Anthropological Linguistics - Paperback

by William Foley (Author)

It starts from a theoretical viewpoint of both language and culture as conventionalised forms of situated practice and uses this as a unifying framework to cover the full range of topics normally treated under the rubric of language and culture.

Back Jacket

This is the first comprehensive textbook in anthropological linguistics to be published for very many years. It provides a remarkably complete and authoritative review of research questions which span the disciplines of linguinitics and anthropology, yet presents a coherent, unified, biologically based view of this cross-disciplinary field.

Anthropological linguistics is concerned with the place of language in its social and cultural context, with understanding the role of language in forging and sustaining cultural practices and social structures. While anthropological concept of culture, its subject matter ranges cry widely: from cognitive or psychologically oriented topics such as linguistic, relativity or universals of color terminology, to sociocultural issues such as language and gender, politeness, socialization, language contact, and linguistic engineering. All these topics and many more are addressed here, supported by examples and illustrations from an array of languages, especially those of Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

Students will find in this book a careful evaluation of current issues and research questions, giving them a basic, yet well rounded understanding of their importance in a wider field; and they will find in each chapter suggestions for further readings, allowing them to pursue topics of particular interest to them.

Author Biography

William A. Foley is Professor of Lingusitics at the University of Sydney. He is author of Functional Syntax and Universal Grammar (with R. van Valin) and The Papuan Languages fo New Guinea, and editor of The Role of Theory in Language Description.