Preface

Language as used in real-life social contexts is fascinating but extremely

challenging to study. Linguistic anthropology as a discipline offers a
set of concepts and tools for undertaking this challenge. My goal in
this book is to provide an accessible introduction to the main princi­
ples and approaches o f linguistic anthropology w ithout overly simpli­
fying the complex contributions o f scholars in the field. To the degree
that this book succeeds in accomplishing this goal, it will be useful not
just to graduate and undergraduate students studying linguistic anthro­
pology for the first time (to w hom I very much hope to com m uni­
cate my enthusiasm for the field) but also to all sorts of other readers
w ho m ight for various reasons be interested in “living language”
These readers might include, for example, cultural anthropologists,
sociologists, or political scientists who have never looked closely at
language in their research but could benefit from doing so. I also hope
the book will be o f value to linguists whose work thus far has been
more technical and abstract in nature but who would like to turn
their attention to the study of actual instances of linguistic practice.
And finally, I hope the book will appeal to anyone who has a natural
curiosity about the central role language plays in shaping and reflect­
ing cultural norms and social interactions.
W ithin the United States, linguistic anthropology is one o f the four
traditional fields of anthropology: archaeology, biological (also called
physical) anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthro­
pology. W hen Franz Boas helped to establish the discipline o f anthro­
pology in the U nited States more than one hundred years ago, most
anthropologists were trained in all four of these fields and often
Preface

conducted research in more than one of them. As scholarship became

more specialized over the past century, however, such breadth
became much rarer. O ne of my main purposes in w riting this book is
to convince anthropologists in other subfields, especially cultural
anthropology, of the advantages of becom ing well-trained in linguistic
anthropology as well as their “hom e” subdiscipline. After all, much of
the data collected by cultural anthropologists (and by many research­
ers in other fields) is linguistic in nature. Linguistic anthropologists
(e.g., Briggs 1986:22) have argued that such data should not be treated
as a transparent window through which the researcher can reach to
obtain facts or information. Rather, interviews and other sources of
data for social scientists should be considered as communicative events
in which meanings are co-constructed and interwoven with various
forms o f context. This book will, I hope, provide useful tools and
examples of analyses that help researchers produce nuanced analyses
of many different kinds of social and linguistic practices.
I should say a few words about nomenclature and the sometimes
arbitrary nature of disciplinary boundaries. Anthropology as a disci­
pline is not found in every university in the United States and certainly
not in every country around the world. Sometimes it is subsumed
under sociology; other times individual anthropologists work in aca­
demic departments ranging from political science to educational
psychology. Linguistic anthropology as a subdiscipline is even more
specific to the U nited States and is rarely identified as such in other
countries. And yet, the core themes and approaches of linguistic
anthropology as set forth in this book are ever more commonly at the
forefront of cutting-edge research in many different fields, even
when “linguistic anthropology” as such is not the label under which
the research takes place. In the United Kingdom,for example,“linguistic
ethnography” has become increasingly popular as a term describing
the work of scholars who study language ethnographically, as linguistic
anthropologists generally do (cf. Creese 2008). Some sociolinguists,
who usually hold PhDs in the discipline of linguistics rather than
anthropology or sociology (though there are exceptions), also produce
scholarship very much in keeping with the approaches 1 describe in
this book. In addition, linguistic anthropologists themselves have
sometimes used other terms to label what they do, such as anthropo­
logical linguistics, ethnolinguistics, or “anthropolitical” linguistics, and
 Preface

many researchers produce im portant and relevant work in other related

fields such as pragmatics, sociopolitical linguistics, discourse analysis,
rhetoric, applied linguistics, or communication (Duranti 1997, 2003,
forthcoming; Zentella 1996). I draw upon the work of many of these
scholars in this book, along with researchers in other fields. W hile
I consider myself firmly rooted in linguistic anthropology, I share with
Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall (2008) a desire to take an “all of the
above” approach to the study of linguistic practices in real-life social
contexts. There is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained, in
my opinion, from engaging in a cross-disciplinary dialogue.
As valuable as I find much of the research on language from all these
different fields, 1 do attempt to differentiate the approach I advocate
from an approach that considers language solely as an abstract set of
grammatical rules, detached from any actual linguistic interaction.
Linguistic structure and the insights surrounding it that have emerged
from the discipline of linguistics since first Ferdinand de Saussure and
then Noam Chomsky began to dominate the field so many decades ago
are extremely important to most linguistic anthropologists, but as
Chomsky’s hegemonic grip on linguistics as a discipline has begun to
weaken, there is even more reason to offer the approach presented in
this book —that of treating language use as a form of social action - as
an alternative that can either complement or cause a reconceptualiza­
tion of Chomsky’s perspective on language. Ideally, scholars who con­
sider linguistic practices to be a form of social action will be able to
make use of the most valuable findings on linguistic structure conducted
in a Chomskyan manner while also paying close attention to the ways
in which such practices are embedded in webs of social hierarchies and
identities.This is a challenging task. As Michael Silverstein has noted, it
can lead to “the same feeling one has in that sitcom situation of standing
with one foot on the dock and another in the boat as the tide rushes
away from shore” (2006:275). Silverstein goes on to state the following:
The serious metaphorical point here is that it takes a great deal ot bod­
ily force to keep standing upright, with one foot firmly planted in lan­
guage as a structured code and the other in language as a medium of the
various sociocultural lifeways of human groups and their emergently
precipitated sociohistorical macrostructures at several orders of magni­
tude. (2006:275)
Preface

