e-book

A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology

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Over the last one hundred and plus years, linguistic anthropology has grown to cover
almost any aspect of language structure and language use. From a discipline that was
at first conceived to provide the tools for the documentation of endangered languages,
especially in North America, it has become an intellectual shelter and a
cultural amplifier for the richness of human communication in social life that is
only selectively recognized in other communication-oriented fields such as linguistics
or psychology. At any gathering of linguistic anthropologists, it is not uncommon to
find experts on a wide range of linguistic and other cultural phenomena, including
bilingualism, narrative, poetry, music, sign languages, literacy, socialization, gender,
speechmaking, conflict, religion, identity, cognition, pidgins and creole languages,
register, and oratory. Some of these scholars can be thought of as ‘‘linguists’’ in the
narrow sense because of their training or because of their knowledge of the grammatical
patterns of specific languages or language families. Others belong to linguistic
anthropology not because of their expertise in grammars and language families, but
because they identify with the methods or concerns of the field, find inspiration in its
literature, and want to contribute to it by further expanding the study of language use
as a cultural activity. In spite of being the smallest of the four subfields of anthropology
as conceived in the USA at the end of the nineteenth century – the other three
being archaeological, biological (formerly ‘‘physical’’), and sociocultural anthropology
– linguistic anthropology has produced a rich body of contributions, many of
which may not be known to students and scholars in other fields within the humanities
and the social sciences. The essays in this Companion are an attempt to remedy
this situation by providing detailed discussions of some of the most important foci of
study within contemporary linguistic anthropology. Each chapter is intended to
present a topic, with a related set of issues and generalizations, that will help readers
understand the intricacies of a particular tradition of inquiry and acquire a sense of
where it is heading in the near future. No previous knowledge of the field is assumed
by the authors of the chapters and considerable care has been taken in defining key
concepts specific to each area of study without sacrificing the flow of the presentation.
Those readers who might find some of the terminology still daunting are invited to
make use of one or more of the existing introductions to linguistic anthropology (e.g.
William Foley’s Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction, William Hanks’
Language and Communicative Practices, or my Linguistic Anthropology) and the
collective lexicon of linguistic topics that I edited for the Journal of Linguistic
Anthropology (vol. 9, republished by Blackwell under the title Key Terms in Language
and Culture), with seventy-five mini-essays on a corresponding number of themes in
the study of language from an anthropological perspective.

What distinguishes this Companion from textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias,
and other collections of essays in linguistic anthropology is that the contributors to
this collection had sufficient space to simultaneously provide an introduction to their
area of study, a detailed discussion of its most innovative and challenging dimensions,
and a set of illustrative examples. They have created state-of-the-art reports that also
constitute important contributions in their own right. It is for this reason that the
essays collected here should be of interest to both novices and experts. This collection
offers an unprecedented look at language from an interdisciplinary and yet fundamentally
anthropological perspective.

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Ketersediaan

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Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

Blackwell companions to anthropology; 1

No. Panggil

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Penerbit

Oxford : Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004

Deskripsi Fisik

P35.C59 - 306.44–dc21

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

0-631-22352-5

Klasifikasi

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Tipe Isi

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Tipe Media

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Tipe Pembawa

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Edisi

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Subjek

ANTROPOLOGI LINGUISTIK

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

agus

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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