An Introduction to

Linguistic
Anthropology
Roland Raoul KOUASSI
FHB University of Cocody
Preliminary:
Language is not just language.
It is always does a mental and
socio-cultural work.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKxd30lQ1f0
 • The course outlines the fundamental
concepts of linguistic anthropology
• Upon successful completion of this
course the students will
• Define anthropology and its academic reality
Course • Know the basic concepts of linguistic anthropology

description • Be able to account for the place of linguistic

anthropology within the field of anthropology
• Account for the nexus between language and
sociocultural reality as studied by linguistic
anthropology
• Account for the methods used in linguistic
anthropology study
• Apply the course to one specific issue in linguistic
anthropology
 References

• Agha, Asif. Language and Social Relations. CUP. 2007

• Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: The University of Texas Press. 1981
• Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture. 1934
• Boas, Franz, Anthropology and Modern Life, 1928
• Boas, Franz. The Mind of Primitive Man. 1911
• Geertz, Clifford. Deep Play. In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Gershon, Ilana.1973
• Haviland, William A. et al. Anthropology: The Human Challenge, 14th Edition. 2014
• Hoijer , Harry. The Relation of Language to Culture. In Anthropology Today: An Encyclopedic Inventory.
A.L. Kroeber, ed. Pp. 554– 573. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1954
• Irvine, Judith and Susan Gal. Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation. In Regimes of Language:
Ideologies, Polities, Identities. Paul V. Kroskrity, ed. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press. Pp. 35–83. Santa Fe: SAR
Press. 2000
• Kottak, Conrad P. Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 2012.
• Kroskrity, Paul (Ed.), Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identity. Sante Fe, New
Mexico: School of American Research Press. 2000
• Mauss, Marcel. The Gift. 1925
• Malinowski, Bronisław. Coral gardens and their magic. Allen and Unwin. (1966 [1938]).
• Labov, William. The Social Stratification of ‘r’ in New York City Department Stores in Labov, W.
Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: U Penn Press. 1972
• Lévi-Strauss, C. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. London: Eyre and Spottis-woode.
• Lévi-Strauss, C. 1963, 1967. Structural Anthropology. Translated by Claire Jacobson and Brooke
Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books.
• Lucy, John. Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity
Hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press. 1992
• Meek, Barbra A. We Are Our Language: An Ethnography of Language Revitalization in a
Northern Athabaskan Community. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 2011
• Sahlins, Marshall. What Is Anthropological Enlightenment?: Some Lessons for the Twenty First
Century. Annual Review of Anthropology 28, i–xxiii. 1999
• Tylor, Edward B. Primitive Culture. 18871
• Whorf, Benjamin Lee. Language, Thought, and Reality. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1956
 What is Anthropology?

• Anthropology is:
• the science of humanity;
• the study of humans and human diversity.
• the study of humankind in all times and places.
• the study of what it means to be human [the objective and
systematic study of humankind in all times and places.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9xfaW8tXuI&t=34s
What do anthropologists do?
 Social
sciences

Natural
Humanities
sciences
 •Anthropological Archeology
The four •Cultural Anthropology
fields •Biological Anthropology
•Linguistic Anthropology
 Anthropological archeology

• Archeology investigates the human past through the

excavation and analysis of material remains, and the
study of recent past and present material culture
• Through analyses of material culture, anthropological
archeologists explore changes in the social, economic, and
symbolic organization of human societies over time.
• Historical archeology, bioarcheology, contemporary archeology,
paleoanthropology, primatology …
 Biological anthropology

• seeks to answer fundamental biological questions about

humans, our relatives, and our ancestors
• investigates human evolutionary history, the causes of
present-day genetic diversity, and the biology of human
behavior
• draws on genetics, paleontology, developmental biology,
primate behavior, nutrition, and ecology (multidisciplinary)
 Sociocultural anthropology

