Linguistic anthropology
Encyclopedia
Linguistic anthropology is the interdisciplinary
study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology
that originated from the endeavor to document endangered language
s, and has grown over the past 100 years to encompass almost any aspect of language structure and use.
Linguistic anthropology explores how language shapes communication, forms social identity and group membership, organizes large-scale cultural beliefs and ideologies, and develops a common cultural representation of natural and social worlds.
has noted, three paradigm
s have emerged over the history of the subdiscipline. 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. A third paradigm, developed over the past two or three decades, studies questions related to other subfields of anthropology with the tools of linguistic inquiry. Though they developed sequentially, all three paradigms are still practiced today.
", although as it and its surrounding fields of study matured it came to be known as "anthropological linguistics
". The field was devoted to themes unique to the subdiscipline—linguistic documentation of language
s then seen as doomed to extinction
(these were the languages of native North America on which the first members of the subdiscipline focused) such as:
was largely responsible for launching the second paradigm that fixed the name "linguistic anthropology" in the 1960s, though he also coined the term "ethnography
of speaking" (or "ethnography of communication
") to describe the agenda he envisioned for the field. It would involve taking advantage of new developments in technology, including new forms of mechanical recording.
A new unit of analysis
was also introduced by Hymes. Whereas the first paradigm focused on ostensibly distinct "languages" (scare quotes indicate that contemporary linguistic anthropologists treat the concept of "a language" as an ideal
construction covering up complexities within and "across" so-called linguistic boundaries), the unit of analysis in the second paradigm was new—the "speech event." (The speech event is an event defined by the speech occurring in it—a lecture, for example—so that a dinner is not a speech event, but a speech situation, a situation in which speech may or may not occur.) Much attention was devoted to speech events in which performers were held accountable for the form of their linguistic performance as such.
Hymes also pioneered a linguistic anthropological approach to ethnopoetics
.
Hymes had hoped to link linguistic anthropology more closely with the mother discipline. The name certainly stresses that the primary identity is with anthropology, whereas "anthropological linguistics" conveys a sense that the primary identity of its practitioners was with linguistics, which is a separate academic discipline on most university campuses today (not in the days of Boas and Sapir). However, Hymes' ambition in a sense backfired; the second paradigm in fact marked a further distancing of the subdiscipline from the rest of anthropology.
in interaction among individuals and groups.
linguistically. Linguistic anthropologist Don Kulick
has done this in relation to identity, for example, in a series of settings, first in a village called Gapun in Papua New Guinea. Kulick explored how the use of two languages with and around children in Gapun village—the traditional language (Taiap) not spoken anywhere but in their own village and thus primordially "indexical" of Gapuner identity, and Tok Pisin
(the widely circulating official language of New Guinea). (Linguistic anthropologists use "indexical" to mean indicative, though some indexical signs create their indexical meanings on the fly, so to speak.) To speak the Taiap language
is associated with one identity—not only local but "Backward" and also an identity based on the display of *hed* (personal autonomy). To speak Tok Pisin is to index
a modern, Christian (Catholic) identity, based not on *hed* but on *save*, that is an identity linked with the will and the skill to cooperate. In later work, Kulick demonstrates that certain loud speech performances called *um escândalo*, Brazilian travesti (roughly, 'transvestite') sex workers shame clients. The travesti community, the argument goes, ends up at least making a powerful attempt to transcend the shame the larger Brazilian public might try to foist off on them—again, through loud public discourse and other modes of performance
.
and Bambi Schieffelin
addressed the important anthropological topic of socialization
(the process by which infants, children, and foreigners become members of a community, learning to participate in its culture), using linguistic as well as ethnographic methods. They discovered that the processes of enculturation
and socialization do not occur apart from the process of language acquisition
, but that children acquire language and culture together in what amounts to an integrated process. Ochs and Schieffelin demonstrated that baby talk
is not universal, that the direction of adaptation (whether the child is made to adapt to the ongoing situation of speech around it or vice versa) was a variable that correlated, for example, with the direction it was held vis-à-vis a caregiver's body. In many societies caregivers hold a child facing outward so as to orient it to a network of kin whom it must learn to recognize early in life.
