Talk:Linguistic anthropology

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At some point this article should be incorporated into the general article in linguistics. Slrubenstein

I think there ought to be a new page on linguistic ideology. It's an important topic and there are scads of books about it. Unfortunately, I'm not so confident in my knowledge of the topic that I want to start/shape the page. Anyone want to step up? Superabo 08:21, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

And another thing: this page links to anthropological linguistics, but that page seems to have little to do with the concept linking it. What to do about that?

Since when are asterisks used to denote foreign terms?134.29.33.119 21:51, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is there a way to make this a bit less, um, academic?

I realize it might be difficult to keep it concise, but there is a lot of jargon in this article. Such as:

the unfolding in realtime of a "'hypertrophic' set of parallel orders of iconicity and indexicality that seem to cause the ritual to create its own sacred space through what appears, often, to be the magic of textual and nontextual metricalizations, synchronized"

that's basically nonsense for a person trying to learn about linguistic anthropology as opposed to someone who already knows about it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Josephbsullivan (talk • contribs) 06:39, 10 March 2007 (UTC).Josephbsullivan 06:41, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Signed. As a beginning linguist, some of the jargon in this article gets away from me. Certain parts later in the article seem sort of coherent but oddly disfluent in meaning, a little bit semantically marked. --Utopianfiat (talk) 01:54, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi, There seems to be an error in the reference to the Bible passage cited: "gospel of Mark, chapter 2, verses 6-8". There doesn't seem to be any mention in the verses cxited that refer to the "knowledge of inner states of others" as claimed in this entry. Could anyone give the correct reference???

By the way, FWIW I don't think this section should be included in a larger section and DEFINITELY NOT into linguistics!!!

LookingGlass 10:00, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bettering this article

This article confuses the concepts of "anthropological linguistics" and "linguistic anthropology" and treats both in inconsistent and incoherent manners. I will undertake a serious clean up soon.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 17:39, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the point of dispute. The article mentions "anthropological linguistics" and "linguistic anthropology." Are you suggesting that is reverses the labels? In that case, I disagree - I think the current discussion is reasonably accurate. Also, could you suggest more concretely which elements you find inconsistent and incoherent?

Personally, I find the introductory paragraph headed "Anthropological issues studied via linguistic methods and data" confusing and perhaps misleading. The rest of the article seems acceptable, though.Cnilep (talk) 17:56, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually you are right. I was too quick on the trigger there. I was reading the article in connection with the article on anthropological linguistics: on further thought I think its the latter that is disputable. This article is just written in an obfuscating, or overly academic manner which I think confused me. I will try to word it down to my level. Just to check my pre-theoretical understaning of the terminology: If I were to define "linguistic anthropology" I would start by saying that from the beginning it was the part of anthropology that studies language, back when descriptive linguistics in the USA was seen as a subdiscipline of anthropology. Then I would say that as descriptive linguistics fused with structural linguistics and historical linguistics into the discipline now known simply as linguistics, linguistic anthropology came to mean specifically the study of culture through linguistic methods (this would be the second paradigm I suppose). In my understanding, currently linguistic anthropology can be said to differ from anthropological linguistics in that the first is a subdiscipline of anthropology that applies linguistic methods to study anthropological phenomena, whereas the second is a subdiscipline of linguistics that study linguistic phenomena in their cultural setting and the interrelatedness between linguistic phenomena and anthropological phenomena. How do you feel about such a definition?
Yes, that sounds about right.Cnilep (talk) 18:49, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
I do disagree slightly with the historical progression of paradigms. Although I do understand that anthropological linguistics can be seen as having sprung from linguistic anthropology as Duranti states, I think it would be less confusing to see it as having sprung from linguistics proper, and not less true. I think it rests a lot on the understanding of Dell Hymes as being the principal father of anthtopological linguistics, which i think is debatable: I would go further back to Boas, Sapir and Whorf to find the roots of anthropological linguistics. Such important fields of anthropological linguistics as colour terminology research, linguistic taxonomy studies, spatio-temporal terminology research and categorization research can't really be traced back to Hymes - and indeed they developed parallel with his work. Ethnography of speaking/ethnolinguistics is certainly an important part of anthropological linguistics but not the only one. Therefore I propose to move away from Duranti's interpretation of the historcial evolution of the discipline of linguistic anthropology, at least as the basis for the structure of the article. I also propose to change the definition of anthropological linguistics both here and in the article Anthropological linguistics ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 20:07, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ugh…

While a lot of this is very interesting, none of this is Wikipedia-esque. I came here for answers, and all I got were tangents, esoteric examples and further confused. Give examples their own page, link to them from this page, and PUT UP DEFINITIONS! I still have absolutely no idea what linguistic anthropology is (or what anthropological linguistics is, for that matter). Please stay consistent with the Wikipedia standard; this style of writing is completely out of character. thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by Halverso (talk • contribs) 20:22, 17 May 2008 (UTC)