• aims to grasp sociocultural existence across all its

dimensions
• describes, analyzes, and interprets the full range of human
social relations and cultural forms.
• It looks at kinship, gender, religion, politics, economy, and
artistic traditions, all with the goal of understanding how
they work, why they differ across time and space, and how
they change on local and global scales.
 Linguistic anthropology

• focuses on the interrelationships between language and other

aspects of a people’s culture.
• studies language as a form of social action.
• It looks at how language makes us who we are, and how we make
language what it is.
• It considers language in the context of human evolution, social
relationships, and cultural forms, and
• it explores the role of languages and ways of speaking in creating,
sustaining, and undermining sociocultural differences and divisions.
 Applied Anthropology
• the application of the methods and theory of anthropology to the analysis and
solution of practical problems
• Educational anthropology: how culture shapes educational processes, how culture is acquired
by individuals and groups through such processes, as well as how people create changes in and
through their educational environments.
• Organizational anthropology: understanding the social behaviors and meaning that makes
up organizational culture and dynamics
• Forensic anthropology: applying skeletal analysis and techniques in archaeology to solving
criminal cases
• Anthropology of development: a term applied to a body of anthropological work which views
development from a critical perspective.
• Development anthropologists critique and contribute to projects and institutions that create and
administer Western projects that seek to improve the sustainable development of marginalized
communities, and to eliminate poverty.
• Human rights, community development, museums, health and medicine (epidemics…), disaster
management, environmental issues …
 Ethnocentrism and anthropology

•Ethnocentrism is a belief that the ways of

one’s own culture are the only proper ones.
•It is the idea that your own way of doing
things is the correct way of being human
The problem of biological and environmental
determinism

• Why are other people the way they are?

• People are the way they are because of their
biology (biological/racial/genetic determinism)
• … because of where they live (parts of the world)
Boas 1901, 1911

• The Mind of Primitive Man. The Journal of American Folklore , Jan. -

Mar., 1901, Vol. 14, No. 52 (Jan. - Mar., 1901), pp. 1-11
• One of the chief aims of anthropology is the study of the mind of man
under the varying conditions of race and of environment. The activities
of the mind manifest themselves in thoughts and actions, and exhibit an
infinite variety of form among the peoples of the world. In order to
understand these clearly, the student must endeavor to divest himself
entirely of opinions and emotion upon the peculiar social environment
into which he is born. He must adapt his own mind, so far as feasible, to
that of the people whom he is studying. The more successful he is in
freeing himself from the bias based on the group of ideas that constitute
the civilization in which he lives, the more successful he will be in
interpreting the beliefs and actions of man. He must follow lines of
thought that are new to him. He must participate in new emotions, and
understand how, under unwonted conditions, both lead to actions.
Beliefs, customs, and the response of the individual to the events of daily
life give us ample opportunity to observe the manifest of the mind of
man under varying conditions.
• Address of the retiring President before the American Folk-Lore Baltimore, December
 Ruth Benedict 1934

• Patterns of Culture
• Cultural integration (configuration) occurs in the pattern of
ideas and emotions characteristic of any given culture
• What ties a culture together exists in the minds of the members
of the culture
• These patterns make cultures into “articulated wholes”
consistent within the members of the community sharing them.
 See also…

• Bronislaw Malinowski
• Edward Sapir
• John Gumperz
• Margaret Mead…
 Contemporary anthropological perspective

• Relativistic: Any truth is relative! So we seek to understand

another person’s beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their
culture rather than our own.
• Empirical: empirical evidence in the formation of ideas
• Holistic: integrate all that is known about human beings and their
activities. Studying the whole of humanity.
• Adaptative (or Evolutionary): changes and adaptation to changes
• Comparative: what humans have in common, how we differ, and
how we change
 The Concept of Culture

• Culture is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,

art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society.” (Tylor, 1871, p.28)
• culture: a society’s shared and socially transmitted (learned)
habits, ideas, values, and perceptions, which are used to make
sense of experience and which generate behavior and are
reflected in that behavior.
• an integrated system of symbols, ideas and values that should be
studied as a working system, an organic whole (Kuper 1999:56)
 What is Linguistic Anthropology?

