Drawing from two broad disciplines, Linguistic anthropology goes beyond simple analysis of language structure and patterns to examining the context and situation in which language is used. Ottenheimer (41) defines linguistic anthropology as the study of language as a cultural resource and practice within the context of anthropology. The discipline is therefore, the study of variation in human languages, the roots of different languages and the role of language in shaping human communication, thought and behavior. The subfield of cultural anthropology focuses on how language is used, the relationship between different languages and culture and how humans acquire culture.
As a concrete domain of inquiry, linguistic anthropology studies begin with theoretical assumptions to study linguistic signs as representations of the world. There are three fundamental paradigms of interest to the area of linguistic anthropology. The first paradigm is anthropological linguistics which includes themes such as grammatical description, issues regarding linguistic relativity and typological classification. The second paradigm is linguistic anthropology which encompasses areas such as the ethnography of speaking or communication, units of language analysis, and the ethnopoetics approach. The third paradigm focuses on the study of anthropological issues through the analysis of linguistic data and methods (Ottenheimer 41).
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"Linguistic Anthropology".
The field of study focuses on the areas of identity, socialization, ideologies, and social space as they relates to individual cultural linguistics. The identity aspect of linguistic anthropology focuses on how language creates group or cultural identity in a series of settings. The socialization aspect addresses issues of how language shapes children, foreigners or infants adoption into a specific community or learning to participate in their cultures. The social space aspect of linguistic anthropology focuses on how language transforms a given society’s general beliefs and practices (Ottenheimer 41).
- Ottenheimer, Harriet. The Anthropology of Language: An Introduction to Linguistic
Anthropology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013.