Ochs and Schieffelin demonstrated that members of all societies socialize children both to and through the use of language. Ochs and Taylor 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 pastor
s and other fairly new Bosavi converts in the Southern Highlands, Papua New Guinea community she studies. Pastors have introduced new ways of conveying knowledge— i.e. new linguistic epistemic markers—and new ways of speaking about time. And they have struggled with and largely resisted those parts of the Bible that speak of being able to know the inner states of others (e.g. the gospel of Mark
, chapter 2, verses 6-8).
's student, Michael Silverstein
opened the way, there has been an efflorescence of work done by linguistic anthropologists on the major anthropological theme of ideologies—in this case "language ideologies
", sometimes defined as "shared bodies of commonsense notions about the nature of language in the world." Silverstein has demonstrated that these ideologies are not mere false consciousness but actually influence the evolution of linguistic structures, including the dropping of "thee" and "thou
" from everyday English
usage. Woolard, in her overview of "code switching
", or the systematic practice of alternating linguistic varieties within a conversation or even a single utterance, finds the underlying question anthropologists ask of the practice—Why do they do that?—reflects a dominant linguistic ideology. It is the ideology that people should "really" be monoglot and efficiently targeted toward referential clarity rather than diverting themselves with the messiness of multiple varieties in play at a single time.
Attitudes toward languages such as Spanish and English in the U.S. are certainly informed by linguistic ideologies. This extends to the widespread impression, created by statements such as that by U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee (in regards to a recently passed measure making English the "official" language of the U.S.), that English is "part of our blood." To Horwitz, this invocation of blood implies that English reflects the deepest vein of the nation's ancestry, i.e., the oldest language spoken in what is now the United States. Such a claim, if made openly, would be doubly absurd, ignoring a) all of the Native American languages severely impacted by the arrival of Europeans, but also b) Spanish, the language of a rather sizable number of European explorers and settlers across the length and breadth of what is now the United States. Thus Alexander is attempting to "naturalize" language and national identity via the metaphor of "blood."
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 Mexico Pueblos as well as on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona — by "kiva speech," discussed in the next section.
greetings and their use and transformation of social space. Prior to that, Indonesianist Joseph Errington — making use of earlier work by Indonesianists not necessarily concerned with language issues per se—brought linguistic anthropological methods (and semiotic theory) to bear on the notion of the "exemplary center," or the center of political and ritual power from which emanated exemplary behavior. Errington demonstrated how the Java
nese *priyayi
*, whose ancestors served at the Javanese royal courts, became emissaries, so to speak, long after those courts had ceased to exist, representing throughout Java the highest example of 'refined speech.' The work of Joel Kuipers further develops this theme vis-a-vis the island of Sumba
, Indonesia
. And, even though it pertains to Tewa Indians in Arizona
rather than Indonesians, Paul Kroskrity's argument that speech forms originating in the Tewa kiva
(or underground ceremonial space) forms the dominant model for all Tewa speech can be seen as a rather direct parallel.
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 in the following manner, arguing that "there are wider-scale institutional 'orders of interactionality,' historically contingent yet structured. Within such large-scale, macrosocial orders, in-effect ritual
centers of semiosis
come to exert a structuring, value
-conferring influence on any particular event of discursive interaction with respect to the meanings and significance of the verbal and other semiotic forms used in it." Current approaches to such classic anthropological topics as ritual by linguistic anthropologists emphasize not static linguistic structures but the unfolding in realtime of a "'hypertrophic' set of parallel orders of iconicity
and indexicality that seem to cause the ritual to create its own sacred space through what appears, often, to be the magic
of textual and nontextual metricalizations, synchronized."
Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity involves the combining of two or more academic fields into one single discipline. An interdisciplinary field crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged....
study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
that originated from the endeavor to document endangered language
Endangered language
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....
s, and has grown over the past 100 years to encompass almost any aspect of language structure and use.
Linguistic anthropology explores how language shapes communication, forms social identity and group membership, organizes large-scale cultural beliefs and ideologies, and develops a common cultural representation of natural and social worlds.
