Linguistic anthropology
Part of a series on |
Anthropology |
---|
Part of a series on |
Linguistics |
---|
Portal |
Linguistic anthropology is the
Linguistic anthropology explores how language shapes communication, forms social identity and group membership, organizes large-scale cultural beliefs and
Historical development
Linguistic anthropology emerged from the development of three distinct paradigms that have set the standard for approaching linguistic anthropology. The first, now known as "anthropological linguistics," focuses on the documentation of languages. The second, known as "linguistic anthropology," engages in theoretical studies of language use. The third, developed over the past two or three decades, studies issues from other subfields of anthropology with linguistic considerations. Though they developed sequentially, all three paradigms are still practiced today.[3]
First paradigm: anthropological linguistics
The first paradigm, anthropological linguistics, is devoted to themes unique to the sub-discipline. This area includes documentation of languages that have been seen as at-risk for extinction, with a particular focus on indigenous languages of native North American tribes. It is also the paradigm most focused on linguistics.[3] Linguistic themes include the following:
- Grammatical description,
- Typological classification and
- Linguistic relativity
Second paradigm: linguistic anthropology
The second paradigm can be marked by reversing the words. Going from anthropological linguistics to linguistic anthropology, signals a more anthropological focus on the study. This term was preferred by
This paradigm developed in critical dialogue with the fields of folklore on the one hand and linguistics on the other. Hymes criticized folklorists' fixation on oral texts rather than the verbal artistry of performance.[4] At the same time, he criticized the cognitivist shift in linguistics heralded by the pioneering work of Noam Chomsky, arguing for an ethnographic focus on language in use.
Hymes had many revolutionary contributions to linguistic anthropology, the first of which was a new unit of analysis. Unlike the first paradigm, which focused on linguistic tools like measuring of phonemes and morphemes, the second paradigm's unit of analysis was the "speech event". A speech event is defined as one with speech presented for a significant duration throughout its occurrence (ex., a lecture or debate). This is different from a speech situation, where speech could possibly occur (ex., dinner). Hymes also pioneered a linguistic anthropological approach to ethnopoetics. Hymes had hoped that this paradigm would link linguistic anthropology more to anthropology. However, Hymes' ambition backfired as the second paradigm marked a distancing of the sub-discipline from the rest of anthropology.[5][6]
Third paradigm: anthropological issues studied via linguistic methods and data
The third paradigm, which began in the late 1980s, redirected the primary focus on anthropology by providing a linguistic approach to anthropological issues. Rather than prioritizing the technical components of language, third paradigm anthropologists focus on studying culture through the use of linguistic tools. Themes include:
- investigations of personal and social identities
- shared ideologies
- construction of narrative interactions among individuals
Furthermore, similar to how the second paradigm used new technology in its studies, the third paradigm heavily includes use of video documentation to support research.[3]
Areas of interest
Contemporary linguistic anthropology continues research in all three paradigms described above:
- Documentation of languages
- Study of language through context
- The study of identity through linguistic means
The third paradigm, the study of anthropological issues through linguistic means, is an affluent area of study for current linguistic anthropologists.
Identity and intersubjectivity
A great deal of work in linguistic anthropology investigates questions of sociocultural
In addition, scholars such as Émile Benveniste,[10] Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall[11] Benjamin Lee,[12] Paul Kockelman,[13] and Stanton Wortham[14] (among many others) have contributed to understandings of identity as "intersubjectivity" by examining the ways it is discursively constructed.
Socialization
In a series of studies, linguistic anthropologists
Ochs and Schieffelin demonstrated that members of all societies socialize children both to and through the use of language. Ochs and Schieffelin uncovered how, through naturally occurring stories told during dinners in white middle class households in Southern California, both mothers and fathers participated in replicating male dominance (the "father knows best" syndrome) by the distribution of participant roles such as protagonist (often a child but sometimes mother and almost never the father) and "problematizer" (often the father, who raised uncomfortable questions or challenged the competence of the protagonist). When mothers collaborated with children to get their stories told, they unwittingly set themselves up to be subject to this process.
