This introductory chapter points out some issues that are central to the anthropology of language. The subdiscipline of linguistic anthropology in the narrow sense is an indispensable source of questions, methods, and solutions in the anthropology of language. The chapter raises some challenges that linguistic anthropology must meet, articulates the questions that define these challenges. It focuses on the implications of a causal account of linguistic transmission, given that the human mind is the niche in which language is propagated and to which language systems come to be adapted. A way to look at the language-culture relation is to examine how the grammatical structures and sub-systems of different languages encode semantic distinctions that appear to correlate with special cultural concerns of the language's speakers. The chapter provides how the other chapters are organized in the book.

The oral-written contrast has roots in both cultural psychology and anthropology. The contrast between oral and written language has proved to be especially productive in educational linguistics, particularly for understanding the enormous task that speakers face as they become fully literate in their first language. Written texts differ from oral discourse in numerous dimensions that reflect both the real-world contexts of language production and comprehension and the conventions that have become associated with particular written and spoken genres over time. Communicative goals of speakers and writers in relation to their audience are broadly similar across genres and modalities: the task of securing the interactant's commitment, interest, and uptake is an overriding concern in the production of even prototypically written register texts like academic articles. The influence of written language on oral communication comes through children's exposure to new words and grammatical structures in written text.