Historical development
As Alessandro DurantiAlessandro Duranti
Alessandro Duranti is Professor of Anthropology and Dean of Social Sciences at UCLA.-Books:* 1981 - The Samoan Fono: a sociolinguistic study - Canberra: The Australian National University, Pacific Linguistics Monograph B80* 1992 - Etnografia del parlare quotidiano - Rome: La Nuova Italia...
has noted, three paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
s have emerged over the history of the subdiscipline. 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. A third paradigm, developed over the past two or three decades, studies questions related to other subfields of anthropology with the tools of linguistic inquiry. Though they developed sequentially, all three paradigms are still practiced today.
"Anthropological linguistics"
The first paradigm was originally referred to as "linguisticsLinguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
", although as it and its surrounding fields of study matured it came to be known as "anthropological linguistics
Anthropological linguistics
Anthropological linguistics is the study of the relations between language and culture and the relations between human biology, cognition and language...
". The field was devoted to themes unique to the subdiscipline—linguistic documentation of language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
s then seen as doomed to extinction
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
(these were the languages of native North America on which the first members of the subdiscipline focused) such as:
- Grammatical description,
- Typological classificationCategorizationCategorization is the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Categorization implies that objects are grouped into categories, usually for some specific purpose. Ideally, a category illuminates a relationship between the subjects and objects of knowledge...
(see typologyLinguistic typologyLinguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...
), and - The unresolved issue of linguistic relativityLinguistic relativityThe principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view...
(associated with Edward SapirEdward SapirEdward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics....
and Benjamin Lee Whorf but actually brought to American linguistics by Franz BoasFranz BoasFranz Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology." Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did...
working within a theoretical framework going back to European thinkers from VicoGiambattista VicoGiovanni Battista ' Vico or Vigo was an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist....
to HerderJohann Gottfried HerderJohann Gottfried von Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.-Biography:...
to HumboldtWilhelm von HumboldtFriedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt was a German philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of Humboldt Universität. He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language and to the theory and practice...
). The so-called Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis is perhaps a misnomer insofar as the approach to science taken by these two differs from the positivist, hypothesis-driven model of science. In any case, it was Harry HoijerHarry HoijerHarry Hoijer was a linguist and anthropologist who worked on primarily Athabaskan languages and culture.He additionally documented the Tonkawa language, which is now extinct...
(Sapir's student) who coined the term.
"Linguistic anthropology"
Dell HymesDell Hymes
Dell Hathaway Hymes was a sociolinguist, anthropologist, and folklorist whose work dealt primarily with languages of the Pacific Northwest. He was one of the first to call the fourth subfield of anthropology "linguistic anthropology" instead of "anthropological linguistics"...
was largely responsible for launching the second paradigm that fixed the name "linguistic anthropology" in the 1960s, though he also coined the term "ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
of speaking" (or "ethnography of communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
") to describe the agenda he envisioned for the field. It would involve taking advantage of new developments in technology, including new forms of mechanical recording.
A new unit of analysis
Unit of analysis
The unit of analysis is the major entity that is being analyzed in the study. It is the 'what' or 'whom' that is being studied. In social science research, typical units of analysis include individuals , groups, social organizations and social artifacts.The literature of International Relations...
was also introduced by Hymes. Whereas the first paradigm focused on ostensibly distinct "languages" (scare quotes indicate that contemporary linguistic anthropologists treat the concept of "a language" as an ideal
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
construction covering up complexities within and "across" so-called linguistic boundaries), the unit of analysis in the second paradigm was new—the "speech event." (The speech event is an event defined by the speech occurring in it—a lecture, for example—so that a dinner is not a speech event, but a speech situation, a situation in which speech may or may not occur.) Much attention was devoted to speech events in which performers were held accountable for the form of their linguistic performance as such.
Hymes also pioneered a linguistic anthropological approach to ethnopoetics
Ethnopoetics
Ethnopoetics is a poetic movement and subfield in linguistics, and anthropology. It was coined as a term by Jerome Rothenberg in collaboration with George Quasha in 1968, when Quasha asked Rothenberg to create a term using 'ethnos' and 'poetics' on the model of 'ethnomusicology' for inclusion in...
.
