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The Consequences of Language
Chapter 1: What Is Anthropology?
An introduction to the field of language and culture. The subdisciplines of anthropology, the
concept of culture, approaches to the study of society, the importance of the institution and
practice oriented approaches.
1. What is culture?
An example
In an article entitled “Cultural Orientation and Academic Language Use,” Jin and Cortazzi
(1993) noted the different expectations of students who had grown up in China and Britain. In this
British classroom setting, the British students tended to be satisfied with the teaching styles of their
British teachers. In contrast, Chinese students reported that the British teachers were remote and
not interested in them or their progress as students. Interviews revealed that these two groups had
very different expectations of the teacher-student relationship. Deference toward teachers is
important in the Chinese setting, but not in the British. Chinese teachers were expected to guide
and lead students in the Chinese setting, but not in the British. Not too surprisingly, Chinese
students were often frustrated by an assignment that asked students to select a topic that illustrated
an important concept of the course. They expected to receive more guidance from their teachers in
this exercise.
Jin and Cortazzi also reported several other differences between the two groups, showing
that each group interpreted the same activity of classroom teaching differently. Anthropologists
term such differences “cultural.” One’s reaction to the cultural practices of other societies is often
negative, for one tends to see the practice of one’s own society as best. In an effort to avoid this
“ethnocentrism,” anthropologists recommend that the observer, for the purposes of understanding
other perspectives, adopt a perspective of culture This involved the avoidance of making value
judgments about different cultural practices, at least until the practice is understood. This,
needless to say is easier said than done.
2. The Concept of Culture
The concept of “culture” is the central concept in the field of anthropology. Culture
encompasses everything with which people organize and understand their lives. Because culture
is socially constructed, it follows that different societies will have different ways in which they
organize and understand the world and thus have different cultures. Anthropologists also see
culture and the capacity for it as the primary element by which humans are distinguished from
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other living things. From this perspective, language is a key component of culture. Nevertheless,
because language is such a significant component of culture, the question frequently arises as to its
relationship to the rest of culture. The exploration of this question is the focus of this book
The Cultural World is a Human World
I find it useful to introduce the concept of by presenting it as one of the four worlds in
which humans live. To begin with, we live in a physical world, meaning that we have to obey the
laws of the physical world, including the laws of gravity and thermodynamics. But from this
perspective, humans are not understood differently from rocks and trees.
As living things, we also live in a biological world. Thus, in addition to the physical laws,
we are subject to the conditions of life; we have to eat and breathe and reproduce ourselves. The
differences between these two worlds are substantial. While the physical world deals with
predictions, laws, constants, and time, the biological world deals with matters of living, dying,
adaptation, selection, evolution, reproduction, and history.
We also live in a social world. This world is not limited to humans. Most animals have a
social component, that is, they interact with other members of their species. When we enter the
social world, we encounter new relationships that concern the individual versus the group with
respect to such matters as cooperation, domination, aggression, and communication. Just as
importantly, the social world is integrated with the biological world. This means that the
biological world is redefined by it. Matters of living and dying, evolving and reproduction are
often carried out in terms of the group and not just the member. This is especially true of natural
selection (chapter 5) where some adaptations are best understood as changes that help the survival
of the group, sometimes to the detriment of the individual member.
Finally, we live in a world of shared meaning, which includes language and understanding.
This world is almost exclusively human. The world of meaning includes questions of meaning,
symbolism, ideology, shared understanding (intersubjectivity), consent, advice, decrees, laws, and
interpretation. In a like way, once we enter this world, the social world and biological world
become redefined by it. It is this world of shared meaning and redefined social and biological
worlds that we call culture. And because different human groups have developed different forms
of shared understanding, we find considerable variation among human groups or societies.
Dimensions to the Study of Culture
Chapter2: What is Anthropology?
From this
characterization, we
see that culture has
World
Meaning
Approach
Idealist:
Society
Social
Organization
Biology
Materialist
different
dimensions, a
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dimension of
meaning, a
Topics of interest
Means of understanding
events of the world, both
other humans and things.
Ways in which groups
organize themselves and
make decisions
Means by which humans
exist in the material world.