Schieffelin's more recent research has uncovered the socializing role of
Ideologies
In a third example of the current (third) paradigm, since
Much research on linguistic ideologies probes subtler influences on language, such as the pull exerted on Tewa, a Kiowa-Tanoan language spoken in certain New Mexican pueblos and on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona, by "kiva speech", discussed in the next section.[24]
Other linguists have carried out research in the areas of
Heritage language ideologies
More recently, a new line of ideology work is beginning to enter the field of linguistics in relation to heritage languages. Specifically, applied linguist Martin Guardado has posited that heritage language ideologies are "somewhat fluid sets of understandings, justifications, beliefs, and judgments that linguistic minorities hold about their languages."[27] Guardado goes on to argue that ideologies of heritage languages also contain the expectations and desires of linguistic minority families "regarding the relevance of these languages in their children’s lives as well as when, where, how, and to what ends these languages should be used." Although this is arguably a fledgling line of language ideology research, this work is poised to contribute to the understanding of how ideologies of language operate in a variety of settings.
Social space
In a final example of this third paradigm, a group of linguistic anthropologists have done very creative work on the idea of social space. Duranti published a groundbreaking article on
Silverstein tries to find the maximum theoretical significance and applicability in this idea of exemplary centers. He feels, in fact, that the exemplary center idea is one of linguistic anthropology's three most important findings. He generalizes the notion thus, arguing "there are wider-scale institutional 'orders of interactionality,' historically contingent yet structured. Within such large-scale, macrosocial orders, in-effect
Race, class, and gender
Addressing the broad central concerns of the subfield and drawing from its core theories, many scholars focus on the intersections of language and the particularly salient social constructs of race (and ethnicity), class, and gender (and sexuality). These works generally consider the roles of social structures (e.g., ideologies and institutions) related to race, class, and gender (e.g., marriage, labor, pop culture, education) in terms of their constructions and in terms of individuals' lived experiences. A short list of linguistic anthropological texts that address these topics follows:
Race and ethnicity
- Alim, H. Samy, John R. Rickford, and Arnetha F. Ball. 2016. Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas about Race. Oxford University Press.
- .
- Bucholtz, Mary. 2010. White Kids: Language, Race, and Styles of Youth Identity. Cambridge University Press.
- Davis, Jenny L. 2018. Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance. University of Arizona Press.
- Dick, H. 2011. "Making Immigrants Illegal in Small-Town USA." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 21(S1):E35-E55.
- Hill, Jane H. 1998. "Language, Race, and White Public Space." American Anthropologist 100 (3): 680–89. .
- Hill, Jane H. 2008. The Everyday Language of White Racism. Wiley-Blackwell.
- García-Sánchez, Inmaculada M. 2014. Language and Muslim Immigrant Childhoods: The Politics of Belonging. John Wiley & Sons.
- Ibrahim, Awad. 2014. The Rhizome of Blackness: A Critical Ethnography of Hip-Hop Culture, Language, Identity, and the Politics of Becoming. 1 edition. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc.
- Rosa, Jonathan. 2019. Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad. Oxford University Press.
- Smalls, Krystal. 2018. "Fighting Words: Antiblackness and Discursive Violence in an American High School." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 23(3):356-383.
- Spears, Arthur Kean. 1999. Race and Ideology: Language, Symbolism, and Popular Culture. Wayne State University Press.
- Urciuoli, Bonnie. 2013. Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class. Waveland Press.
- Wirtz, Kristina. 2011. "Cuban Performances of Blackness as the Timeless Past Still Among Us." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 21(S1):E11-E34.
Class
- Fox, Aaron A. 2004. Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture. Duke University Press.
- Shankar, Shalini. 2008. Desi Land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley. Duke University Press.
- Nakassis, Constantine V. 2016. Doing Style: Youth and Mass Mediation in South India. University of Chicago Press.
Gender and sexuality
- Bucholtz, Mary. 1999. "'Why be normal?': Language and Identity Practices in a Community of Nerd Girls". Language in Society. 28 (2): 207–210.
- Fader, Ayala. 2009. Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. Princeton University Press.
- Gaudio, Rudolf Pell. 2011. Allah Made Us: Sexual Outlaws in an Islamic African City. John Wiley & Sons.
- Hall, Kira, and Mary Bucholtz. 1995. Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self. New York: Routledge.
- Jacobs-Huey, Lanita. 2006. From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women's Hair Care. Oxford University Press.
- Kulick, Don. 2000. "Gay and Lesbian Language." Annual Review of Anthropology 29 (1): 243–85. .
- Kulick, Don. 2008. "Gender Politics." Men and Masculinities 11 (2): 186–92. .
- Kulick, Don. 1997. "The Gender of Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes." American Anthropologist 99 (3): 574–85.
- Livia, Anna, and Kira Hall. 1997. Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Oxford University Press.
