Carol A. Chapelle - The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics

12 Wierzbicka, A. (2002). Sexism in grammar: The semantics of gender in Australian English. Anthropological Linguistics, 44(2), 143–77.

WILLIAM A. FOLEY

Anthropological linguistics is the subfield of linguistics (and anthropology) concerned with the place of language in its wider social and cultural context, its role in forging and sustaining cultural practices and social structures. While Duranti (2001) denies that a true field of anthropological linguistics exists, preferring the term linguistic anthropology to cover this subfield, this author regards the two terms as interchangeable. With some cogency, Duranti (2001) argues that, due to current concerns of mainstream linguistics with the explicit analysis of the formal structures of language in contrast to anthropology's broader approach of looking at how humans make meaning through semiotic systems in cultural practices, this subfield is properly included within anthropology rather than linguistics. However, this author begs to differ, believing that the current historical divisions of academic turf are just that—historical and contingent—and subject to change, and would be loath to institutionalize such divisions by insisting on rigidly labeled compartments. The current disciplinary concerns of linguistics do not reflect its earlier history, in which it was firmly enjoined to anthropology (Boas, 1940; Sapir, 1949; Haas, 1977). It is hoped that, over time, this more inclusive view will reassert itself, and hence the preference is to use both terms to cover this subfield, although, as titled, the label anthropological linguistics will be used in this entry. For excellent and up‐to‐date coverage of the very wide range of topics dealt with under anthropological linguistics, see Enfield, Kockelman, and Sidnell (2014).

Anthropological linguistics needs to be distinguished from a number of neighboring disciplines with overlapping interests; first, its close sister, sociolinguistics. Anthropological linguistics views language through the prism of the core anthropological concept, culture, and as such seeks to uncover the meaning behind the use, misuse, or non‐use of language, its different forms, registers, and styles. It is an interpretive discipline, peeling away at language to find cultural understandings. Sociolinguistics, on the other hand, views language as a social institution, one of those institutions within which individuals and groups carry out social interaction. It seeks to discover how linguistic behavior patterns with respect to social groupings and correlates differences in linguistic behavior with the variables defining social groups, such as age, sex, class, race, and so on.

While this distinction is neither sharp nor absolute, it is useful and perhaps an example might help in establishing this. Consider the variable pronunciation of the progressive/gerundive ending, so that running can be pronounced [rΛnIŋ] or [rΛnIn] (informally described as “dropping the g ,” i.e., “runnin”). If we approach this variable from a sociolinguistic perspective, we will note the correlation between each pronunciation and particular social groupings, for example, the higher frequency of the [In] variant with male speakers, and [Iŋ] with female speakers; or, again, the higher frequency of the [In] variant with speakers of a working or lower‐class background, while higher frequencies of [Iŋ] are correlated with middle and upper‐class backgrounds. Such would be a typical sociolinguistic approach (see, e.g., Labov, 1972). However, an anthropological linguistic approach, while taking note of all these correlations, would ask a further fundamental question: what do speakers mean when they use an [In] versus an [Iŋ] variant? Of course, the answer may vary in different contexts, but one possible answer, following Trudgill (1972), is that the use of [In], considering its link to the social variables of maleness and the working class, could be an assertion of a strong masculine self‐identity. Trudgill (1972) points out that male, middle‐class speakers in Norwich, Britain, often use variables like [In] to stake exactly this claim, regarding the values perceived to be associated with working‐class life, such as toughness, struggles against the odds, and physical labor, as indicative of enhanced masculinity.

Because anthropological linguistics seeks to uncover the meaning behind the uses of language within culture, it also presents some overlap with semantics and pragmatics, particularly the latter. Again, without insisting on sharp boundaries, we can distinguish among these along the following lines. Semantics (Reimer, 2010; Löbner, 2013) is that subfield of linguistics that studies the meanings of signs, their interrelations and combinations, while pragmatics (Cummings, 2005; Huang, 2013), albeit a bit hazy in its own delimitations, investigates how speakers create meaning in context in ongoing acts of language use. In view of its definition offered above, anthropological linguistics can be contrasted with these two other fields by the central role that culture and cultural practices play in its descriptions. Consider the word wampu from the Yimas language of New Guinea, which can be described semantically as polysemous, with the meanings “heart, care, desire.” A pragmatic description will investigate its various uses in differing contexts to determine what extended meanings it can take on in appropriate contextual frames. But an anthropological linguistic description would go farther and explore how this word is central in indigenous conceptualizations of morality and cultural practices of reciprocal gift exchange. Linguistic expressions and metaphors for culturally valorized practices related to generosity and exchange are built on this word (see Kulick, 1992, for similar data). Finally, a detailed anthropological linguistic study will uncover the cultural beliefs and practices which account for why this word has the polysemous meanings it does; what, for instance, connects “heart” with “care” in indigenous ideology?

Humans are by definition social beings and, as emphasized by Geertz (1973), largely fashioned by culture. Culture is transmitted and society reproduced by ongoing interaction between persons. What people do in such ongoing interactions is make meanings, and this process is what we call communication. Cultural practices, then, are nothing other than processes of communication that have become recurrent and stable and hence transmitted across generations, and in so doing, they become prereflective practical ways of doing things, a habitus (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990). Anthropological linguistics, then, studies how humans employ these communicative cultural practices, or semiotic practices, as resources to forge large and small, transient or permanent social groups (Agha, 2007). In an insightful overview, Enfield and Levinson (2006) argue that all such communicative practices occur at three levels. The first is an individual‐based “interaction engine.” This is where concerns of anthropological linguistics overlap with cognitive psychology. The “interaction engine” consists of the cognitive and biological abilities that underlie our capacity to communicate, such as the capability to interpret the intentions and mental states of others (the so‐called “theory of mind”; Carruthers & Smith, 1996). Such substrates make all human communication possible. The second is the interpersonal “interaction matrix.” This is an emergent level of behavior formed by coordinated practices of social actors, much of it culturally shaped and habitual, although there are clearly panhuman aspects as well. Examples include turn taking in conversations and other mechanisms studied in conversational analysis (Sacks, 1992; Sidnell & Stivers, 2012). Finally, level three is the sociocultural level proper. Included here are the culturally mandated routines or rituals in which particular types of linguistic practices are selected and sanctioned, such as courtroom summations, divination rituals, political oratory, or barroom chitchat. This is the conventional domain for the notions of register and genre, although the interpersonal moves which actually construct a particular register are features of level two, and the cognitive underpinnings which allow us to interpret the intentions of the speaker in using a particular register belong to level one.