- Franz Boas is considered the father of American anthropology. He established anthropology as the study of human diversity and argued that cultural and linguistic differences must be explained in their historical context. - Boas' work on Native American languages in the Handbook of American Indian Languages helped establish linguistics as a core part of anthropological research. It showed the diversity of American Indian languages and challenged views of their inferiority. - Linguistic anthropology emerged to study language as both a structured code and a medium for social life. It brings attention to language use and variation within social and cultural contexts.

1. A Brief History of
Linguistic(s and) Anthropology
ANTH1007
University of Cincinnati

2. The Four Fields of Anthropology
“[T]he work of anthropologists … single[s] out clearly a
domain of knowledge that heretofore has not been treated
by any other science. It is the biological history of
mankind in all its varieties; linguistics applied to people
without written languages, the ethnology of people
without historic records; and prehistoric archeology.”
(The History of Anthropology, Boas, 1904)

3. Affinity between Linguistic &
Social/Cultural Anthropology
Description of the language of a culture or society was part of
many early ethnological studies
But language taken as a ‘window on culture’: simply a set of
labels for underlying cultural systems of meaning

4. Affinity between Linguistic &
Social/Cultural Anthropology
E.g., kinship terms, color terminology

5. When Linguistics and Anthropology
were One
Anthropology as a professional
discipline associated with the
Bureau of American Ethnology
(BAE) and the project of
documentation of North American
indigenous cultures in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.
And with one individual - Boas.

6. Franz Boas (1858 -1942)
“Father of American Anthropology”
Educated in Germany in intellectual climate that saw language as
an essential aspect of culture
However, he rejected the dominant theory of the time about a
deterministic relation between race, culture and language.
In his ‘Introduction’ to the Handbook, he posited the autonomy
of language, race and culture, and argued that cultural and
linguistic differences had to be explained.

7. Handbook of American Indian Languages (Boas, 1911; 1922)
Significant advance on previous work
on American Indian (AI) languages (e.g,
vocabulary lists):
• made use of latest methods of
linguistic science: systematic analysis
of sound system and grammatical
structure (phonology, morphology,
syntax)
• ethnographic methodology: based on
actual language use
• also challenged current views on
linguistic diversity

8. Diversity of American Indian Languages
~50 language families (Powell, 1891): e.g., Iroquoian
(Mohawk), Athabaskan (Navajo), Eskimo-Aleut (Yup’ik),
Uto-Aztec (Hopi).
Many of the languages differ markedly from European
languages such as English, Spanish, etc.
–no general terms for, e.g., ‘animal’(Mohawk) ‘toss’
(Navajo) ‘boot’ (Yup’ik)
–Can express in a single word the meaning of an entire
sentence. E.g., Mohawk
Tewaka’nikonhrhare
‘We should make ourselves some cornbread.’

9. Boasian Anthropology
The aim of ethnology (i.e., anthropology) should be to
explain human diversity in all its forms.
This required two things:
cultural (and linguistic) relativism, the idea that cultures
(and languages) had to be understood in their own terms; and
ethnographic approach, that cultural and linguistic
differences had to be explained in their historical specificity

10. Boas’ Perspective on Language
“The gift of speech and a well ordered language are
characteristics of every known group of human beings.
No tribe has ever been found which is without
language…. The truth of the matter is that language is
an essentially perfect means of expression and
communication among every known people. Of all
aspects of culture, it is a fair guess that language was
the first to receive a highly developed form and that its
essential perfection is a prerequisite to the development
of culture as a whole”
(‘Language,’ Sapir, 1933)

11. Origins of the science of language:
Sir William Jones
• Sir William Jones (1746-1794) British colonial judge in India
(Calcutta) identified the common origin of languages such as
Sanskrit, Persian, Latin, Greek and English
– Pitar (Skt), πατηρ (Grk), pater (Lat), father (Eng)
• Lead to the development of the field of ‘Historical Linguistics’:
– Aim was to classify languages into genetically related
families (represented in ‘language trees’), and to trace their
historical evolution through sound changes (formulated as
‘Sound Laws’)
– However, this scientific endeavor became entangled with
racist and colonialist attitudes and practices (‘scientific
racism’)