- Manalansan, Martin F. IV. "'Performing' the Filipino Gay Experiences in America: Linguistic Strategies in a Transnational Context." Beyond the Lavender Lexicon: Authenticity, Imagination and Appropriation in Lesbian and Gay Language. Ed. William L Leap. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1997. 249–266
- Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2014. Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice Among Latina Youth Gangs. John Wiley & Sons.
- Rampton, Ben. 1995. Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. Longman.
- Zimman, Lal, Jenny L. Davis, and Joshua Raclaw. 2014. Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Oxford University Press.
Ethnopoetics
Ethnopoetics is a method of recording text versions of oral poetry or narrative performances (i.e. verbal lore) that uses poetic lines, verses, and stanzas (instead of prose paragraphs) to capture the formal, poetic performance elements which would otherwise be lost in the written texts. The goal of any ethnopoetic text is to show how the techniques of unique oral performers enhance the aesthetic value of their performances within their specific cultural contexts. Major contributors to ethnopoetic theory include Jerome Rothenberg, Dennis Tedlock, and Dell Hymes. Ethnopoetics is considered a subfield of ethnology, anthropology, folkloristics, stylistics, linguistics, and literature and translation studies.
Endangered languages: language documentation and revitalization
Endangered languages are languages that are not being passed down to children as their mother tongue or that have declining numbers of speakers for a variety of reasons. Therefore, after a couple generations these languages may no longer be spoken.[32] Anthropologists have been involved with endangered language communities through their involvement in language documentation and revitalization projects.
In a language documentation project, researchers work to develop records of the language - these records could be field notes and audio or video recordings. To follow best practices of documentation, these records should be clearly annotated and kept safe within an archive of some kind. Franz Boas was one of the first anthropologists involved in language documentation within North America and he supported the development of three key materials: 1) grammars, 2) texts, and 3) dictionaries. This is now known as the Boasian Trilogy.[33]
Language revitalization is the practice of bringing a language back into common use. The revitalization efforts can take the form of teaching the language to new speakers or encouraging the continued use within the community.[34] One example of a language revitalization project is the Lenape language course taught at Swathmore College, Pennsylvania. The course aims to educate indigenous and non-indigenous students about the Lenape language and culture.[35]
Language reclamation, as a subset of revitalization, implies that a language has been taken away from a community and addresses their concern in taking back the agency to revitalize their language on their own terms. Language reclamation addresses the power dynamics associated with language loss. Encouraging those who already know the language to use it, increasing the domains of usage, and increasing the overall prestige of the language are all components of reclamation. One example of this is the Miami language being brought back from 'extinct' status through extensive archives.[36]
While the field of linguistics has also been focused on the study of the linguistic structures of endangered languages, anthropologists also contribute to this field through their emphasize on ethnographic understandings of the socio-historical context of language endangerment, but also of language revitalization and reclamation projects.[37]
See also
- Ethnolinguistics
- Evolutionary psychology of language
- Linguistic insecurity
- List of important publications in anthropology
- Miyako Inoue
- Semiotic anthropology
- Sociocultural linguistics
- Sociolinguistics
- Sociology of language
- World Oral Literature Project
References
- ^ Duranti, Alessandro (ed.), 2004: Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, Malden, MA: Blackwell.
- ^ Society for Linguistic Anthropology. n.d. About the Society for Linguistic Anthropology (accessed 7 July 2010).
- ^ a b c d Duranti, Alessandro. 2003. Language as Culture in U.S. Anthropology: Three Paradigms. Current Anthropology 44(3):323–348.
- JSTOR 539732.
- .
- ^ Hymes, Dell. 1981 [1975] Breakthrough into Performance. In In Vain I Tried to Tell You: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics. D. Hymes, ed. Pp. 79–141. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- ^ Kulick, Don. 1992. Language Shift and Cultural Reproduction: Socialization, Self and Syncretism in a Papua New Guinea Village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description. In Meaning in Anthropology. K. Basso and H.A. Selby, eds. Pp. 11–56. Albuquerque: School of American Research, University of New Mexico Press.
- ^ Kulick, Don, and Charles H. Klein. 2003. Scandalous Acts: The Politics of Shame among Brazilian Travesti Prostitutes. In Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Agency and Power. B. Hobson, ed. Pp. 215–238. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Benveniste, Emile. 1971. Problems in general linguistics. Miami: University of Miami Press.
- ^ Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. 2005. Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4–5), 585–614.
- ^ Lee, Benjamin. 1997. Talking Heads: Language, Metalanguage, and the Semiotics of Subjectivity. Durham: Duke University Press.
