Linguistic Anthropology

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Linguistic Anthropology

• The Development of Structuralism

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Wilhelm von Humboldt

• Language is the medium through which humans
  perceive the world
• There is a relationship between a nations
  language and its character

(1767 1835)
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Wilhelm von Humboldt

• The outer form of a language consists of the
  raw material the sounds used to make
  different languages
• The inner form is the pattern the structure
  of the grammar and the meanings given to the
  raw material
• It is the inner form that distinguishes
  languages from one another

Wilhelm von Humboldt (ca. 1830)
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Wilhelm von Humboldt

• Language is dynamic, not static.
• Language is an activity, not a product of
  activity.
• A language is not a set of actual utterances
  produced by speakers
• It is the underlying principles or rules that
  made it possible for speakers to produce such
  utterances.
• A Structural conception of language.

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Ferdinand de Saussure

• Language is a structured system that can be
  viewed
• synchronically (as it exists at any one time)
• diachronically (as it changes over time)

(18571913)
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Ferdinand de Saussure

• parole the way a particular person speaks
• langue the system of rules that makes it
  possible for a person to know how to speak
• parole

parole
parole
langue
parole
parole
parole
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Ferdinand de Saussure on Signs

• Language is a symbolic system that depends upon
  signs
• Signified an abstract mental concept
• Signifier a material "sound-image" (i.e., an
  utterance, a written word, a picture)
• the process of signification is what gives
  meaning to an expression

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Fredinand de Saussure

• Wanted to counter prescriptive linguistics as a
  program for telling people how they should use
  their language (standard)
• His interest was in descriptive linguistics to
  describe how people actually use language
  (nonstandard)
• Language is a social fact (à la Durkheim)
• Language is a sequence of sounds that carry
  meaning

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The Structure of Sentences

• paradigmatic

• syntagmatic

• The dog threw up on the rug.
• What can substitute for dog? For rug?
• Animate vs. inanimate nouns

• When a sign in one slot affects what happens in
  another slot
• The dog slept on the rug.
• The dog marinated on the rug.

Michael Agar, Language Shock Understanding the
Culture of Conversation, 1994
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Franz Boas

• Preserve native languages before they are lost
  forever
• Develop a comprehensive system of synchronic
  description
• Sounds
• Grammar
• Dictionary
• Linguistics a s a way to study culture

Franz Boas (1858-1942)
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Leonard Bloomfield

• Studied Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian)
  languages, especially Tagalog
• Showed that the techniques of historical
  linguistic techniques applied equally well to
  non- western languages

(1887-1949)
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Leonard Bloomfield

• Language (1933) becomes the standard textbook of
  American linguistics
• Linguistic phenomena could properly and
  successfully be studied when isolated from their
  nonlinguistic environment

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Leonard Bloomfield

• Heavily influenced by behavioralism
• Investigate only empirically observable phenomena
• Study what people say to one another and how they
  respond

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The Behaviorist Approach
Focus only on what can be observed
Stimulus
Response
in between lies a black box
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Bloomfields Behaviorism

• The elements of language can be studied in
  isolation from the nonlinguistic environment
  you study sound systems and grammar, not
  semantics
• A child learns language by listening to and then
  repeating what others have said
• No speculation about what is going on in a
  persons head when they are using language