Language, Culture, and Society: A Book of Readings

By Ben G. Blount

Book Overview

Twenty-four articles representing a diversity of interests and approaches have been brought together in this collection intended to define and develop topics of central interest to language, culture,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0881338508
• ISBN13: 9780881338508
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: Waveland Press
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.5" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

An alternative to Duranti's view of language as culture in US anthropology

If we want to gain insights into future directions in sociolinguistics/linguistic anthropology, we should `look back' to the foundational collections published in 1970s in which cognitive anthropological studies were nicely integrated into sociolinguistics (e.g., Blount 1974; Blount & Sanches 1977; Giglioli 1972; Gumperz & Hymes 1972; Sanches & Blount 1975). Blount's collection under review is one of the most important ones in this respect. This collection captures the tendencies from 1950s-1990s well. In his introductory remarks to each period (1910-1940s; 1950-1970s; 1980-1990s), Blount provides a `cognitive' alternative to Duranti (2003) in which `three paradigms' are discussed. This book is an expanded version of Blount (1974), which divides the study of language, culture, and society into three periods: 1910-1940s as the formative period, 1950s-1970s as the period of paradigm development, and 1980s-1990s as the period of (new) directions. Among the selected ten papers published between 1950s and 1970s, two papers fall within the category of cognitive anthropology (Charles O. Frake's `The Ethnographic Study of Cognitive Systems' and Brent Berlin's `Speculations on the Growth of Ethnobotanical Nomenclature'). Michael Silverstein's `Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description' published in 1976 plays a prominent role in synthesizing the cognitive papers with other more sociological and/or interactional papers (see pp. 106-107 for Blount's account). This collection is also notable in that Ben G. Blount selects cognitive anthropological papers published in 1980s (Eugene Hunn's `Ethnoecology: The Relevance of Cognitive Anthropology for Human Ecology' in 1989) and in 1990s (Paul Kay, Brent Berlin, and William Merrfield's `Biocultual Implications of Systems of Color Naming' in 1991), as well as a synthetic semiotic-cognitive paper `Whorf's View of the Linguistic Mediation of Though' by John A. Lucy published in 1985. Interestingly, these cognitive papers are chosen along with a `postmodern' or non-cognitive paper by Charles L. Briggs and Richard Bauman's `Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power' published in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology in 1992 (which was also edited by Blount). If we follow Duranti (2003), the period of paradigm development between 1950s and 1970s should have no `classic' cognitive anthropological papers. However cognitive lines of inquiry are `alive and well' even in 1980s and 1990s. Thus, we question Duranti's statement that "language was no longer a window on the human mind ... Rather it was primarily a social phenomenon, to be studied ... in the midst of speech events or speech activities" in 1970s and 1980s (Duranti 2003: 329). The reader is invited to think about the issue of cognitive versus anti-cognitive linguistic anthropology. Reference Duranti, A. 2003. Language as Culture in U.S. anthropology: Three paradigms. Current Anthropology 44(3): 323-347.