Linguistic Anthropology

It is an interdisciplinary field that is dedicated to the learning and education of language as a cultural resource as well as speaking as a cultural practice. According to linguistic anthropology, the human language faculty is assumed as a cognitive and social accomplishment that helps in giving the intellectual tools to think and act in the environment. 

Furthermore, the study of linguistic anthropology should be done by proper and detailed documentation of what speakers say as they participate in social activities every single day. This documentation counts on observation of the participant as well as some other techniques, comprising audio-visual (AV) recording, interviewing the participants, etc.

Historical Development

Linguistic anthropology arose from the growth of three different paradigms that set the methods of approaching linguistic anthropology. The first one is now called ‘anthropological linguistics’ and it concentrates on the documentation of the languages. Moreover, the second one is called ‘linguistic anthropology’ that participates in theoretical training of the use of language. Lastly, the third one evolved over the past two or three decades, learnings issues from other sub-fields of anthropology with the linguistic tactics. Therefore, they evolved successively. All three paradigms are still experienced today as well.

1st Paradigm

The first paradigm is called ‘anthropological linguistics’ and this one is devoted to themes exclusive to the sub-discipline; documentation of the languages that were then perceived as doomed to disappearance, exclusively focusing on the languages of native North American tribes. It is also that paradigm that mostly focuses on linguistics. The themes included are as follows:

• Grammatical description
• Typological classification
•  Linguistic relativity

2nd Paradigm

The second paradigm is markable through the switch from ‘anthropological linguistics’ to ‘linguistic anthropology’, indicating more anthropological attention on learning. In addition, this word was the suggestion of Dell Hymes, who was also accountable, with John Gumperz, for this unique idea of ethnography of communication. The word linguistic anthropology represented Hymes’ vision concerning the future, where language would be a learning in the context of the circumstances, and it would be relating to the community speaking it. This new period would include multiple new technological improvements and growth like mechanical recording, etc.

3rd Paradigm

The third paradigm began at the end of the 1980s. It was refocused on anthropology by giving a linguistic approach to the issues related to anthropology. Moreover, instead of focusing on exploring the language, the third paradigm anthropologists concentrate on learning culture with linguistic tools. These themes consist of the following:

• Investigations of social and personal identities
• Sharing of ideologies
• Creation of narrative interactions amid individuals

Moreover, like how the second paradigm utilised the new technology in its learnings and education, the third paradigm deeply comprises the use of audio-video (AV) documentation to give the research good support.

Fields of Interest

Contemporary linguistic anthropology remains as a researcher in all three of the paradigms mentioned above; documentation of the languages, learning, and knowledge of the language through context, and learning and analysing of identity with linguistic means. The third paradigm, the learning, and practice of anthropological issues is a species-rich area of learning for present linguistic anthropologists.

Identity and Intersubjectivity

A good contract of work in linguistic anthropology examines the questions of sociocultural identity linguistically as well as discursively. Moreover, the linguistic anthropologist Don Kulick has done so about identity, for instance, in a sequence of settings, first in a village named Gapun in northern Papua New Guinea. He discovered the application of two languages with and around children in the Gapun village; the traditional language termed as ‘Taiap’, not spoken by anyone anywhere but in their village and thus primordially ‘indexical’ of the identity of ‘Gapuner’, as well as Tok Pisin, the broadly mixing official language of New Guinea.

Socialisation

In a sequence of learnings, linguistic anthropologists Bambi Schieffelin and Elinor Ochs addressed the anthropological theme of socialisation which is the procedure through which infants, children, and foreigners become parts of a particular community, learning to contribute and take part in its culture, with the use of linguistic and other ethnographic techniques. Moreover, they learned that the procedures of enculturation, as well as socialisation, don’t occur separately from the procedure of language acquisition; however, children obtain language as well as the culture at the same time in what amounts to an integrated procedure.

Ideologies

In a third example of the 3rd paradigm, since Roman Jakobson’s scholar Michael Silverstein unlocked the way, there has been an upsurge in the work done by linguistic anthropologists on the main anthropological theme of ideologies; moreover, in this case, ‘language ideologies’ are sometimes described as ‘shared forms of common-sense notions regarding the nature of language in our world’.

Conclusion

Linguistic anthropology is defined as the interdisciplinary learning and education of how and in what manner language can influence our social life. Furthermore, it is a part of anthropology that initiated from the endeavour to document endangered languages and has developed over the past century to include most aspects and use of the structure of the language.