Anthropological
linguistics is the... study of the relationship between language and culture;it usually refers to
work on languages that have no written records. In the United States a close relationship
between anthropology and linguistics developed as a result
of research by anthropologists into the American Indian cultures and languages.
Early students in this field discovered what they felt to be significant
relationships between the languages, thought, and cultures of the Indian groups. The issue of the relatedness
of language and culture is still a controversial one, and it is now thought by
many scholars that the relationship is not as close as was first suspected.
Anthropologists currently draw on linguistic techniques primarily for the
analysis of such areas as kinship systems, botanical taxonomies, and colour terms, but a number of anthropologists are still
engaged in fieldwork centring on language description
Anthropological Linguistics provides a forum for the
full range of scholarly study of the languages and cultures of the peoples of
the world, especially the native peoples of the Americas. Embracing the field
of language and culture broadly defined, the journal includes articles and
research reports addressing cultural, historical, and philological aspects of
linguistic study, including analyses of texts and discourse; studies of
semantic systems and cultural classifications; onomastic studies; ethnohistorical
papers that draw significantly on linguistic data; studies of linguistic
prehistory and genetic classification, both methodological and substantive;
discussions and interpretations of archival material; edited historical
documents; and contributions to the history of the field.
Anthropological linguistics is concerned with
- Descriptive (or synchronic) linguistics: Describing dialects (forms of a language used by a specific speech community). This study includes phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and grammar.
- Historical (or diachronic) linguistics: Describing changes in dialects and languages over time. This study includes the study of linguistic divergence and language families, comparative linguistics, etymology, and philology.
- Ethnolinguistics: Analyzing the relationship between culture, thought, and language.
- Sociolinguistics: Analyzing the social functions of language and the social, political, and economic relationships among and between members of speech communities.
Bibliography
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