Hymes had hoped to link linguistic anthropology more closely with the mother discipline. The name certainly stresses that the primary identity is with anthropology, whereas "anthropological linguistics" conveys a sense that the primary identity of its practitioners was with linguistics, which is a separate academic discipline on most university campuses today (not in the days of Boas and Sapir). However, Hymes' ambition in a sense backfired; the second paradigm in fact marked a further distancing of the subdiscipline from the rest of anthropology.
Anthropological issues studied via linguistic methods and data
In the third paradigm, which has emerged since the late 1980s, instead of continuing to pursue agendas that come from a discipline alien to anthropology, linguistic anthropologists have systematically addressed themselves to problems posed by the larger discipline of anthropology—but using linguistic data and methods. Popular areas of study in this third paradigm include investigations of social identities, broadly shared ideologies, and the construction and uses of narrativeNarrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
in interaction among individuals and groups.
Areas of interest
Contemporary linguistic anthropology continues research in all three of the paradigms described above. Several areas related to the third paradigm, the study of anthropological issues, are particularly rich areas of study for current linguistic anthropologists.Identity
A great deal of work in linguistic anthropology investigates questions of sociocultural identityCultural identity
Cultural identity is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as one is influenced by one's belonging to a group or culture. Cultural identity is similar to and has overlaps with, but is not synonymous with, identity politics....
linguistically. Linguistic anthropologist Don Kulick
Don Kulick
Don Kulick is professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Kulick received his B.A. in Anthropology and Linguistics from Lund University in Sweden in 1983 and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stockholm University in 1990. Previous academic positions include both Stockholm and Linköping...
has done this in relation to identity, for example, in a series of settings, first in a village called Gapun in Papua New Guinea. Kulick explored how the use of two languages with and around children in Gapun village—the traditional language (Taiap) not spoken anywhere but in their own village and thus primordially "indexical" of Gapuner identity, and Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country...
(the widely circulating official language of New Guinea). (Linguistic anthropologists use "indexical" to mean indicative, though some indexical signs create their indexical meanings on the fly, so to speak.) To speak the Taiap language
Taiap language
Taiap is an endangered language isolate spoken by around a hundred people in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. It is being replaced by the national language and lingua franca Tok Pisin.The first European to come across Taiap was a German missionary in 1938...
is associated with one identity—not only local but "Backward" and also an identity based on the display of *hed* (personal autonomy). To speak Tok Pisin is to index
Indexicality
In linguistics and in philosophy of language, an indexical behavior or utterance points to some state of affairs. For example, I refers to whoever is speaking; now refers to the time at which that word is uttered; and here refers to the place of utterance...
a modern, Christian (Catholic) identity, based not on *hed* but on *save*, that is an identity linked with the will and the skill to cooperate. In later work, Kulick demonstrates that certain loud speech performances called *um escândalo*, Brazilian travesti (roughly, 'transvestite') sex workers shame clients. The travesti community, the argument goes, ends up at least making a powerful attempt to transcend the shame the larger Brazilian public might try to foist off on them—again, through loud public discourse and other modes of performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...
.
Socialization
In a series of studies, linguistic anthropologists Elinor OchsElinor Ochs
Elinor Ochs is an American linguistic anthropologist, and professor of Anthropology at University of California, Los Angeles. Ochs is married to Alessandro Duranti, faculty member at UCLA and current Dean of Social Sciences at UCLA.-Works:...
and Bambi Schieffelin
Bambi Schieffelin
Bambi Schieffelin is a linguistic anthropologist at New York University in the department of Anthropology. She has written extensively about language socialization, language contact, language ideology, Haitian creole, and missionization....
addressed the important anthropological topic of socialization
Socialization
Socialization is a term used by sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists and educationalists to refer to the process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies...