• The study of the diversity of human language in the past and

present, and its relationship to social groups, practices, and values
• How speaking, singing, reading, joking, texting, arguing and so
on, makes us who we are.
• How interactions create social relationships, political inequalities,
cultural forms, and historical change.
• We can “hear” culture only by “listening to” language in a certain
way. (Silverstein 2004: 621)
History of Linguistic
Anthropology
 Ruth Benedict,
Franz Boas Patterns of Margaret Mead Edward Sapir
Culture

Benjamin Lee
Harry Hoijer Dell Hymes John Gumperz
Worf
• Franz Boas: cultural relativism (1900)
• Bronislaw Malinowski: against ethnocentrism, ethnographic methods,
functionalism (Trobriand Islands 1915-1918)
• Edward Sapir: linguistic relativity, the psychology of culture
• Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Harry Hoijer: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
(Sapir 1921, 1929, Whorf 1940, Hoijer 1954)
• Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead: Patterns of Culture, cultural
configurationalism (Benedict 1934)
• Claude Levi Strauss: Structural Anthropology
• Dell Hymes, John Gumperz and Ethnography of Communication /
interactional sociolinguistics (, Gumperz 1958, Hymes 1964, Hymes &
Gumperz 1972)
• William Labov: Variationist Sociolinguistics (Labov 1961, Labov 1972…)
Language, Cultural
Indexicality, and Sociocultural
Action
 Indexicality

• See C. S. Peirce’s three sign modalities:

• Icon: likeness, shared features
• Index: factual correspondent, pointing to something
• Symbol: imputed characteristic, interpretive habit
• First order indexicality
• Second order indexicality
• Higher order indexicality (Silverstein)
• Implicit meaning
• Meaning that we don’t say or write, but express.
• The index points away from what you say to the context
in which it fits.
• We produce more indexicality than simple meaning
when we speak.
• We are more implicit than explicit (Jan Blommaert)
• Indexicals are context-sensitive or context-dependent
units or expressions.
• Through indexicality, every utterance tells something
about the utterer, the co-speaker, and the relation
between interactants, the sociocultural context of
production
• Indexical meaning anchors language usage into social
and cultural patterns. (see Blommaert 2005)
• the social effects mediated by speech are highly context-
bound or indexical in character: they are evaluated in
relation to the context or situation at hand (Agha 2007:14)
 Indexicality, cont.
• An index is a sign that shows evidence of the concept or object being represented.
• An index indicates or points at something.
• Indexicality refers to the pervasive context-dependency of natural language
utterances pointing at specific features, ideas, peculiarities…
• Regional accent indexing speaker identity or origin
• Verbal etiquette marking deference and demeanor
• Dexis pointing at specific space and time facts (shifters… I, here, you, now…)
• Demonstratives – this, that
• Tense and aspect
• Modality
• As Peirce put it, and indexical sign stands in a relation of “dynamical coexistence”
with its object
Nonverbal indexicality

Nonverbal alone Nonverbal + speech

(multimodal indexicality)
 Language and Speech Communities

• Language and speech community are constructs developed by scholars of language to refer
to a social aggregate within which language is used.” (Irvine 2006: 689)
• An ethnic group with a single language? (see J. G. Herder)
• Masse parlante? Saussure… mass of speakers
• though speech is similar, speakers still maintain linguistic distinction
• Speech community is a “field of action where the distribution of linguistic variants is a
reflection of social facts” (John Gumperz 1968: 383)
• Linguistic diversity within speech communities: communicative repertoires, multilingualism,
multidialectalism…
• Speech networks and communities of practice: where community is not assumed a priori it is
achieved. (Irvine 2006)
• Speech community is the “product of the communicative activities engaged in by a given
group of people.” (Duranti 1997:882)
 Language Socialization