(obtain food, clothing,
shelter),
Proponent
Clifford Geertz (1973)
Michael Tausig (1980
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1985)
H.R. Radcliffe-Brown (1952)
Meyer Fortes and
E.E Evans-Prichard (1940)
Marvin Harris (1979)
Roy Rappaport (1979)
Leslie White (1949)
Karl Marx (19xx)
dimension of society and a dimension of biology. While the concept of culture includes all of
these domains, some sociocultural anthropologists choose to focus their attention more on one of
these areas (sidebar).
3. Issues Concerning the Concept of Culture. While we have found the concept of culture
helpful in explaining the differences between the actions of different groups of people, the concept
has also been criticized on the grounds that it makes societies appear to be: 1) too static; 2) too
uniform; 3) too bounded; and 4) only hints at how humans interact in a given situation.
The Classic Concept Of Culture Is Too Static.
Brian Street in his 1993 article entitled “Culture is a verb” emphasized that culture is in part
dynamic, that it consists of people doing things to meet their daily needs. This dimension of
“doing” disappears, Street argues, when the concept of culture is nominalized, that is, represented
as a noun. This nominalized view of culture as a noun has other consequences as well. For
example, it asks us to look at “a culture” as a discrete entity, different from all other cultures. From
this point of view, Chinese and British “cultures” are made to appear as totally different from each
other with no common points.
Yet, the difficulty between British teachers and Chinese students came from the fact that a
common institution the classroom existed. The problem arose not from the vast differences, but
from the differences within the institution, that of the role of a teacher and student. Both the
Chinese students and their British teachers assumed that if we share an institution (the classroom)
then we can expect that the roles of teachers and students to be identical.1 The nominalized view
of culture also promotes the idea that people within a culture all act the same way. This is
obviously not the case of our own “culture” and we can presume that it is not for other “cultures”
1
The strategy of assuming similarities rather than differences in similar institutions is generally a successful one.
However, it occasionally leads to unfortunate results, as in the Chinese student – British teacher example.
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as well. Finally, the nominalization of culture makes culture appear static and unchanging and
leads to unsolvable problems like “why and how do cultures change?”
To address this problem, numerous scholars like Street began to emphasize a
practice-oriented approach that focuses on people doing things and interacting with each other in
the process of going about meeting their daily needs. One of the first and clearest expressions of
this perspective, since Marx2, is Berger and Luckmanns’ Sociology of Knowledge in which they
show that institutions arise from and change in the course of people going about their everyday
tasks. Berger and Luckmann go on to show that there is a dialectical relationship between the
interaction (sometimes called an event) and the structures (institutions), which arise from and
produce them. Berger and Luckmann (1966:61) illustrate this using a three-way opposition:
“society is a human product; society is an objective reality; man is a social product.”
Culture as practice
Earlier approaches to the study of culture
emphasized the types of institutions that were part of
culture, such as the famous quote from Tylor (side
bar). More recently anthropologists: Sahlins (1976,
Culture...is that complex whole which
includes knowledge, belief, art, law
morals, custom, and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man
as a member of society.
Tylor 1871:i (Primitive Culture)
Street (1993), Bourdieu (1977), Ortner (1993) have
begun to introduce the importance of human activity (technically termed praxis, that culture also
involves ongoing human activity, especially interaction with others. This view of culture
emphasizes the concept of agency, that nothing gets done without individual agents doing things.
From this perspective, the cultural institutions of Tylor are viewed as products of human
activity in the same way that tools are products of human activity. Similarly, cultural institutions
also are viewed from the individual’s perspective as a resource that can be used to get things done.
These two views of culture stand in a cooperative (or dialectical) relationship with each other and
both are essential for the understanding of how culture works.3
This view also introduces the individual (technically called the subject) as a culturally
defined entity and raises question of how is an individual constituted and how do individuals differ
2
Today, Karl Marx is remembered for his political writings on socialism and communism. Within anthropology he is
seen as the founder of the materialist perspective and of a practices orientation.
3
The term dialectical refers to a situation of mutual cause and effect. Both members (often called a moments) can
cause, give rise to, and influence the other. Other terms for this relationship are coevolution or just plain evolution. A
dialectic relationship stands in opposition to a nomothetic one, in postulating a one directional influence: A causes
(influences) B, but not B causes A. Nomothetic relationships are more common in the physical world.
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across culture.
Culture as a collection of institutions.
