categories. Primary causation, communicative causation and physical causation all of which combine with the inner, social and outer world. I am going to discuss how these causations have a relationship with tapu and different viewpoints from each different causation.
When Hone Kaa (Smith & Haami, 2000) was a young boy he was staying at the marae for a year. One day his mother told him to go and get some firewood to cook their food with. Hone found a lovely tree and collected the wood he needed. Once back at the Marae they used the wood for the fire and ate their meals. Not long after eating, Kaa’s body started appearing with scabies all over it. After three days and no improvement of the scabies leaving, the district nurse cam and said she had a cure and gave him some medicine. The same day Hone’s uncle started yelling at Hone’s mother, he was accusing her of eating defiled food. Little did anyone know that Hone had cut wood from tapu. A sacred tree, a tree which generations of Maori had planted their pito (umbilical cords) under the tree. What Hone had done is transgressed an aged old tapu. The tohunga (priest) said the only cure for this was to clean out the fireplace and stack what was left in a pile and burn again, then dig a hole and bury what was ever left. The next morning, Hone’s scabies had disappeared. The district nurse said “yes of course they have, it was the medicine”.
“Tapu is a state of mind” (Prime. D, 2000) Tapu is something so sacred it is...