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  3. Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language

Linguistic anthropologists seek to understand the social and cultural character of language: they investigate socioculturally grounded 'meanings' and 'functions' of linguistic forms, and the variations in language usage across cultures. Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language publishes monographs and edited collections that make substantive ethnographic and theoretical contributions to this growing subfield of anthropology. The books are aimed at scholars in the sociology and anthropology of language, anthropological linguistics, sociolinguistics and socioculturally informed psycholinguistics.

  • General Editors: Judith Irvine, Brandeis University, Bambi Schieffelin, New York University
  • Editorial Boards: Marjorie Harness Goodwin, University of South Carolina, Joel Kuipers, George Washington University, Don Kulick, Stockholms Universitet, John Lucy, University of Chicago, Elinor Ochs, University of California, San Diego, Michael Silverstein, University of Chicago

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17 results in Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language

Language and Social Relations
  • Asif Agha
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    16 November 2006
  • Language is closely linked to our social relationships and is the medium through which we participate in a variety of social activities. This fascinating study explores the important role of language in various aspects of our social life, such as identity, gender relations, class, kinship, status, and hierarchies. Drawing on data from over thirty different languages and societies, it shows how language is more than simply a form of social action; it is also an effective tool with which we formulate models of social life and conduct. These models - or particular forms of social behaviour - are linked to the classification of 'types' of action or actor, and are passed 'reflexively' from person to person, and from generation to generation. Providing a unified way of accounting for a variety of social phenomena, this book will be welcomed by all those interested in the interaction between language, culture, and society.

Language, Gender, and Sex in Comparative Perspective
  • Edited by Susan U. Philips, Susan Steele, Christine Tanz
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    26 June 1987
  • Most studies of gender differences in language use have been undertaken from exclusively either a sociocultural or a biological perspective. By contrast, this innovative volume places the analysis of language and gender in the context of a biocultural framework, examining both cultural and biological sources of gender differences in language, as well as the interaction between them. The first two parts of the volume on cultural variation in gender-differentiated language use, comparing Western English-speaking societies with societies elsewhere in the world. The essays are distinguished by an emphasis on the syntax, rather than style or strategy, of gender-differentiated forms of discourse but also often carry out the same forms differently through different choices of language form. These gender differences are shown to be socially organized, although the essays in Part I also raise the possibility that some cross-cultural similarities in the ways males and females differentially use language may be related to sex-based differences in physical and emotional makeup. Part III examines the relationship between language and the brain and shows that although there are differences between the ways males and females process language in the brain, these do not yield any differences in linguistic competence or language use. Taken as a whole, the essays reveal a great diversity in the cultural construction of gender through language and explicity show that while there is some evidence of the influence of biologically based sex differences on the language of women and men, the influence of culture is far greater, and gender differences in language use are better accounted for in terms of culture than in terms of biology. The collection will appeal widely to anthropologists, psychologists, linguists, and other concerned with the understanding of gender roles.

Language and Emotion
  • James M. Wilce
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    09 April 2009
  • Language is a means we use to communicate feelings; we also reflect emotionally on the language we and others use. James Wilce analyses the signals people use to express emotion, looking at the social, cultural and political functions of emotional language around the world. His book demonstrates that speaking, feeling, reflecting, and identifying are interrelated processes and shows how desire or shame are attached to language. Drawing on nearly one hundred ethnographic case studies, it demonstrates the cultural diversity, historical emergence, and political significance of emotional language. Wilce brings together insights from linguistics and anthropology to survey an extremely broad range of genres, cultural concepts, and social functions of emotional expression.

Language Diversity and Thought
  • A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis
  • John A. Lucy
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    02 July 1992
  • Language Diversity and Thought examines the Sapir–Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis: the proposal that the grammar of the particular language we speak affects the way we think about reality. Adopting an historical approach, the book reviews the various lines of empirical inquiry which arose in America in response to the ideas of anthropologists Edward Sapir and Benjamin L. Whorf. John Lucy asks why there has been so little fruitful empirical research on this problem and what lessons can be learned from past work. He then proposes a new, more adequate approach to future empirical research. A companion volume, Grammatical Categories and Cognition, illustrates the proposed approach with an original case study. The study compares the grammar of American English with that of Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language spoken in southeastern Mexico, and then identifies distinctive patterns of thinking related to the differences between the two languages.