One of the remarkable discoveries made by some of the earlier anthropologists was the
interconnectedness of human groups. Fortes and Prichard (1940) reported the extensive
interrelationships between different groups of pastoralists4 and farmers in East Africa; Lowie
(1920) did the same for the Native American plains society. This interrelatedness between
societies is not easily captured lay the concept of culture because of its assumption of
boundedness.
Currently, many anthropologists favor the concept of the
institution as a major cultural unit. In the above example from Jin and
Cortazzi, we see the educational system as an institution. Bourdieu
(chapter 11) likened an institution to a game in which there are players or
roles which people can play: teacher; student; principal; or dean and goals
to be a famous academic or an all A student. Associated with each role are
proscribed ways of interaction and power: teachers can order homework;
students can only talk when given permission.
Bourdieu also used an economic metaphor to help explain the
kinds of resources (power) that players can use including: economic capital (money); symbolic
capital (access to ways of speaking); and social capital (honor and connections). Also, associated
with a given institution are orders of discourse and
legitimations for the institution. The educational
institution, for example, calls for a way of speaking
sometimes called “standard English.” This order of
discourse calls for “grammatical usage” and an avoidance
Ironically, it is the encounter of an
institution that superficially appears familiar
(as opposed to one that is totally different)
that is most likely to trip up the foreigner.
The Chinese students, for example assumed
that the British system of education
functioned exactly like their own.
of swearing. The use of swearing, on the other hand,
would define an order of discourse more likely to be associated with another institution such as the
neighborhood bar. Legitimations have to do with justifying the institution and its actions and
goals. One often hears in the academic field, “there is no higher calling than that of a scholar,”
while in the field of medicine, the word “doctor” replaces that of “scholar. “
This comparison of the two institutions of education, we see that the Chinese and British
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define the roles of the teacher and student differently. The Chinese teacher takes on a much more
parental role than does the British teacher whose responsibilities are much narrower. Yet, because
educational institutions have analogous roles, the Chinese student expects the British teacher to
behave like a Chinese teacher. This reflects the interaction of another institution found in Chinese
societies known as “Confucianism,” which emphasizes the parental role of the teacher. While
institutions do not have to influence each other they often do, and when they do, they give the
society a much more coherent appearance.
The question of how institutions fit together (or don’t) in a given society is an important
area of investigation in this framework. Another concerns the distribution of institutions in a
society. Some may be limited to a subgroup within the society, while others may extend well
beyond it. This approach thus overcomes the problem of boundedness found in the concept of
culture.
Culture Is Learned As We Participate In Our Community.
We are usually unaware of the process of constructing institutions, rather we just go about
our activities using the institutions that we grew up with, that is, that we learned in the process of
enculturation, of becoming a member of society. It is only when these institutions do not work for
us that we become aware of them and attempt to modify them, and from an agency point of view
this is where cultural change -changes in cultural practices (institutions)- begins.
Culture Is Shared.
An essential property of culture (and the institution) is that it is shared by individuals who
interact with each other. From a practice point of view, a group of interacting individuals
constitutes a society, and the product of their interaction (or resources that they use to interact) is
termed culture.
The Coercive Aspects of Culture.
From the individual’s perspective, institutions represent a set of potential resources
available for accomplishing tasks. In fact, it is only through institutions that things can get done.
In this sense, institutions define ways of doing things, and ways of not doing things. Often
associated with these practices are beliefs, legitimations and values that encourage some practices
over others. For example in some societies, people eat with a fork in the right hand, in others
(Europe) the fork is held in the left hand, and in others, other utensils (spoons, chopsticks, hands)
4
Pastoralism is a form of (material) economy largely based on the domestication of animals.
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are preferred. If we try to depart from the standard practices of our society, we begin to feel the
coercive nature of culture, which is established through these beliefs, legitimizations and values.
Power and Privilege.
The coercive aspect of culture is commonly referred to as power.5 Associated with the
concept of power is the concept of privilege, a situation where different members of a society have
different rights of access to its institutional resources (education, property, knowledge, etc.).
Institutionalized racism, for example, is the situation where some members of a society are denied
access to many of the institutions of a society, whether small (drinking fountains) or large (voting,
employment, travel) based on their racial identity. The institutional perspective encourages the
examination and analysis of questions of power and privilege.
