Читать книгу The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics - Carol A. Chapelle - Страница 60

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.

We can usefully look at much of the research work done in anthropological linguistics under the banners provided by this schema of the three levels. The breadth of work in this subfield is enormous, and space will only permit the exploration of a few key illustrative areas. Perhaps the most persistently fascinating area within it has been the question of linguistic relativity, whether features of the language we speak influence our cognition. This is a question that spans levels one and three: whether deeply sedimented features of our conventional publicly shared language developed and transmitted over generations (level three) influence the way we cognize the world, make inferences, or remember information (level one). While this has been an area of vigorous speculation over the centuries, nothing amounting to serious empirical work emerged until recently, and here the focus will be on some pioneering work on the language and cognition of space. Earlier work on spatial cognition assumed it to be strongly informed by innate, presumably biologically based, universals, so that it is essentially the same in all languages and cultures. Given these universal conditions and our ecological niche as terrestrial, diurnal creatures, it is claimed that we are predisposed to conceive of space in relativistic and egocentric terms, projecting out from the anatomical patterns of our bodies. Thus, the coordinates through which spatial orientation are established are projected from ego, the deictic, central reference point for all spatial reckoning, along two horizontal axes and one vertical. The vertical one, drawn from our upright position or, perhaps, the experience of gravity establishes the UP–DOWN axis; the horizontal axes are FRONT–BACK, derived from the anatomically asymmetrical division of the body into two halves, and LEFT–RIGHT, from the symmetrical division. The location of objects in space, then, is always determined relative to the orientation of the speaker: If we are standing eye to eye across from each other, my left is your right. There are no fixed, absolute angles used in human spatial orientation.

Recent research has shown these assumptions to be unfounded. Languages (and speakers) actually differ as to whether they employ this speaker‐centered relative system of LEFT–RIGHT, FRONT–BACK, or an absolute system based on fixed parameters of geographical space like the cardinal directions or landward/seaward or upriver/downriver. Such absolute systems are in fact very common and occur in Aboriginal Australia, Oceania, and Mesoamerica. A particularly striking example is Guugu‐Yimidhirr, of northeastern Australia. This language completely lacks all spatial terms which are relative to body orientation; in particular there are no terms for locating the position of objects in space equivalent to FRONT, BACK, LEFT, RIGHT (e.g., the last two terms can only be used to refer to the left and right hands and perhaps other symmetrical body parts, like eyes, legs, etc.). Rather, the language heavily employs four words, corresponding roughly to the four cardinal directions. The astounding thing about languages like Guugu‐Yimidhirr is that these absolutely based terms are habitually used by speakers to describe location or motion. It is as if in response to the question “Where's the salt?” the response is, “It's there, to the east.” In the relativistic, egocentric spatial universe of the English speaker, this is likely to provide little enlightenment and lead to a puzzled look or worse, but this is exactly how a Guugu‐Yimidhirr speaker would respond.

Levinson (2003) is a careful, empirical study investigating the core claim of linguistic relativity with respect to Guugu‐Yimidhirr, among other languages: does the system of spatial categories in that language influence the way its speakers cognize space, as determined by tests that probe spatial reasoning and memory tasks? A number of experiments were carried out testing Dutch speakers in these tasks, who have a relative system of LEFT–RIGHT, FRONT–BACK like English with Guugu‐Yimidhirr speakers, and in each case, there were marked differences in the response of the two groups to stimuli. Such results strongly suggest differences in cognition, as measured by differences in memory and reasoning, and these are closely correlated to the different linguistic systems for talking about space in the languages of the two groups of subjects. For instance, in a simple recall experiment a table facing north was laid out with a line‐up of three toy animals, all facing one direction, say east and to the right. The subject was asked to remember it, and it was then destroyed. He was then led into another room, with a table facing south and asked to reproduce the alignment. If he does this task absolutely, he will set up the line facing east, but this time to the left. If, on the other hand, he does it relatively, the line will be set up facing right, but to the west. Results for this test were in line with predictions from the hypothesis of linguistic relativity: 9 out of 15 of Guugu‐Yimidhirr subjects preserved the absolute eastward alignment of the array, while 13 of 15 Dutch control subjects preserved the relative rightward alignment.

