Intro linguistics

• Linguistic anthropology


  The study of language in relation to culture and society
• Dell Hymes


  • Sociolinguist and anthropologist who coined the term 'linguistic anthropology' and developed the idea of keeping ethnographic records of communication
  • His vision was that language would be analyzed based on the context and relative to the people who are speaking it
  • Contributed various modern aspects to the field that changed the course of the study
• Edward Sapir


  • Linguistic anthropologist famous for his detailed classification of indigenous American languages still spoken today
  • Came up with the concept of linguistic relativity, a theory he developed with Benjamin Whorf
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis


  Explains how the language we speak significantly influences how we perceive the world
• Eve Clark


  • Pioneer in the sphere of first language acquisition
  • Her research has changed the way we think children acquire their first language
  • Provided theories and evidence on how children acquire their first language
• Roman Jakobson


  • Linguist and literary theorist who formed revolutionary ideas about language
  • Came up with the 'distinctive features' idea, which indicated that speech sounds are distinctively marked by binary differences
  • His ideas have allowed the field to categorize the sounds of languages in an organized and hierarchical way
• Steve Pinker


  • Author of 'The Language Instinct'
  • Proposes that language is a biological instinct that develops through natural selection
• Ferdinand de Saussure


  • Pioneer of semiology and linguistics
  • Proposed that a linguistic sign comprises two parts - the 'signifier' (phonetics) and the 'signified' (conceptual interpretation)
  • Expressed how the linguistic sign is arbitrary, with no inherent connection between the signifier and signified
• Code-switching


  The practice of alternating between different languages or varieties of language in conversation
• Sociolinguistics


  The study of the relationship between language and society
• Linguistic anthropologists have discovered that the meanings of words often fall beyond the words' immediate context
• Language ideology


  The study of how language structures and use reveal underlying cultural beliefs, assumptions, and values
• Linguistic anthropologists study how language forms gender, class and racial constructs, and how these meanings differ across languages
• Social spaces and socialization


  • Modern linguistic anthropologists have conducted creative strategies to learn about the ideas that define social spaces
  • Researchers have used linguistic anthropological methods to study how language use reflects and shapes social structures and processes of socialization