Ethnolinguistics
Ethnolinguistics is the interdisciplinary study of the relationship between language and culture, blending insights from linguistics, ethnology, and anthropology. It explores how different cultures perceive their environments and how this perception influences language structure and meaning. For instance, some cultures may have multiple terms for various forms of snow, reflecting their unique interaction with their environment, while others may use a single term for similar elements, indicating different cultural priorities. The field gained prominence in the early twentieth century through the work of scholars like Edward Sapir and Benjamin L. Whorf, who highlighted the ways language shapes thought and cultural identity. Ethnolinguistics emphasizes the importance of social and cultural contexts in language development, making it a vital area of study for understanding ethnic identity and promoting multilingualism. The discipline has evolved significantly since the 1980s, leading to the emergence of cultural linguistics, which further investigates the interplay between language, culture, and cognition. Overall, ethnolinguistics plays a crucial role in preserving cultural diversity and advocating for minority rights.
On this Page
Ethnolinguistics
Ethnolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and the culture it defines. Ethnolinguistics combines the fields of linguistics, the scientific study of language, and ethnology, the study of different cultures. The field is also related to anthropology, which studies the origins and development of humankind. An example of an ethnolinguistic focus is how different cultures perceive their physical environment. Many cultures use words related to the arrival of the sunrise and the sunset to gauge direction within a landscape. Others base their directional language on the closeness of landmarks such as rivers. The study of ethnolinguistics relates language to imagery, claiming that words derive their meanings from relative scenes and scenarios. Ethnolinguists also relate language to perception and cultural patterns and suggest that the structure of a language informs the way a person thinks.
Overview
Ethnolinguistics is a specified branch of linguistics related to anthropological linguistics. The concept dates back to the early nineteenth century when German philosophers Johann Gottfried von Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt contributed to the birth of modern linguistics. Humboldt's The Diversity of Human Language Structures and Its Influence on the Mental Development of Mankind (1836) profoundly influenced the future of ethnolinguistics. The discipline faced many obstacles for more than a century, however, and was generally discounted by linguists save for a few dedicated individuals. American anthropological linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin L. Whorf brought ethnolinguistics into the spotlight in the early twentieth century when they discovered that some cultures had multiple words for one object, while others applied one word to multiple objects of a similar nature. For example, the Inuit people of the Arctic have many words for snow, while the Aztec language uses just one word to describe snow, ice, and cold weather.
In broad terms, linguistics examines human language in relation to sounds and meaning, observing how humans acquire, process, and represent language. Ethnolinguistics builds on this foundation to study the social and cultural characteristics of language, applying studies in anthropology to understand how communities directly affect the development of a language. Ethnolinguistics was not popular in mainstream linguistics until the 1980s. During this time, a wave of ethnolinguistic publications emphasized the significant connection between language, culture, and thought. Studies in ethnolinguistics observed vastly diverse language dialects present in relatively small regions, leading researchers to view ethnic identity as an important factor in the development of languages. The field continued to gain traction as the decades progressed, and even spawned a related branch of linguistics referred to as cultural linguistics. Ethnolinguistics and cultural linguistics are vital in maintaining minority rights, understanding cultures, preserving culture and language, and promoting multilingualism.
Bibliography
Głaz, Adam. Linguistic Worldview(s): Approaches and Applications. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022.
"Johann Gottfried von Herder." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 19 May 2022, plato.stanford.edu/entries/herder/#RolBirLinAnt. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
Palmer, Gary B. Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. U of Texas P, 1996, pp. 3-9.
Sharifian, Farzad. "Advances in Cultural Linguistics." Approaches to Language, Culture, and Cognition: The Intersection of Cognitive Linguistics and Linguistic Anthropology. MacMillan, 2014.
Tuan, Yi-fu. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perceptions, Attitudes, and Values. Columbia UP, 1974, pp. 59-74.
Underhill, James W. Ethnolinguistics and Cultural Concepts: Truth, Love, Hate and War. Cambridge UP, 2012, pp. 17-31.