High Culture Versus Human Culture
A colleague of mine once said “Culture? Whenever I hear that word I have to reach for my
wallet.” Rather than the anthropologists’ notion of culture, he was referring to what we often call
“high culture,” which traditionally referred to the outstanding works of art, music and literature of
the western world. More recently, “high culture” now includes such works from other societies as
well. In contrast, the anthropologist characterizes “human culture” as an even broader term, which
as defined above includes high culture and the more ordinary aspects of human existence. The
problem with two meanings for the term ‘culture’ is not that one is right and the other is wrong, but
that one might not be aware of the fact that one meaning may be intended by the speaker and
another understood by the listener.
Summary of the concept of culture.
5
The question of what constitutes power is a topic of current discussion and a variety of definitions exist. For a further
discussion of power we recommend Foucault (1994) and Fairclough (1989).
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High culture versus human culture. The dimensions to the study of culture include the
idealist, social organization and materialist.
Culture can be viewed as a collection of institutions or as practice.
Culture is learned
Culture is shared.
Some aspects of culture are coercive reflecting the existence of power which in turn leads to
The possibility that there may exist in some institutions privileged relationships that give
some individuals rights that others are denied.
Culture is (almost) exclusively human and shows considerable variation among human
groups.
Cultural change begins with the creative actions individual members.
4. The Development of Linguistic Anthropology
This section provides an overview of the schools of thought that have contributed to
linguistic anthropology. For the reader encountering this information for the first time, this section
may seem very complicated and uninteresting. We offer this overview at this time, to give the
reader an appreciation of the general areas of contribution (see the diagram toward the end of this
section) and to show the directions that this book will take. We will introduce the contributions of
each of these traditions in more detail in later chapters. One way to keep track of this is to continue
to refer to this table and add notes about what each scholar or school has contributed as you
encounter them in your readings. At his point, we suggest you refer to the diagram and write down
one thing about each individual or school that was mentioned in the text.
American Anthropology
Most scholars agree that Franz Boas (1858-1942) founded the field of anthropology in the
United States, at the turn of the last century. Boas, who initially trained as a
physicist, turned his attention to culture and became one of the founders of
American Anthropology while a professor at Columbia. One of Boas’ major
areas of interest was the culture of several groups of Native Americans living
on the northwest coast of the United States and neighboring Canada. He was
especially drawn to the power and beauty of their languages and how central
they were to understanding the cultures that they represented. It was this deep
interest and commitment to the study of language that made linguistics (the
study of language) one of the four subfields (along with archaeology, physical
and sociocultural) of American anthropology and why language and culture courses are part of the
anthropological curriculum in the United States. To be sure, there were American born linguists
before Boas, like Dwight Whitney, but he was trained in Europe and never focused on the study of
The Consequences of Language: What Is Linguistic Anthropology?
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American languages.
Boas’ most well known student was Edward Sapir who
continued to investigate the role in human society. Sapir
was particularly interested in the role that language played
in thinking and along with his student Benjamin Lee Whorf,
William Dwight Whitney, (1827-1894)
was the first American linguist with an
international reputation. He focused on
the development of Sanskrit and its
relationship to other Indo-European
languages.
as we shall see in chapter 7, developed the concept of linguistic determinism, which proposed that
the structure of ones language determined the way in which one perceived and understood the
world.
Although the popularity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis waned with the rise of the
Chomskian School, the views of this tradition evolved into the tradition of cognitive anthropology
and, to some extent, culture and personality. Cognitive anthropology, also called “ethnoscience”
(chapter 9) held that different cultures had different “sciences” which could be discovered by
investigating how a given language classifies its experience. This led to studies of color
classification (Kay 1969), diseases (Frake 1961) and even beer. The question of the role of
language in influencing thinking has also lead to an analysis of ideology (chapter 10).
Leonard Bloomfield, another of Sapir’s students, chose to focus more on grammar and less
on the cultural dimensions of language. Bloomfield did much to formalize the study of the
structure (grammar) of the language, particularly in the areas of phonology (sound systems) and
morphology (the structure of words) (chapter 3). Bloomfield’s Language (1933) for example,
demonstrated potential of structural linguistics as a discipline in its own right, linguistics programs
began to arise in universities as departments in their own right and not subdisciplines within
anthropology.
