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In order to provide readers with some tools they can use to approach linguistic anthropology, I have chosen four key terms that provide insight into the socially embedded nature of language and the linguistically mediated nature of social life: multifunctionality, language ideologies, practice, and indexicality. These terms draw upon an array of theoretical approaches from within the field of linguistic anthropology and beyond. As a rule in this book I try to avoid jargon, but linguistic anthropology is no different from other fields such as chemistry or art in having developed a set of specialized terms in order to refer efficiently and accurately to important concepts.

The terms that I have chosen here are “key” in two ways: first, they are central to the main areas of research in the discipline, and second, they can provide readers with important keys to understanding the social nature of language because they come from the social and linguistic theories that have had the greatest influence on current scholarship in the field. Like the terms that are defined in Duranti’s (2001) edited volume, Key Terms in Linguistic Anthropology, the four terms defined below identify some of the features that unify the discipline and will therefore provide common points of reference as we consider specific topics and areas of study within the field.