12. Historical Linguistics
The Reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (PIE)

13. Ferdinand de Saussure
• Synchronic approach – describe language at a given
moment (contra diachronic approach of Historical
linguistics)
• Langue (the formal system of rules in the abstract) v.
parole (everyday speech, i.e., language in use)
• Structural Linguistics - language is reduced to a set of
formal rules for describing its internal structure, based on
the notion of contrast (or différence)

14. Langue: the Abstract System(s) of Language
Language (langue)
Phonology –
system of
sounds and
rules for their
combination
and distribution
Morphology
– rules for
combining
combinations
of sounds
into words
Syntax –
rules for
combining
words into
sentences
Pragmatics –
rules for use
of language
forms based
on context of
usage

15. Noam Chomsky: The Search for Universals
• Revolutionized the field of linguistics in 1950s and 1960s
• Like Saussure, focused on abstract rules of language
(competence) while ignoring language use (performance)
• Aim of linguistic study is to discover Universal Grammar
(UG): “the basic design underlying the grammars of all
human languages”
• ‘Generative’ of ‘transformational’ linguistics: concerned
with the search for universals of language structure rather
than the explanation of diversity in human languages or
variation in language use.

16. Bringing the Social/Cultural Back In
In the 1960s ‘sociolinguists’ like Dell Hymes
attempted to bring attention to language use in its
social context back into the study of language
Return to ethnographic methods of participant
observation as well as the collection of naturally
occurring language use.
New terms communicative competence‘i.e., the
knowledge required to be a competent user of
language within a given speech community’ and
ethnography of communication

17. From ‘Anthropological Linguistics’ to
‘Linguistic Anthropology’
Critique of cultural anthropology and the view of language as a
“neutral medium” (Duranti, 1997, p. 4).
Need for a more dynamic view of language-culture relation.
Language is a code for representing experience; but also a form
of social organization and a system of differentiation

18. ‘Linguistic Anthropology’is balancing act “with one foot firmly planted
in language as structured code and the other in language as a medium
of the various sociocultural lifeways of human groups” (Silverstein, 2006)

19. Pounded Rice Ritual
(Ahearn, 2001)

20. Pounded Rice Ritual
(Ahearn, 2001)
During her fieldwork in the Nepali village of Junigau, Ahearn (2001)
observed the following exchange during the traditional wedding
ceremony.
The groom, seated and surrounded by his groomsmen, addresses his
fiancé, who is seated on the floor at the groom’s feet and surrounded by
her bridesmaids, and asks her to bring pounded rice for the wedding
guests.
He repeats the same utterance 3 times, before the fiancé delivers the rice to
him, at which point she is considered his wedded wife.

21. Asking for the Pounded Rice
(Ahearn, 2001)
Importantly, the groom varied slightly the utterance each time
he addressed his faincé/wife:
1 ‘lyāunus, dulai, chiurā; tapaĩko hāmro jantī bhokāyo’
2 ‘lyāu, dulai, chiurā; timro hāmro jantī bhokāyo’
3 ‘le, dulai, chiurā; tero hāmro jantī bhokāyo’

22. Pounded Rice Ritual
(Ahearn, 2001)
Personal Pronouns in Nepali (Junigau dialect)
1st person (ma)
2nd person
3rd person (waha)

23. Pounded Rice Ritual
(Ahearn, 2001)
Personal Pronouns in Nepali (Junigau dialect)
1st person (ma)
2nd person high honorific
medium level
lowest level
3rd person (waha)

24. Pounded Rice Ritual
(Ahearn, 2001)
This use of language does not just reflect social roles – it
constitutes the roles of husband and wife
The use of these different pronouns symbolically enacts the
lowering of the woman’s status to that of ‘wife,’ i.e., her
subordination to the man, her ‘husband’
Example of language use as social action, i.e., language use is
central to the reproduction of gender roles and traditional
marriage in Nepali society.

25. Next
What does it mean to know a language?
Components of language (phonology, morphology,
syntax, etc.)
Linguistic Diversity
McWhorter (2016)