One of Bloomfield’s students, Zelig Harris was the teacher of Noam Chomsky, considered
by many to be the greatest living authority in the field of linguistics today. While following the
structuralist tradition laid out by Bloomfield, Chomsky departed from Bloomfield’s empircist,
behaviorist psychology and introduced a rationalist (chapter 5) perspective in which the mind was
seen as more active and more structured and hence preprogrammed to learned language. Because
of this, Chomsky saw all human languages to be related through what he called linguistic
“universals grammar” so that the analysis of one language could provide insights into the workings
of another. Chomsky also provided important breakthroughs on the study of syntax and the
generation of sentences.
While the Bloomfieldian school, as it was known, was primarily interested in grammatical
structure, interest in regional American dialect variation developed in the 1940s and prospered in
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the 50s. This in turn developed into an interest in social dialects, dialects distributed socially (by
class, race, gender) as opposed to geographically. The work of William Labov and others led to
the development of sociolinguistics, the study of linguistic variables, something we will have
more to say about in chapter 8. Although sociolinguistics developed as a very narrow study of
language variation, it reopened within the field of linguistics a new interest in language as
discourse and as a result, a broader sense of the term sociolinguistics is virtually identical to the
term language and culture. The American sociolinguistic tradition has since widened its scope to
include the analysis of discourse. This involves the study of the way people interact, which
focuses on an analysis of the texts they produce.
The European Tradition
At about the same Franz Boas was writing an Introduction to the Handbook of American Indian
Languages (1911) the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, was moving toward a new approach
to the study of language, which he called synchronic linguistics. Up until that time, European
linguists had been making important discoveries about the historical (diachronic) study of
language (section chapter 3). For example, not only were French and German related to each
other, but these languages were related to other languages spoken in Greece (Greek), Iran (Farsi)
and India (Hindi). Saussure proposed that alongside historical linguistics (the study of language as
a historical product), that language be looked at synchronically, not as a historical product, but as a
system of signs used to generate messages. As we show in (chapter 3), Saussure helped clarify the
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nature of the linguistic sign and the arbitrary relationship between meaning and sound. Although
Saussure’s work did not have much impact on American linguistic thinking until the late 1960s
when an English version of his Course de linguistique générale became available.
With roots in the thinking of the French sociologist, Emil
Durkheim, Saussure is credited with providing the intellectual
basis for the European linguistic school now known as
Structuralism. This approach was so appealing that it attracted
scholars from beyond the field of linguistics like the French
Like other scholars of the time,
Durkheim wanted to promote
the study of social phenomenon
as scientific by claiming that they
were observable facts capable of
empirical observation, just like
the facts of the established
physical sciences.
anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss (chapter 9) and the Prague
School in the 1930s. Because of the rise of Nazism in Europe during this period, many scholars of
Jewish heritage had to flee Europe (Lévi-Strauss from France, Roman Jakobson of the Prague
school) to the United States where they were able to interact with American linguistic scholars.
Chomsky, for example, co-authored works with Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss’ work reflects the
influence of Chomsky and others.
Semiotics
C.S. Peirce, a mathematician by training, wrote fascinating essays on a wide range of
topics including a field he called semiotics (chapter 9). Semiotics, like Saussure’s semiology,
bases the study of language on the sign. Peirce’s notion of semiotics was adopted and developed
by current linguists, Thomas Sebeok and Umberto Eco, who his perhaps better known for his
novels, including The Name of the Rose. While this field has made several important
contributions to the study of language and culture, we do not deal with it in this book.
Symbolic Interactionism
Another important thread comes from the work of the American psychologist George
Herbert Mead. Taking an evolutionary perspective, Mead focused on the role that the symbol
(language) played in human development. As we elaborate in chapter 10, Mead argued that when
humans started to interact using symbols (signs), they were able to break the typical
stimulus-response connection of much of animal behavior. This then lead to humans to reacting
not to the symbol but to the intention behind the sign and not to the sign itself. This line of
thinking, known as symbolic interactionism, provided an important insight about the role symbols
might have played in human evolution. It also opened up a new approach to the study of language
(and culture) known as a practice-oriented approach (chapter 10) that complements the analysis
structure, by emphasizing the study of the use of language in face-to-face interaction among
speakers. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s, Sociology of Knowledge (1967) is one of the
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first works that incorporated Mead’s insights. Furthermore, it contains a very clear exposition of
the role of language and practice in the construction of human social reality (chapter 10) leads to
the exploration, as we shall see in chapters 5 and 8, of issues like ideology, power and privilege.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics (chapter 9), not to be confused with practice also has to do with what happens
when people interact. This line of thinking began with the work of the philosopher, J.L. Austin,
and his very popular How to Do Things with Words (1962). Austin called attention to the
importance of illocutionary acts, acts which can only be accomplished only through language,
such as a jury declaring someone’s innocence or guilt, or a representative of the clergy declaring a
couple married. Without the speech act, the deed does not happen.