The goal of this book is to provide some concrete assistance in the

form of theoretical insights, methodological tools, and ethnographic
examples for those who would like to remain standing upright —those
w ho wish to look closely at language both in terms of its grammatical
patterning and in terms of its role in the shaping of social life.
Living Language is divided into three parts, each of which is com­
prised of four chapters. In the first part, “Language: Some Basic
Questions,” I explain how language use can be conceived of, and pro­
ductively studied as, a form of social action. The introductory chapter,
“The Socially Charged Life of Language,” presents four key terms that
will act as anchors for readers as they proceed through the ensuing
chapters. These four key terms — multifunctionality, language ideologies,
practice, and indexicality - can be applied in many different social contexts
to obtain a deeper understanding of how language works. Chapter 2,
“The Research Process in Linguistic Anthropology,” describes the many
different methods linguistic anthropologists use to conduct their research
and discusses some of the practical and ethical dilemmas many research­
ers face when studying language in real-life situations. Chapter 3,
“Language Acquisition and Socialization,” focuses on the way that lin­
guistic anthropologists study how young children learn their first
language (s) at the same time that they are being socialized into appro­
priate cultural practices. This way of understanding linguistic and cul­
tural practices as being thoroughly intertwined can also apply to
adolescents and adults who engage in language socialization whenever
they enter new social or professional contexts. Chapter 4, the final chap­
ter in the first part of the book, “Language, Thought, and Culture,”
looks at some of the controversies and foundational principles underly­
ing the so-called “Sapir—W horf Hypothesis” and the ways in which
language relates to thought and culture.
The second part of the book, “Com m unities o f Speakers, Hearers,
Readers, and W riters,” moves on from these basic questions to con­
sider the constitution o f various forms of linguistic and social com ­
munities. Chapter 5, “Com m unities o f Language Users,” explores the
concept o f “speech com m unity” and surveys some of the scholarship
on this topic, concluding with a discussion o f the valuable alternative
concept o f “com m unity o f practice.” Chapter 6, “Multilingualism and
Globalization,” places these communities in a global context to dem ­
onstrate how im portant it is to consider multilingualism in individuals
 Preface

and communities when conducting research on linguistic or social

practices anywhere in the world. Chapter 7, “Literacy Practices,”
makes a case for the importance of looking at the interwoven nature
o f literacy and orality. Many linguistic anthropologists focus solely on
spoken language, but studying literacy practices in conjunction with
verbal interactions can be quite illuminating. Chapter 8,“Performance,
Performativity, and the Constitution of Communities,” the final chap­
ter in the second part of the book, disentangles the various theoretical
and ethnographic approaches to performance and performativity and
discusses the importance o f these themes for understanding how lin­
guistic and social communities come to be formed.
The final part of the book, “Language, Power, and Social
Differentiation,” moves more deeply into the constitution of actual
communities by examining various dimensions of social and linguis­
tic differentiation and inequality within particular communities.
Chapter 9, “Language and Gender,” explores some com m on language
ideologies concerning the ways in which wom en and men speak and
reviews the research on the complex nature o f gendered linguistic
practices. Chapter 10, “Language, Race, and Ethnicity,” engages with
two other com m on forms of social and linguistic differentiation, that
of racialization and ethnicization. This chapter describes the
rule-governed nature of African American English, the Ebonics
controversy of 1996—1997, and the racializing aspects o f M ock Spanish.
Chapter 11, “Language Death and Revitalization,” looks at the rea­
sons why so many of the world’s languages are endangered and asks
what social inequalities and language ideologies underpin these dis­
courses o f endangerm ent.The concluding chapter, “Language, Power,
and Agency,” pulls together the threads of the previous chapters to
present a view of linguistic practices as embedded within power
dynamics and subject to various forms of agency. This chapter pro­
vides an overview of the social theorists, including Raym ond Williams,
Michel Foucault, Sherry Ortner, and Pierre Bourdieu, who are in my
view the most useful for developing a deeper understanding of lan­
guage, power, agency, and social action.
In sum, this book is meant to be an invitation to all readers to
explore more fully the notion that to use language is always to engage
in a form of social action. Embarking on this exploration will lead to
a better appreciation for what “living language” can mean.