Learning How to Ask
  • A Sociolinguistic Appraisal of the Role of the Interview in Social Science Research
  • Charles L. Briggs
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    25 July 1986
  • Interviews are ubiquitous in modern society, and they play a crucial role in social scientific research. But, as Charles Briggs convincingly argues in this book, received interviewing techniques rest on fundamental misapprehensions about the nature both of the interview as a communicative event, and of the nature of the data that it produces. Furthermore, interviewers rarely examine the compatibility of interviews as a means of acquiring information to one another. These oversights often blind interviewers to ensuing errors of interpretation, as well as to the limitations of the interview as a means of acquiring data. To conflict these problems, Professor Briggs presents an analysis of the 'communicative blunders' that he himself committed in conducting research interviews among Spanish-speakers in northern New Mexico. By focusing on these errors and exploring how they may be avoided, he is able to propose new techniques for designing, implementing, and analyzing interview-based research. These rest on identifying the subjects' resources for conveying information, and the relative compatability of the shared rules and understandings that underlie their strategies with those associated with interviews. Critical of existing paradigms of interviewing, which he sees as deriving from Western 'folk' theories of reality and communication, Briggs shows that the development of more sophisticated interviewing methodologies requires further research into interviewing itself. Briggs's conclusions provide a basis for the reexamination of current uses of interviews in a wide range of contexts - from social science research to job applications, welfare and health care delivery, criminal and legal investigations, journalism and broadcasting, and other areas of everyday life. His book will appeal to linguists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, as well as other readers whose research or professional activities depend on the use of interviews.

Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking
  • 2nd edition
  • Edited by Richard Bauman, Joel Sherzer
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    19 October 1989
  • First published in 1974, this collection of classic case studies in the ethnography of speaking had a formative influence on the field. No other volume has so successfully provided a broad, cross-cultural survey of the use, role and function of language and speech in social life. The essays deal with traditional societies in Native North, Middle, and South America, Africa, and Oceania, as well as English, French, and Yiddish speaking communities in Europe and North America and Afro-American communities in North America and the Caribbean. Now reissued, the collection includes a key introduction by the editors that traces the subsequent development of the ethnography of speaking and indicates directions for future research. The theoretical and methodological concepts and perspectives that illuminated the first edition are recognized anon and valued by many disciplines beyond that of linguistic anthropology. Scholars and students whose backgrounds may be in literature, speech communication, performance studies or ethnomusicology will equally welcome this edition.

Language Socialization across Cultures
  • Edited by Bambi B. Schieffelin, Elinor Ochs
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    27 February 1987
  • Children's aquisition of language and their acquisition of culture are processes that have usually been studied separately. In exploring cross-culturally the connections between the two, this volume provides a new, alternative, integrated approach to the developmental study of language and culture. The volume focuses on the ways in which children are both socialized through language and socialized to use language in culturally specific ways. The contributors examine the verbal interactions of small children with their caregivers and peers in several different societies around the world, showing that these interactions are socially and culturally organized, and that it is by participating in them that children come to understand sociocultural orientations. They emphasize the salient language behaviours of children and others, and show how these are embedded in broader patterns of social behaviour and cultural knowledge. They reveal that various features of discourse - phonological, morpho-syntactic, lexical, pragmatic, and conversational - carry sociocultural information, and that language in use is a major resource for conveying and displaying socio-cultural knowledge. As children acquire language, so they are also acquiring a world view. This innovative approach to the study of language acquisition and socialization will appeal widely to anthropologists, linguists, psychologists, specialists in communication studies, and educationists.

