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Q5. What do you mean byLinguistic anthropology? Explain the historical
background of the Linguistic anthropology.
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Ans. Linguistic anthropology examines the links between language and culture,
including how language relates to thought, social action, identity, and power relations. It
is one of the four traditional subfields of American anthropology, sharing with cultural
anthropology its aims of explaining social and cultural phenomena, with biological
anthropology its concern over language origins and evolution, and with archaeology the
goal of understanding cultural histories. Linguistic anthropology has developed through
international work across social science disciplines, as researchers attend to language as
a key to understanding social phenomena. The discipline overlaps most closely with the
sociolinguistic subfield of linguistics. But while sociolinguistics generally considers
social factors in order to explain linguistic phenomena, linguistic anthropology aims to
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explain social and cultural phenomena by considering linguistic information.
Of the many areas of anthropology that entice researchers to study, language is one that
draws significant and sustained attention. As far back as 1500 BCE, individuals in India
speculated about language development, derivations, and use. Similar speculation was
done in Europe among Greek philosophers at the time of Socrates and his followers.
Evidence from over 30,000 preserved cuneiform writings has consistently raised
curiosity regarding the spoken language of the ancient Sumerians prior to 2000 BCE, as
have discoveries regarding original language types from other indigenous peoples, such
as the aborigines of Australia and New Guinea.
The reasons and methods for trying to understand language have changed from one
historic era to the next, making scholarly activity in the field known as linguistics as
vibrant as each era. Knowledge of the changes in perspective about language
development provides one key to unlocking the door to characterize the nature of
human beings as well as unlocking the door to the evolution and growth of societies. For
example, Franz Boas (1858–1942) used what became known as descriptive-structural
linguistics in his studies of culture and anthropology in the early 20th century. His
interpretation of language was, in the words of Michael Agar (1994), “just a ‘part’ of
anthropological fieldwork, and the point of fieldwork was to get to culture” (p. 49). This
sense of linguistics as a vehicle was shared by the students of Boas and became a
primary interpretation for many years, especially through the influence of Leonard
Bloomfield. One can only imagine the kinds and degrees of meaning that are lost to us
about peoples of the world due to the formal methods used in the study of language in
the early 20th century and the relegation of language, as a research tool, as it was by
Boas and Bloomfield. However, for the time, descriptive structural linguistics was a
significant advancement, albeit more of a part of anthropology rather than a separate
field in itself. That changed dramatically in the latter half of the 20th century,
particularly with the dynamic referred to by Noam Chomsky (2005) as the second
cognitive revolution when the number of new research fields increased (e.g., cognitive
psychology, computer science, artificial intelligence). The first cognitive revolution is a

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