(the process by which infants, children, and foreigners become members of a community, learning to participate in its culture), using linguistic as well as ethnographic methods. They discovered that the processes of enculturation
Enculturation
Enculturation is the process by which a person learns the requirements of the culture by which he or she is surrounded, and acquires values and behaviours that are appropriate or necessary in that culture. As part of this process, the influences which limit, direct, or shape the individual include...
and socialization do not occur apart from the process of language acquisition
Language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
, but that children acquire language and culture together in what amounts to an integrated process. Ochs and Schieffelin demonstrated that baby talk
Baby talk
Baby talk, also referred to as caretaker speech, infant-directed speech or child-directed speech and informally as "motherese", "parentese", "mommy talk", or "daddy talk" is a nonstandard form of speech used by adults in talking to toddlers and infants.It is usually delivered with a "cooing"...
is not universal, that the direction of adaptation (whether the child is made to adapt to the ongoing situation of speech around it or vice versa) was a variable that correlated, for example, with the direction it was held vis-à-vis a caregiver's body. In many societies caregivers hold a child facing outward so as to orient it to a network of kin whom it must learn to recognize early in life.
Ochs and Schieffelin demonstrated that members of all societies socialize children both to and through the use of language. Ochs and Taylor uncovered how, through naturally occurring stories told during dinners in white middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
households in southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
, both mothers and fathers participated in replicating male dominance
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
(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 pastor
Pastor
The word pastor usually refers to an ordained leader of a Christian congregation. When used as an ecclesiastical styling or title, this role may be abbreviated to "Pr." or often "Ps"....
s and other fairly new Bosavi converts in the Southern Highlands, Papua New Guinea community she studies. Pastors have introduced new ways of conveying knowledge— i.e. new linguistic epistemic markers—and new ways of speaking about time. And they have struggled with and largely resisted those parts of the Bible that speak of being able to know the inner states of others (e.g. the gospel of Mark
Gospel of Mark
The Gospel According to Mark , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Mark or simply Mark, is the second book of the New Testament. This canonical account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the three synoptic gospels. It was thought to be an epitome, which accounts for its place as the second...
, chapter 2, verses 6-8).
Ideologies
In a third example of the current (third) paradigm, since Roman JakobsonRoman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary theorist.As a pioneer of the structural analysis of language, which became the dominant trend of twentieth-century linguistics, Jakobson was among the most influential linguists of the century...
's student, Michael Silverstein
Michael Silverstein
Michael Silverstein is a professor of anthropology, linguistics, and psychology at the University of Chicago. He is a theoretician of semiotics and linguistic anthropology. Over the course of his career he has drawn together research on linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language ideology,...
opened the way, there has been an efflorescence of work done by linguistic anthropologists on the major anthropological theme of ideologies—in this case "language ideologies
Language ideology
In sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, a language or linguistic ideology is a systematic construct about how particular ways of using languages carry or are invested with certain moral, religious, social, and political values, giving rise to implicit assumptions that people have about a...
", sometimes defined as "shared bodies of commonsense notions about the nature of language in the world." Silverstein has demonstrated that these ideologies are not mere false consciousness but actually influence the evolution of linguistic structures, including the dropping of "thee" and "thou
Thou
The word thou is a second person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in almost all contexts by you. It is used in parts of Northern England and by Scots. Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee , and the possessive is thy or thine...
" from everyday English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
usage. Woolard, in her overview of "code switching
Code-switching
In linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals—people who speak more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
", or the systematic practice of alternating linguistic varieties within a conversation or even a single utterance, finds the underlying question anthropologists ask of the practice—Why do they do that?—reflects a dominant linguistic ideology. It is the ideology that people should "really" be monoglot and efficiently targeted toward referential clarity rather than diverting themselves with the messiness of multiple varieties in play at a single time.
Attitudes toward languages such as Spanish and English in the U.S. are certainly informed by linguistic ideologies. This extends to the widespread impression, created by statements such as that by U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee (in regards to a recently passed measure making English the "official" language of the U.S.), that English is "part of our blood." To Horwitz, this invocation of blood implies that English reflects the deepest vein of the nation's ancestry, i.e., the oldest language spoken in what is now the United States. Such a claim, if made openly, would be doubly absurd, ignoring a) all of the Native American languages severely impacted by the arrival of Europeans, but also b) Spanish, the language of a rather sizable number of European explorers and settlers across the length and breadth of what is now the United States. Thus Alexander is attempting to "naturalize" language and national identity via the metaphor of "blood."
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 Mexico Pueblos as well as on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona — by "kiva speech," discussed in the next section.
