Introduction to Linguistics Antropology

Introduction to Linguistics Anthropology

Linguistics anthropology (or ethnolinguistics) is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to the study of the language as a culture resource and speaking and speaking as a culture practice (Linguistics Anthropology). The origin of this term lies in the nineteen century western anthropology, where ethnography was a descriptive account of a community or culture, usually one located outside the west. At that time it was seen as complementary of ethnology which is more an historical and comparative analysis of non-western societies and cultures.

The domain of ethnolinguistics extends in different thematic areas which language and the sociocultural contexts are treated together, involving diverse connections between linguistics and anthropology.

The Ethnographer Work

In terms of data collection, the ethnographer usually involves the research participating, in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what they said, and/or asking questions though formal or informal interviews, collecting documents and artifacts. (Ethnography Principles)

Ethnography of Communication

One of the biggest contributors is maybe the anthropologist that has done more contributions to the first studies of context. His article in 1962 about what he determined as Ethnography of communication is the starting point of an influent paradigm in the anthropology itself, as like the fist research, and the first of the research trends that contribute the opening to the contemporary in discourse studies in the 1960s (Foundation in Sociolinguistics).

Teun A. van Dijk in his book “Sociedad y discurso” quoted the definition done by Hymes  in “Foundation of sociolinguistics” In which he defined the ethnography of communications as the study of  “situations and uses, the patrons and the functions of speaking as an activity with its own right” (Van Dijk, 2011)

The Hyme’s work influence has been so widely mark by contemporary authors  that the ethnography of communication has been used in different work frames such as in sociolinguistics, analysis of discourse, sociology, and more.