• Two premises:
• The process of acquiring a language is deeply affected by the process of becoming a
competent member of society
• The process of being a competent member of society is realized through a large extent by
language
• Learning a language and becoming a social actor therefore are a single process
• The way children are socialized into language often affects their “trajectories of
socialization”
• See early complex structures as a result of early emancipation (white vs black
kids in the US. Bryce-Heath 1982)
• Privilege, power, and opportunity are linked to trajectories of language
socialization
 Language and Social Action

• Vs. language as a mental activity

• Vs. language as a system
• For linguistic anthropology, language and sociocultural reality are
inextricably intertwined.
• Language and society are mutually constituted, that is language creates
the social world we live in and the social world we live in conditions and
shapes the language we use
• Language is a socio-culturally active semiotic system.
• In linguistic anthropology, we study phonology/phonetics, morphology,
syntax, semantics and pragmatics as part of social action
 Language Ideology

• We discover language ideologies through the study of the

metalinguistic/metapragmatic function of language.
• Language ideologies are “Cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic
relationships together with their loading of moral and political interests” (Irvine 1989,
255)
• Language ideologies are metalinguistic attitudes which link language use to social
identity
• Official language
• Standardization
• Gender (ma petite/mon bois… that woman speaks too aggressively…)
• Globalization
• Ethnocentrism and primitive culture
• Literacy
 The ideology of language standard

• Standard variety:
• Accent-less, region-less, accent/voice from nowhere, neutral…
• Attitude: pristine, immaculate, clean,
• Example: Received Pronunciation in UK; General American
Accent; Paris Accent…
• Other varieties
• Dialect, accent, regional, localized voice
• Attitude: broken accent, incorrect, tainted, scarred
(verbal scar, see Silverstein 2011), polluted, stained,
deficient, dysfunction
• Actions: accent cleansing, purification, oral corrective
therapy, verbal cosmetic/plastic surgery, verbal/accent
bleaching, decontamination (see Prof. Higgins and Eliza
Doolittle, Pygmalion/my Fair Lady)
• Example: AAVE, Cockney, Texan Accent, Brooklynese
(NY) (see Labov ), Liverpool Accent, Ivorian Popular
French, Nouchi, Français de Moussa (Lafage 1991;
Kouadio 2007), Le Petit Negre (Kouadio 2007), Naija,
•"A woman who utters such depressing and
disgusting sounds has no right to be
anywhere — no right to live. Remember
that you are a human being with a soul and
the divine gift of articulate speech . . . don't
sit there crooning like a bilious
pigeon." Prof. Henry Higgins, in Pygmalion
(George Bernard Shaw, 1912)
• The negative attitude toward local varieties is also
loaded with ideas of
• Lower status
• Lower education
• Less social prestige
• Lower class
•…
 Language, Sexuality and Gender

• Sex: biological
• Gender: cultural distinction
• Though this dichotomy may be simplistic
• See Eckert and McConnell 2003:10 “There is no obvious point at which sex leaves
off and gender begins, partly because there is no single objective biological criterion
for male or female sex.”
• Sex is a complex combination of anatomy, hormones, and chromosomes
• Ref. sex or gender verification in sports or sex test or hormone test… (Caster
Semenya, South Africa , ….)
• Gender is learned, collaborative, action, asymmetric
• Language is a powerful tool that construct and maintains gender features
and actions
 Gender theories

• The biological theory: gender is defined in terms of biological sex.

• The theory assumes that men outsize and outpower women (Bergvall, 1999; Tannen, 1993)
and that gender polarities exist in language use.
• The biological theory also assumes that gender roles are static and contextually
independent.
• The social constructionist theory (Leaper & Smith, 2004) defines gender in light
of social contexts in which interactions occur.
• It assumes that gender roles are fluid and contextually situated (Leaper & Smith, 2004),
that gendered identities are voluntary, and that males and females choose their gendered
identities (Leaper & Smith, 2004).
• In terms of language use, the social constructionist theory assumes that males and females
are not confined to one particular language style, but exchange styles based on the social
context of their interactions (Coates & Johnson, 2001; Leaper & Smith, 2004).
Male talk vs. Talk

• Male speech is characterized as opposition / competition oriented or adversarial.