- ^ Kockelman, Paul. 2004. Stance and Subjectivity. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 14(2), 127–150.
- ^ Wortham, Stanton. 2006. Learning identity: The joint emergence of social identification and academic learning. New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Ochs, Elinor. 1988. Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language socialization in a Samoan village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Ochs, Elinor, and Bambi Schieffelin. 1984. Language Acquisition and Socialization: Three Developmental Stories and Their Implications. In Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion. R. Shweder and R.A. LeVine, eds. Pp. 276–320. New York: Cambridge University.
- Ochs, Elinor, and Carolyn Taylor. 2001. The “Father Knows Best” Dynamic in Dinnertime Narratives. In Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader. A. Duranti, ed. Pp. 431–449. Oxford. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
- Schieffelin, Bambi B. 1990. The Give and Take of Everyday Life: Language Socialization of Kaluli Children. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ a b Schieffelin, Bambi B. 1995. Creating evidence: Making sense of written words in Bosavi. Pragmatics 5(2):225–244.
- ^ Schieffelin, Bambi B. 2000. Introducing Kaluli Literacy: A Chronology of Influences. In Regimes of Language. P. Kroskrity, ed. Pp. 293–327. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
- ^ a b Schieffelin, Bambi B. 2002. Marking time: The dichotomizing discourse of multiple temporalities. Current Anthropology 43(Supplement):S5-17.
- ^ a b Schieffelin, Bambi B. 2006. PLENARY ADDRESS: Found in translating: Reflexive language across time and texts in Bosavi, PNG. Twelve Annual Conference on Language, Interaction, and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles, 2006.
- ^ Silverstein, Michael. 1979. Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology. In The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels. R. Cline, W. Hanks, and C. Hofbauer, eds. Pp. 193–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
- .
- ^ Silverstein, Michael. 1985. Language and the Culture of Gender: At the Intersection of Structure, Usage, and Ideology. In Semiotic Mediation: Sociocultural and Psychological Perspectives. E. Mertz and R. Parmentier, eds. Pp. 219–259. Orlando: Academic Press.
- ^ Woolard, Kathryn A. 2004. Codeswitching. In Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. A. Duranti, ed. Pp. 73–94. Malden: Blackwell.
- ^ Kroskrity, Paul V. 1998. Arizona Tewa Kiva Speech as a Manifestation of Linguistic Ideology. In Language ideologies: Practice and theory. B.B. Schieffelin, K.A. Woolard, and P. Kroskrity, eds. Pp. 103–122. New York: Oxford University Press.
- ISBN 978-962-209-665-3.
- ISBN 978-1-107-43181-2.
- ^ Guardado, Martin. 2018. " Discourse, Ideology and Heritage Language Socialization: Micro and Macro Perspectives. New York & Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
- .
- ^ Errington, J. Joseph. 1988. Structure and Style in Javanese: A Semiotic View of Linguistic Etiquette. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
- ^ a b Silverstein, Michael. 2004. "'Cultural' Concepts and the Language-Culture Nexus." Current Anthropology 45(5):621–652.
- ^ Wilce, James M. 2006. Magical Laments and Anthropological Reflections: The Production and Circulation of Anthropological Text as Ritual Activity. Current Anthropology. 47(6):891–914.
- )
- ISBN 9780511975981
- ISBN 9780511975981, retrieved 2019-10-08
- S2CID 146277852.
- .
- )
Further reading
- Ahearn, Laura M. 2011. Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
- Blount, Ben G. ed. 1995. Language, Culture, and Society: A Book of Readings. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.
- Bonvillain, Nancy. 1993. Language, culture, and communication: The meaning of messages. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
- Brenneis, Donald; and Ronald K. S. Macaulay. 1996. The matrix of language: Contemporary linguistic anthropology. Boulder: Westview.
- Duranti, Alessandro. 1997. Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Duranti, Alessandro. ed. 2001. Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
- Giglioli, Pier Paolo. 1972. Language and social context: Selected readings. Middlesex: Penguin Books.
- Salzmann, Zdenek, James Stanlaw and Nobuko Adachi. 2012. Language, culture, & society. Westview Press.
External links
- Society for Linguistic Anthropology – downloadable publications of authors cited in the article
- Alessandro Duranti's publications
- Joel Kuipers' publications
- Elinor Ochs' publications
- Bambi Schieffelin's publications
- James Wilce's publications
The Jurgen Trabant Wilhelm von Humboldt Lectures (7hrs)