Another thread of pragmatics is introduced by H.P. Grice (chapter 9) who noted the role of
communicative conventions or “maxims” as he called them that people employ to facilitate their
conversations. A maxim like “be relevant” in what you say helps the listener interpret incoming
messages. For example, if someone says to me, “I’m thirsty,” I can use the relevance maxim to
conclude that he is asking for a drink and not just informing me of his bodily state. Erving
Goffman also investigated how people interact and introduced the concept of “face” as in “to gain
or lose face.” Goffman (chapter 9) noted that when people interact much of what they do can be
considered facework, that is, the use of language to develop their public image and to protect that
of others. Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson have picked up on and expanded on Goffman’s
concept of face and applied it to the area of politeness (chapter 9). Brown and Levinson have
shown that varying degrees of politeness can be correlated with the extent to which they preserve
face in face threatening encounters. Other areas of pragmatics have been developed by John
Searle and Anna Wiersbicka.
Language and Power
For the most part, the above schools, showed little interest to the
discussion of the role of power in human interaction. This lack of concern
for power occurred not only in linguistic studies, but in virtually all the
social sciences. Following earlier notions of Karl Marx and Antonio
Gramsci, the philosopher Michael Foucault introduced and explored the
Foucault’s Crime
and Punish (1971)
explores the
question of power
and control in the
evolution of the
penal system.
question of the nature of power and control in Western society. The anthropologist, Pierre
Bourdieu (chapter 10), brought these issues to anthropology in a series of writings including
Language and Symbolic Power (1991). Using the metaphor of the marketplace, Bourdieu likened
symbolic capital to economic capital, which could be used to obtain one’s needs. Norman
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Fairclough, with his colleagues, Gunther Kress, Remy Clark, and Brian Street have introduced an
approach, known as Critical Language Studies (chapter 10) to language and culture which focuses
on the analysis of discourse, particularly with respect to ideology and power (chapters 5 and 8).
Fairclough, in his Language and Power, has developed a range of techniques for the analysis of
texts with respect to these issues.
Other Contributions to Language and Culture
This brief sketch offers only a glimpse of the wide range of contributors to this field. In
closing this section, we name a few others who have contributed significantly to this enterprise:
John Thompson, ideology (chapter 11); Christopher Eheret, language and history (chapter 4);
Joseph Greenberg, language classification (chapter 4).
Other General Sources for the Study of Language and Culture.
We mentioned in section 3 that due to its multifaceted historical development (section 5),
the field of linguistic anthropology involves a wide variety of perspectives. As a result, a number
of excellent textbooks appeared on this topic that offer complimentary perspectives on this topic.
We offer the following list, alphabetically arranged of some that we have found useful: Bonvillain
(1997); Burlings (19xx); Hymes (1964); Jaworski and Coupland (1999); Salzman (1998).6
5. What are the current directions in linguistic anthropology?
Today, anthropology is refocusing on the study of language as discourse. This is partly due
to its increasing interest in looking at culture as human activity, and to the increasing attention
given to sociolinguistics in linguistics departments. As a result, the number of sociolinguistic
faculty and linguistic anthropology faculty are on the rise in their respective departments. These
faculty engage in teaching and research (both theoretical and applied) on the areas of language as
discourse and language as thing. As we shall see in the last chapters of the book, an area of
increasing focus is that of language and social justice. Topics here range from 1) language in the
schools (English only versus Ebonics (chapter 15); 2) language and literacy (chapter 14); 3)
language and gender chapter 12), language rights (chapter 13).
Outside the departments of linguistics and anthropology, there has been a renewed interest
in language teaching and learning. The disciplines of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching
English as a Foreign/Second language, typically found in English departments have expanded
rapidly over the last twenty years. The language proficiency movement of the 1980s has given rise
in the teaching of the LOTEs (Languages Other Than English), especially in the area of the LCTLs
(The Less Commonly Taught Languages). Outside the academic sector, there is great need for
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teachers of English all over the world, as well as a need for linguistic anthropology in the public
and private for a wide range of applied activities, from language planning and policy making to
teaching and teacher training. While the majority of linguistic anthropologists (and sociolinguists)
will continue to work in the academic sector, we can expect that the number outside academia will
grow as well.
