Definition

• Linguistic anthropology as practiced today . . . is the understanding of the crucial role played by language (and other semiotic resources) in the constitution of society and its cultural representations. To pursue this goal, linguistic anthropologists have ventured into the study of everyday encounters, language socialization, ritual and political events, scientific disousre, verbal art, language contact and language shift, literacy events, and media."
• • • • "Unlike linguistics, [linguistic] anthropologists have never considered language in isolation from social life but have insisted on its interdependence with cultural and social structures. In this sense, their technical linguistic analyses are means to an end, data from which it is possible to make inferences about larger anthropological issues. Hence, under the . . . label 'language and culture,' anthropologists study topics such as the relations between world views, grammatical categories and semantic fields, the influence of speech on socialization and personal relationships, and the interaction of linguistic and social communities. . . . [T]he relation between languages and social groups cannot be taken for granted, but is a problem which must be ethnographically investigated."