Studying Language Like an Anthropologist Pt. 1

Plan for 9/5/131. Re-introductions

2. Review 3. Who is Alessandro Duranti?

4. What is Linguistic Anthropology?5. Key Issues and Debates

6. Final Project and Project Proposals

Anth 225-001Class 3

Re-introductions

Review

• What is language?• What is the connection between

language and thought?• What is technostrategic language?• Cohn on language as a means of

understanding

Good Question…

Andrew’s question:Is there any way we can use language that doesn't in some way express a relationship of power? 

Who is Alessandro Duranti?Pioneer in Linguistic Anthropology; wrote the treatise Linguistic Anthropology on the subject in 1997; among his most famous works is From Grammar to Politics: Linguistic Anthropology in a Western Somoan Village (UC Press, 1981)

What is Linguistic Anthropology?

• “It is the understanding of the crucial role played by language (and other semiotic resources) in the constitution of society and its cultural representations” (Duranti 2009: 5).

• It is an approach to the study of language that uses anthropological methods and insights; it places language at the center of inquiry about culture.

Methodological Points of Departure/Confluence

Linguistic Anthropology • Ethnography• Spontaneous language

use; informal language use

• Co-constructed nature of human interaction and text formation

• Data is often collected in ways that it could not be reproduced or for some ethical reasons shared.

Sociolinguistic• Grammar• Interviews• Statistical models of

language use based on independent variables such as generation, class, gender, age, race

Linguistic Relativism

• Researchers must speak the language and must work to understand concepts in the language under investigation, and should not attempt to force concepts into their native language for which there may be no concepts.

Speech Communities

• Chompsky’s notion that there was an “Ideal speaker” of a language who spoke said language using all of the proper grammatical structures all the time.

• Labov’s interest in understanding a metropolitan urban center as one speech community based on their shared norms of understanding variation

• Gumperz’ attempts to understand why people who speak multiple languages or dialects shift from one to the next.

Language users as performers

1. Speakers adapt to situations, adapt situations to speech.

2. Every speaker does something specific with language in certain situations; while this might follow certain “rules,” there is still considerable flexibility and as agents, they are able to make change.

3. The way an individual speaks, those aethetic dimensions of their talk has social and political implications.

4. Audiences are crucial to the construction of messages.

Analyzing Language and Culture Connection

1. Start from linguistic forms2. Start from cultural construct or

social process

Project Proposals

Key elements1. Problem statement2. Human Experience under

investigation3. Discussion of previous study4. Methods for collecting data5. Brief timeline6. Grammar/Style/References