Social space
In a final example of this third paradigm, a group of linguistic anthropologists has done very creative work on the idea of social space. Duranti published a ground breaking article on SamoanSamoan language
Samoan Samoan Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa, is the language of the Samoan Islands, comprising the independent country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Samoan, a Polynesian language, is the first language for most...
greetings and their use and transformation of social space. Prior to that, Indonesianist Joseph Errington — making use of earlier work by Indonesianists not necessarily concerned with language issues per se—brought linguistic anthropological methods (and semiotic theory) to bear on the notion of the "exemplary center," or the center of political and ritual power from which emanated exemplary behavior. Errington demonstrated how the Java
Java
Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...
nese *priyayi
Priyayi
Priyayi is the Dutch era class of the nobles of the Robe, as opposed to royal nobility or bangsawan or ningrat/di ningrat in Java, Indonesia's most populous island...
*, whose ancestors served at the Javanese royal courts, became emissaries, so to speak, long after those courts had ceased to exist, representing throughout Java the highest example of 'refined speech.' The work of Joel Kuipers further develops this theme vis-a-vis the island of Sumba
Sumba
Sumba is an island in eastern Indonesia, is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, and is in the province of East Nusa Tenggara. Sumba has an area of 11,153 km², and the population was officially at 611,422 in 2005...
, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
. And, even though it pertains to Tewa Indians in Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
rather than Indonesians, Paul Kroskrity's argument that speech forms originating in the Tewa kiva
Kiva
A kiva is a room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, kivas are square-walled and underground, and are used for spiritual ceremonies....
(or underground ceremonial space) forms the dominant model for all Tewa speech can be seen as a rather direct parallel.
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 in the following manner, arguing that "there are wider-scale institutional 'orders of interactionality,' historically contingent yet structured. Within such large-scale, macrosocial orders, in-effect ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
centers of semiosis
Semiosis
Semiosis is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. Briefly – semiosis is sign process...
come to exert a structuring, value
Value (personal and cultural)
A personal or cultural value is an absolute or relative ethical value, the assumption of which can be the basis for ethical action. A value system is a set of consistent values and measures. A principle value is a foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity are based...
-conferring influence on any particular event of discursive interaction with respect to the meanings and significance of the verbal and other semiotic forms used in it." Current approaches to such classic anthropological topics as ritual by linguistic anthropologists emphasize not static linguistic structures but the unfolding in realtime of a "'hypertrophic' set of parallel orders of iconicity
Iconicity
In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness.Iconic principles:...
and indexicality that seem to cause the ritual to create its own sacred space through what appears, often, to be the magic
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
of textual and nontextual metricalizations, synchronized."
See also
- ethnolinguisticsEthnolinguisticsEthnolinguistics is a field of linguistics which studies the relationship between language and culture, and the way different ethnic groups perceive the world. It is the combination between ethnology and linguistics. The former refers to the way of life of an entire community i.e...
- Identity (social science)Identity (social science)Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...
- IdeologyIdeologyAn ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
- Language contactLanguage contactLanguage contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
- Miyako Inoue
- Sociocultural linguisticsSociocultural linguisticsSociocultural linguistics is a term used to encompass a broad range of theories and methods for the study of language in its sociocultural context. Its growing use is a response to the increasingly narrow association of the term sociolinguistics with specific types of research involving the...
- SociolinguisticsSociolinguisticsSociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...
- Sociology of languageSociology of languageSociology of language focuses on the language's effect on the society. It is closely related to the field of sociolinguistics, which focuses on the effect of the society on the language....
- World Oral Literature ProjectWorld Oral Literature ProjectThe ' is 'an urgent global initiative to document and disseminate endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record'. Directed by Dr Mark Turin and co-located at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, at the University of Cambridge and Yale University, the project was...
- Linguistic insecurityLinguistic insecurityLinguistic insecurity refers to feelings of anxiety, self-consciousness, or lack of confidence in the mind of a speaker surrounding the use of their own language. Often, this anxiety comes from a speaker’s belief that his/her use of language does not conform to the perceived standard and/or the...
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. 1998. Language, culture, & society. Westview Press.