Ways of expressing politeness in language is another domain in which researchers in anthropological linguistics have been active. Politeness is essentially a field in which cultural ideologies about personhood and social roles (level three) are enacted in prescribed rituals and formulas of social interaction between persons (level two). The person may be “inscribed” (Gergen, 1990) in social relationships (level two), but the kind of person he or she can be is determined by macronotions of what are their proper rights and obligations and how these are articulated in the wider sociocultural sphere (level three) (Kockelman, 2013). Politeness forms in language are the recognition of differential rights and duties among the interactants in a social encounter. Typically, those of higher rank are recognized as such through the use of politeness forms by those in lower rank. Rank is mainly established by rights and duties: Those of higher rank have rights over those of lower rank, who, in turn, often have duties to those in higher rank, although in many cases higher rank can bring concomitant duties as well. Consider the elaborate ritual of greetings among the Wolof of Senegal (Irvine, 1974) and how their cultural ideology of social inequality is enacted in its performance. A clue is provided by an insightful Wolof proverb about greetings: “When two persons greet each other, one has shame, the other has glory” (Irvine, 1974, p. 175). Wolof is a stratified Muslim society, and greeting rituals are used as a way of negotiating relative social status among the interlocutors. The basic dichotomy in Wolof society is between nobles and commoners. The local ideology associates lower status with both physical activity (i.e., movement) and speech activity. Higher‐status people are associated with passivity. Because of this, it is the lower‐status person who initiates the greeting encounter, by moving toward the higher‐status person and beginning the ritual greeting. As a consequence, any two persons in a greeting encounter must place themselves in an unequal ranking and must come to some understanding of what this ranking is; the simple choice of initiating a greeting is a statement of relatively lower status. The form of a greeting encounter is highly conventionalized. It consists of salutations, questions about the other party and his household, and praising God. The more active, lower‐status person poses questions to the higher‐status one, who in a typical higher‐status, passive role simply responds, but poses none of his own. In addition to the typical speech acts performed and their roles in turn taking, the interactants are also ideally distinguished in terms of the nonsegmental phonological features of their speech. Correlated to the activity associated with lower status, the greeting initiator will speak a lot, rapidly, loudly, and with a higher pitch. The recipient of the greeting, on the other hand, being more passive and detached, will be terse, responding briefly and slowly to questions posed in a quite low‐pitched voice. The distinct linguistic practices associated with the interlocutors in a Wolof greeting encounter are linked to the kinds of persons they are. The greeting ritual both enacts the cultural ideology of inequality among persons in Wolof and reproduces it every time it is enacted. The linguistic forms used, polite or otherwise, index the kind of persons the interactants are, just as they construct and reconstruct this ideology at every mention.

A final area of research to illustrate the typical concerns of anthropological linguists is the cultural performance of verbal art or, more specifically, culturally valued genre types. Certain social roles, typically those of higher social status, are marked by their control of particular, also highly valued, genres; think of how a priest is determined by his control of the liturgy, or the shaman by her spells, or even a successful barrister by her stirring summation oratory. The study of genres is clearly a core specialty of this subfield and belongs squarely to level three, the sociocultural matrix. Genres are prototypical cultural practices; they are historically transmitted, relatively stable frameworks for orienting the production and interpretation of discourse. In a word, they are “institutionalized.” The capacity to produce and detect genres as models for discourse comes from their “framing devices” (Bateson, 1974) or “contextualization cues” (Gumperz, 1982), such as once upon a time for a fairy tale or citations for an academic paper. Such framing devices work to the extent that genres are not so much inherent in the text forms themselves, but in the frameworks and interpretive procedures that verbal performers and their audience use to produce and understand these texts. Genre classifications are not rigidly definable in terms of formal text types, but are the result of applying (sometimes conflicting) interpretive procedures indexed by the framing devices employed.

Framing devices are features of the poetic function (Jakobson, 1960) of language, formal linguistic principles for the enaction of diverse genre types, such as line final rhyme for certain genres of English poetry, like sonnets. Various types of framing devices include special formulas or lexical items, tropes like metaphor or metonymy, paralinguistic features, like drums or singing, and, most importantly, parallelism. This last is recurring patterns in successive sections of text and can be found at all levels of the linguistic system, phonology (rhyme and rhythm), grammatical (repeated phrases or clauses), and lexical (paired words). Genres do not exist as abstract categories, but only as schemes of interpretation and construction, which are enacted in particular performances. Genres can be recontextualized from earlier contexts to new ones with a greater or lesser shift in their interpretation. This opens a gap between the actual performance and the abstract generic model we might have of it from earlier performances. This gap can be strategically manipulated by performers to convey comments about current social happenings or valuations of cultural traditions (Briggs & Bauman, 1992).

SEE ALSO: Linguaculture; Politeness