Language, Identity, and Marginality in Indonesia
  • The Changing Nature of Ritual Speech on the Island of Sumba
  • Joel C. Kuipers
  • Published online:
    05 July 2011
    Print publication:
    10 September 1998
  • Indonesia's policy since independence has been to foster the national language. In some regions, local languages are still political rallying points, but their significance has diminished, and the rapid spread of Indonesian as the national language of political and religious authority has been described as the 'miracle of the developing world'. Among the Weyewa, on the island of Sumba, this shift has displaced a once vibrant tradition of ritual poetic speech, which until recently was an important source of authority, tradition, and identity. But it has also given rise to new and hybrid forms of poetic expression. This first study to analyse language change in relation to political marginality argues that political coercion or cognitive process of 'style reduction' may partially explain what has happened, but equally important in language shift is the role of linguistic ideologies.

Shifting Languages
  • J. Joseph Errington
  • Published online:
    01 June 2011
    Print publication:
    10 December 1998
  • Indonesian is the national language of a vast, plural nation state, the world's fourth-largest country with a population of over 200 million. Although its use is growing rapidly, and is now spoken by nearly everyone over the age of six, it has almost relatively few native speakers. This remarkable growth, unprecedented in the development world, is largely due to the forceful presence of state institutions that use, promote, and disseminate a language first introduced by the Dutch colonial administration. Joseph Errington's third book on language in Indonesia is a detailed analysis of 'shifting languages' in two small Javanese communities. A key figure in this area of research, he examines changing conversation practices in relation to questions of ethnicity, nationalism, and political culture. Errington concludes that the Javanese story has theoretical implications beyond the two villages to other parts of Indonesia, South East Asia, and to the developing world in general.

Grammatical Categories and Cognition
  • A Case Study of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis
  • John A. Lucy
  • Published online:
    19 January 2010
    Print publication:
    02 July 1992
  • Grammatical Categories and Cognition uses original, empirical data to examine the Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis: the proposal that the grammar of the particular language we speak affects the way we think about reality. The author compares the grammar of American English with that of Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language spoken in south-eastern Mexico, focusing on differences in the number marking patterns of the two languages. He then identifies distinctive patterns of thought relating to these differences by means of a systematic assessment of memory and classification preferences among speakers of both languages. The study illustrates the distinct approach to empirical research on the linguistic relativity hypothesis which Lucy develops in a companion volume Language Diversity and Thought.

Investigating Obsolescence
  • Studies in Language Contraction and Death
  • Edited by Nancy C. Dorian
  • Published online:
    08 January 2010
    Print publication:
    06 July 1989
  • Languages die for political, economic and cultural reasons, and can disappear remarkably quickly. Between ten and fifty per cent of all languages currently spoken can be considered endangered, but it is only in the past ten years or so that due importance has been given to the study of contracting and dying languages. This volume represents the first attempt to give a broad overview of current research in a developing field, and to examine some of the crucial methodological and theoretical issues to which it has given rise. It includes twenty studies by scholars who, taken together, have worked on a range of languages currently under threat across the globe. They occur in diverse speech communities where the expanding languages are not only those that are very familiar - English, Spanish, or French, for example - but also Swedish, Arabic, Thai etc. The final part of the volume is devoted to a consideration of the implications of research into language obsolescence for other aspects of linguistics and anthropology - first and second language acquisition, historical linguistics, and the study of pidgins and creoles and of language and social process. As a whole, this collection will certainly stimulate further and better co-ordinated research into a topic of direct relevance to sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics.

Ku Waru
  • Language and Segmentary Politics in the Western Nebilyer Valley, Papua New Guinea
  • Francesca Merlan, Alan Rumsey
  • Published online:
    30 December 2009
    Print publication:
    29 March 1991
  • The highlanders of New Guinea are renowned for their elaborate systems of ceremonial exchange. Although much has been written about them, previous accounts have concentrated far less on the conduct of exchange events than on the structure of exchange systems. This 1991 book deals centrally with the conduct of particular exchange events, and shows through examination of them how larger social structures are reproduced and transformed. As part of the emphasis on exchange as social action, the book closely examines the oratory that plays a crucial part in the events. Basing their study on original fieldwork carried out in the Nebilyer Valley, Francesca Merlan and Alan Rumsey focus on an inter related set of large-scale compensation payments which arose out of an episode of warfare. This book furthers our understanding of the interaction between social structures and historical events; and particularly of the crucial role of talk. It will be of special interest to anthropologists and linguists.

Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture
  • Marcyliena Morgan
  • Published online:
    17 November 2009
    Print publication:
    04 July 2002
  • African American language is central to the teaching of linguistics and language in the United States, and this book, in the series Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, is aimed specifically at upper level undergraduates and graduates. It covers the entire field - grammar, speech, and verbal genres, and it also discusses the various historical strands that need to be identified in order to understand the development of African American English. The first section deals with the social and cultural history of the American South, the second with urban and northern black popular culture, and the third with policy issues. Morgan examines the language within the context of the changing and complex African American and general American speech communities, and their culture, politics, art and institutions. She also covers the current heated political and educational debates about the status of the African American dialect.

Language, Culture, and Society
  • Key Topics in Linguistic Anthropology
  • Edited by Christine Jourdan, Kevin Tuite
  • Published online:
    16 November 2009
    Print publication:
    11 May 2006
  • Language, our primary tool of thought and perception, is at the heart of who we are as individuals. Languages are constantly changing, sometimes into entirely new varieties of speech, leading to subtle differences in how we present ourselves to others. This revealing account brings together eleven leading specialists from the fields of linguistics, anthropology, philosophy and psychology, to explore the fascinating relationship between language, culture, and social interaction. A range of major questions are discussed: How does language influence our perception of the world? How do new languages emerge? How do children learn to use language appropriately? What factors determine language choice in bi- and multilingual communities? How far does language contribute to the formation of our personalities? And finally, in what ways does language make us human? Language, Culture and Society will be essential reading for all those interested in language and its crucial role in our social lives.

Voices of Modernity
  • Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality
  • Richard Bauman, Charles L. Briggs
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    03 July 2003
  • Language and tradition have long been relegated to the sidelines as scholars have considered the role of politics, science, technology and economics in the making of the modern world. This reading of over two centuries of philosophy, political theory, anthropology, folklore and history argues that new ways of imagining language and representing supposedly premodern people - the poor, labourers, country folk, non-europeans and women - made political and scientific revolutions possible. The connections between language ideologies, privileged linguistic codes, and political concepts and practices shape the diverse ways we perceive ourselves and others. This 2003 book demonstrates that contemporary efforts to make schemes of social inequality based on race, gender, class and nationality seem compelling and legitimate, rely on deeply-rooted ideas about language and tradition. Showing how critics of modernity unwittingly reproduce these foundational fictions, it suggests strategies for challenging the undemocratic influence of these voices of modernity.

Literacy and Literacies
  • Texts, Power, and Identity
  • James Collins, Richard Blot
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    08 May 2003
  • Literacy and Literacies is an engaging account of literacy and its relation to power. The book develops a synthesis of literacy studies, moving beyond received categories, and exploring the domain of power through questions of colonialism, modern state formation, educational systems and official versus popular literacies. Collins and Blot offer in-depth critical discussion of particular cases and discuss the role of literacies in the formation of class, gender, and ethnic identity. Through their analysis of two domains - those of literacies and power, and of literacies and subjectivity - they challenge received assumptions about literacy, intellectual development and social progress and argue that neither 'universalist' nor 'particularist' accounts offer satisfactory approaches to the phenomenon. This is a sustained exploration of the domain of power in relation to literacy. It will be welcomed by students and researchers in anthropology, linguistics, literacy studies and history.

Literacy, Emotion and Authority
  • Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll
  • Niko Besnier
  • Published online:
    14 August 2009
    Print publication:
    24 August 1995
  • Literacy continues to be a central issue in anthropology, but methods of perceiving and examining it have changed in recent years. In this 1995 study Niko Besnier analyses the transformation of Nukulaelae from a non-literate into a literate society using a contemporary perspective which emphasizes literacy as a social practice embedded in a socio-cultural context. He shows how a small and isolated Polynesian community, with no access to print technology, can become deeply steeped in literacy in little more than a century, and how literacy can take on radically divergent forms depending on the social and cultural needs and characteristics of the society in which it develops. His case study, which has implications for understanding literacy in other societies, illuminates the relationship between norm and practice, between structure and agency, and between group and individual.