Linguistic Anthropology Notes

Introducing Linguistic Anthropology

Linguistic anthropology involves studying human language universally.
It examines this language within the broader context of anthropology.

Why Study Language?

Language study is crucial due to its pervasiveness and complexity in human life.
It enhances awareness of language-related problems and offers unique insights.
Examples of language-related issues:
- Misunderstandings in scheduling (e.g., "next Tuesday").
- The necessity of legal translation, despite shared language.
- Communication challenges between patients and physicians.
- Subtle sexism in textbooks.
- Controversies surrounding bilingual education and Ebonics.
Key questions in linguistic anthropology:
- How can language and culture be adequately described?
- Do animals exhibit linguistic capacities?
- How did language originate and influence human evolution?
- How are languages acquired?
- How can languages be classified?
- What is the relationship between language and thought?
- What is meaning, and how is it learned?
- What does it mean to be human?

Modern Myths Concerning Languages

Many common beliefs about languages are misconceptions.
Myth: Most of the world is monolingual, like America.
Myth: English spelling is phonetic and rule-based.
Myth: Most writing systems are alphabetic.
Myth: Immersion is the best way to learn a language.
Myth: Some languages are inherently harder to learn.
Myth: Some languages are more "primitive."
Myth: Language is unambiguous; misinterpretation is the problem.
Myth: Dialects indicate a lack of education.
Myth: Language use reflects intelligence.
Myth: Fluency in a second language diminishes native language mastery.
Myth: Foreign language ability is a special skill few possess.
Myth: Dictionaries are the ultimate authority on language.
Myth: Double negatives are illogical.
Myth: Linguistic background simplifies language learning.
Myth: Languages have inherent personalities (e.g., French is romantic).
Myth: Native Americans share a single language.
Myth: A large vocabulary equates to language proficiency.
Unwritten languages are often mistakenly considered "primitive."
This misconception stems from ethnocentric attitudes about language sounds and combinations.
Example: The Czech word $scvrnkls$ 'you flicked off (something) with your finger' appears strange to English speakers due to its consonant cluster.
Grammatical complexity does not equate to language effectiveness.
Some languages have less "grammar" than others, but this doesn't make the language less useful.
Example: Takelma, an extinct language from Oregon, had complex verb morphology with inflections for tense-modes, person, number, voice, conditional, locative, instrumental, and aspect. Edward Sapir's description of Takelma morphology fills 238 pages.
The vocabulary of a language reflects the needs of its speakers.
A language associated with a relatively simple culture would have a smaller vocabulary than the language of a complex society
A language's vocabulary is sufficient to serve the sociocultural needs of its speakers.
Example: The Agta of the Philippines have thirty-one verbs for types of fishing.
Example: The Aguaruna of Peru have 566 names for plant genera.
Conversely, complex societies have lexical specialization in specific domains.
Example: Munich beer terminology includes over seventy terms based on strength, color, fizziness, aging, clarity, and brewery.
Dell Hymes argues languages are not functionally equivalent; their roles vary across societies.
The language of the Mezquital Otomi in Mexico, while preserving their culture, limited their integration into national society due to lack of Spanish proficiency.
Literacy significantly impacts a language's success.
In multilingual countries, languages used in literacy gain political and economic power.
In Mexico, Spanish is associated with knowledge, while indigenous languages are viewed as signs of ignorance.
Linguistic profiling, judging individuals based on speech, can lead to language prejudice.
This prejudice can exist even between languages with long histories, such as attitudes toward Puerto Ricans in the eastern United States.
Languages and dialects can classify people, leading to discriminatory treatment.
Linguistic prejudice is closely related to racial prejudice.
Edward Sapir noted that all attempts to correlate linguistic morphology with cultural development are futile.
The vocabulary of a language reflects the culture it serves, but language should not be identified solely with its dictionary.