Questions for Study and Review
1. According to the author, what is the central question of anthropology?
2. Identify the four branches of anthropology. How does each address the question of language
and culture?
3. One of the earliest characterizations of the term “culture was offered by Tylor in 1871 in his
book Primitive Culture “Culture . . . is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
art, law morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of
society” (Tylor 1871:i). How does this description differ from that offered above.
4. Who were Franz Boas and Dwight Whitney and how did they differ as scholars.
5. What is the primary question that the study of language and culture attempts to answer?
6. Using the diagram in section 4, what schools provided the major influences on Chomsky?
Other Resources
1. Bohannan, Paul and Mark Glazer. High Points in Anthropology. New York: McGraw Hill,
1988.
2. Whitney on language; selected writings of William Dwight Whitney. Edited by Michael
Silverstein. Introductory essay by Roman Jakobson. Publisher Cambridge, MIT Press [1971]
3. Robbins, R.H. A short history of linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1967.
4. Boas. Linguistics and Ethnology. From Introduction to the Handbook of American
Languages, reprinted in Language in Culture and Society. D. Hymes (ed.). 1966:15-23.
Glossary
(Note: some of these terms have been repeated from earlier chapters)
Agent: The individual actor in a social setting. A practice-oriented perspective recognizes that
nothing, including the creation and maintenance of institutions, gets done with out individual
agents doing them.
Anthropology: The academic discipline that focuses on what it means to be human. The
fundamental concept in anthropology is culture.
Archeology: On of the four subdisciplines of anthropology that studies culture over time.
Culture: The central concept of anthropology. The concept of culture recognizes that human
societies differ in the way they see and understand the world and in the way its members go
about their daily activities. This concept is developed in chapter 2.
Dialectic: Used here to describe any reciprocal situation where each of the poles of the dialectic,
be they people, institutions or social environments are capable of influencing the other pole.
Examples of dialectical relationships include the relationship between the individual and
society and the relationship between activity and structure.
High culture The works of art produced by a society. Sometimes confused with the
anthropological definition of culture.
6
For full listings, consult the bibliography at the end of the book.
The Consequences of Language: What Is Linguistic Anthropology?
Chapter 1, Page 15
Idealist: An approach to the study of culture which emphasizes the study of ideas, world view, and
meaning.
Institution: A unit of social interaction with roles, practices, goals, discourses and legitimations.
See chapter 2.
Language and culture: Also called linguistic anthropology, language and culture explores the
roles that language plays in culture. It is preferred by some because it suggests a broader scope
than linguistic anthropology.
Legitimation: A justification, be it true or false, for an institution or institutional practices.
Linguistic anthropology: One of the four branches of anthropology that investigates the role that
language plays in human life. Also called ‘language and culture.’
Materialist: An approach to the study of culture which focuses on material conditions; how a
society supplies its basic needs many of which are culturally defined.
Nominalized: The process of converting concepts, activities and processes into nouns. The text
points out that nominalization has important consequences for the study of culture.
Physical anthropology: The branch of anthropology that investigates the way that the evolution
of the human physical form is related to the evolution of culture.
Practice: The name given to the approaches to the study of culture that recognize the dialectic
between structure and activity.
Practice-oriented approach: An approach that recognizes the importance of both structure and
practice in the analysis of human society.
Society: A term used to identify a group of individuals that interact.
Sociocultural anthropology: The branch of anthropology that examines the diversity of human
culture.
Structure: Stands in opposition to ‘practice’ and includes the organizational aspects of society.
The institution is a structure.
Structure-oriented approaches: focus on the analysis of structure without paying much
attention to question to the practice side of human society.
Subdisciplines: The discipline of anthropology has four subdisciplines or subfields: archaeology;
physical anthropology; sociocultural anthropology; and language and culture.
Subject: The technical term for an individual in a social network. Includes the agent and concerns
the basis for the makeup of an individual in society.
Synchronic The study of a language system at one point in time.
World openness: A term used to describe the capacity of humans to acquire different cultures.
The term points out that the human world is open (undefined) until it acquires a cultural
framework with which to view it.