• Males use language primarily to assert their position of dominance, attract and maintain an
audience, and to assert themselves when other speakers have the floor.
• In contrast, female speech is characterized as collaboration oriented or affiliative.
• They use language more cooperatively than males, respond to and elaborate on what others
have said, make more supportive comments, ask more questions, and work to keep
conversations going.
• They use language to create and maintain relationships of closeness and equality, to criticize
others in acceptable ways, and to accurately interpret other female’s speech (Sheldon, 1990).
Who’s speaking here?

• “I am frightened to death”!
• mauve, lavender aquamarine, azure and magenta
• adorable, charming, lovely, fantastic, heavenly
• awfully, pretty, terribly, vastly, quite
• Dear me! Do you always get up so late? It‟s one o‟clock!
• Shit! The train is late again!
 Register

• A register is a linguistic repertoire that is associated, culture internally, with

particular social practices and with persons who engage in such practices.
• The use of a register conveys to a member of the culture that some typifiable
social practice is linked indexically to the current occasion of language use,
as part of its context. (Asif Agha 2000:210)
• Registers and recognizable instances of social practice
• distinctive registers are associated with social practices of every kind—such
as law, medicine, prayer, science, magic, etc.
• registers rely on the metalinguistic ability of native speakers to discriminate
between linguistic forms, to make evaluative judgments about variant forms.
 Language and Performance

• ‘Performance’ means something like a particular practice of some held

knowledge or belief
• In linguistics distinction between ‘performance’ and competence, in
anthropology ‘performance’ means special events like rituals
• Three main ways linguistic anthropology understand performance:
• communicative competence (Dell Hymes 1972)
• performatives (doing by saying: I pronounce you husband and wife…) and
• verbal art: stylization of language, acts of speech on display, oratory, storytelling,
theater…

• Performance for sociality, esthetics, strategy…

 Language and thought

• Franz Boas, Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Harry Hoijer, Lera

Boroditsky…
• Linguistic Determinism
• Linguistic Relativity (Eskimos and snow; Akan and yam…)
• “We see and hear and otherwise experience largely as we do
largely because the language habits of our community
predispose us to certain choices of interpretation” Sapir 1949
[1929]):128)
 Language and power

• Hegemony
• Governmentality
• Official language
• Standard variety vs. others, minority varieties
• Naming, forms of address and power (vous/tu; ma
petite/mon bois, le vieux/lo vié, le babatchai…)
Methods in Linguistic
Anthropology
 Ethnography

• Ethnography A detailed description of a particular

culture primarily based on fieldwork.
• Fieldwork: on-location research.
• participant observation In ethnography, the technique of
learning
a people’s culture through social participation and personal
observation within the community being studied, as well as
interviews and discussion with individual members of the
group over an extended period of time.
 Ethnology

• The study and analysis of different cultures from a

comparative or historical point of view, utilizing
ethnographic accounts and developing
anthropological theories that help explain why certain
important differences or similarities occur among
groups.
Discourse Analysis and Transcription

• Linguistic anthropology record instances of discourse, and

• transcribe those instances
Practice
• How different do men and women speak? How? What are the
indexicals? (see Deborah Tannen You Just Don’t Understand:
Women and Men in Conversation. 1990)
• Choose specific language practices and unveil cultural facts
linked to those practices (any language will do)
• In your mother tongue, give a few examples showing ideas about
specific forms of language or speech.
• Give ideas that the following forms index:
• Babatchai (Ivorian French)
• Igwe (Igbo)
• Ma petite (Ivorian French)