Brief History of Anthropology

Anthropology is defined as the holistic study of humankind.
Key propositions of anthropology:
- Understanding the origin and nature of humans as biological organisms.
- Studying cultural evolution and human adaptation.
- Recognizing the importance of language in human communication.
Anthropology addresses the diversity of race, language, and culture.
Early anthropology focused on nonliterate tribal peoples considered "primitive."
Modern anthropology also studies contemporary cultures, including the anthropologist's own.
The establishment of the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879 marked a turning point in the study of Native American languages and cultures.
Franz Boas played a dominant role in early American anthropology.
By World War II, anthropology was established with four subfields: biological, cultural, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology.
The holistic approach emphasizes the interconnectedness of different facets of the human condition.
Anthropology involves fieldwork, often augmented by laboratory work.
Cultural anthropologists study diverse societies, including modern ones.

Anthropology, Linguistics, and Linguistic Anthropology

Linguistics is the scientific study of language structure.
Linguistic anthropology studies language in its biological and sociocultural contexts.
Linguists focus on language structure, while linguistic anthropologists focus on speech use and its relationship to society and culture.
Linguistic anthropology examines communicative links, traditional learned behavior, and cultural values in relation to language.
Examples differentiating linguistics and linguistic anthropology:
- Linguistic Statement: In English, the nasal consonants n as in sin, and ŋ (written as ng) as in sing, are in contrast because they differentiate the meanings of two English words.
- Linguistic Statement: The Modern English word woman developed over the centuries from the Old English wifman.
- Linguistic Anthropology Statement: In Javanese, the choice of words is determined by such characteristics of the speaker and the addressee as their age, gender, wealth, education, and occupation; and the more refined the level of speech, the slower, softer, and more even the presentation will be.
- Linguistic Anthropology Statement: The remarkable cave-wall paintings and carvings of the Upper Pale-olithic Cro-Magnons serve as an indirect proof that these prehistoric people had a full-fledged language.
The term linguistic anthropology is preferred over anthropological linguistics.
It emphasizes the study of language within the framework of anthropology.

Methods of Linguistic Anthropology

Linguistic anthropology is concerned wth the study of language in its biological and sociocultural contexts

Contrasting Linguistics with Linguistic Anthropology

Linguistics is the scientific study of language and its structure.
Linguistic anthropology studies language in its biological and sociocultural contexts.
Sociocultural refers to the interconnection between society and culture
Linguistic anthropologists study communicative links of individuals within a society and between groups

The Fieldwork Component

Anthropological research is primarily conducted in the field.
Participant observation involves immersion in daily activities for extended periods.
Communication in the local language is essential.
Interpreters, if used, should be selected carefully.
Knowledge of a language is an invaluable tool for gaining an informed understanding of the many aspects of culture.
Bronislaw Malinowski emphasized the value of language in understanding native sociology and folklore.
Linguistic anthropologists need both language skills and cultural knowledge.
Informants, now often called consultants, contribute intellectual insights.
Kenneth L. Hale advocated for the full collaboration of language informants.
He emphasized that the distribution of linguistic talent and interest and the distribution of formal education in the Western sense do not necessarily correspond in any way.
Data collection away from the field is useful for preliminary analysis.
Describing language function requires fieldwork and in-person interactions with speakers.
There are hundreds of languages that linguists and anthropologists know relatively little about.
Ideally for fieldwork, informants should be active participants in their culture.
Informants should be able to enunciate clearly.
Both men and women need to participate in fieldwork, and there participation varies across cultures.
Both younger and older members of a society should participate in elicitating data.
The field-worker should obtain material that is dialectally uniform and spoken in a natural tone of voice and at a normal rate of speed.
Eliciting data starts with simple questions and progresses to unprompted discussions, narratives, and conversations.
Tape recordings are valuable for accurate transcription.
Video cassette recorders are helpful for capturing body language.
A corpus is adequate for studying the sounds and grammar of a language once several days of recording and analysis have passed with no new sounds or grammatical forms noted.
The size of a corpus, the collection of language data available to the linguist, should be large, and data should be drawn from both casual and noncasual speech.
Practical speaking skills and knowledge of a language's structure are prerequisite for the full understanding of the relations between a language on the one hand and the society and its culture on the other.
Culture shock manifests as disorientation and anxiety.
Field-workers must adjust to different foods, lack of privacy, poor hygiene, and physical discomfort.
The overall experience can be frustrating and is a challenging but interesting undertaking.
Michael Agar discussed Malinowski's fieldwork in Melanesia and New Guinea, where he dived right in, lived with the natives, and learned their language as they spoke it while they went about their everyday business.
- Malinowski became the patriot saint of ethnography and pioneer of the approach to fieldwork, a name that is now enshrined in the jargon, called participant observation. You don't just stand around and watch like a parody of a lab technician; you jump in and do everyday life with people to get a firsthand feel for how things go. At the same time, you keep a third eye at an altitude of several feet above the action and watch what's going on in a more distant way.

A Checklist for Research in the Field

Field research experiences are generally unique, and a checklist can be helpful.
Preparatory Stage:
- Search for existing publications
- Draft a concrete project plan
- Preparation of a budget
- Write-up of an application for a research grant, to include:
  - applicant's curriculum vitae
  - title and description of project
  - justification
  - methodology
  - expected contribution when finished
  - (be specific; poorly or vaguely described projects are not acceptable)
  - anticipated cost
  - travel expenses
  - maintenance in the field (food and "housing")
  - informants' services (money or gifts)
  - equipment (computer, camera, etc.)
  - minor incidentals
  - related academic work
    - prior to departure for the field
    - upon return
  - publication plans
- Concrete preparation for travel to a foreign country:
  - valid passport
  - necessary visa(s)
  - relevant inoculations
  - small dictionaries of the languages of the area
  - information about the local fauna, flora, climate, etc..
  - glasses (two pairs)
  - personal medicines
  - first-aid kit
  - antibiotic
  - antihistamine
  - medicinal preparations used in treating:
    - dysentery
    - malaria
    - general body pain
  - aspirin
  - tablets to disinfect water for drinking
  - bandaging for wounds
  - camera and accessories
  - paper, pencils
  - mosquito net, etc.
    field-research stage
  - acclimatization to the environment (people, climate, hygienic conditions, etc.)
  - overcoming culture shock
  - efforts to gain confidence of members of the group
  - cultivating friendly personal relations
  - finding a local patron (an older and distinguished member of the group)
  - finding reliable interpreters (if any)
  - finding good informants (men and women)
  - stabilizing daily routine
  - applying implicit and explicit rules for behaving in a foreign culture
- field-research methods
  - talk little, listen carefully
  - record data as soon as possible after receiving information
  - avoid questions answerable by "yes" or "no"
  - ask simple to-the-point questions
  - obtain dialogs between native people
  - obtain traditional narratives
  - be a participant observer
  - collect data using both the emic approach (information elicited from informants) and the etic approach (obtained by "objective" observation)
  - carry out interviews:
    - spontaneous
    - with questions prepared beforehand
  - produce a small-scale demographic survey
  - map the territory (for example, the village and its surroundings)
  - conduct case studies
  - explore the lexicons of native cultural domains
- possible sources of tension and stress
  - lack of privacy
  - strikingly different living conditions:
    - food
    - beverages
    - hygiene
    - parasites
    - insects
    - diseases
  - (be careful not to become the local physician: lack of success could pose danger)
- the post-field-trip stage
  - organizing and indexing of field notes
  - analysis of data
  - writing up of results
  - preparing publications
  - ethical aspects of publications (could some published information pose risk to members of the group or the informants?)
  - reporting on the use of grant funds to the funding organization
  - maintaining friendly contacts (if possible) with the members of the group studied