Linguistic Anthropology

The Development of Structuralism

 Wilhelm von Humboldt
• Language is the medium
through which humans
perceive the world

• There is a relationship
between a nation’s
language and its
character

(1767 – 1835)
 Wilhelm von Humboldt
• The “outer form” of a
language consists of the raw
material – the sounds – used
to make different languages

• The “inner form” is the pattern

– the structure – of the
grammar and the meanings
given to the raw material

• It is the “inner form” that

distinguishes languages from
one another

Wilhelm von Humboldt

(ca. 1830)
 Wilhelm von Humboldt
• Language is dynamic, not static.

• Language is an activity, not a product of activity.

• A language is not a set of actual utterances produced by

speakers…

• It is the underlying principles or rules that made it

possible for speakers to produce such utterances.

• A “Structural” conception of language.

 Ferdinand de Saussure
• Language is a structured
system that can be viewed

• synchronically (as it exists at

any one time)

• diachronically (as it changes

over time)

(1857–1913)
 Ferdinand de Saussure
• parole – the way a
parole
parole particular person speaks

• langue – the system of

parole langue parole
rules that makes it
possible for a person to
know how to speak

parole
parole
 Ferdinand de Saussure on Signs

• Language is a symbolic system

that depends upon “signs”

• “Signified” – an abstract mental

concept

• “Signifier” – a material "sound-

image" (i.e., an utterance, a
written word, a picture)

• the process of signification is

what gives meaning to an
expression
 Fredinand de Saussure
• Wanted to counter prescriptive linguistics – as a
program for telling people how they should use their
language (“standard”)

• His interest was in descriptive linguistics – to describe

how people actually use language (nonstandard”)

• Language is a “social fact” (à la Durkheim)

• Language is a sequence of sounds that carry meaning

 The Structure of Sentences
paradigmatic syntagmatic
• “The dog threw up on the • When a sign in one slot
rug.” affects what happens in
another slot
• What can substitute for
“dog”? For “rug”? • “The dog slept on the rug.”

• Animate vs. inanimate • “The dog marinated on the

nouns rug.”

Michael Agar, Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation, 1994

 Franz Boas
• Preserve native languages
before they are lost forever

• Develop a comprehensive
system of synchronic
description
– Sounds
– Grammar
– Dictionary

Linguistics a s a way to study culture

Franz Boas
(1858-1942)
 Leonard Bloomfield
• Studied Malayo-
Polynesian
(Austronesian)
languages, especially
Tagalog

• Showed that the

techniques of historical
linguistic techniques
applied equally well to
non- western languages
(1887-1949)
 Leonard Bloomfield
• Language (1933)
becomes the standard
textbook of American
linguistics

• Linguistic phenomena
could properly and
successfully be studied
when isolated from
their nonlinguistic
environment
 Leonard Bloomfield

• Heavily influenced by behavioralism

• Investigate only empirically observable phenomena

• Study what people say to one another and how they

respond
 The Behaviorist Approach
Focus only on what can be observed

Stimulus Respons
in between lies e
“a black box”
 Bloomfield’s Behaviorism
• The elements of language can be studied in isolation
from the nonlinguistic environment – you study
sound systems and grammar, not semantics

• A child learns language by listening to and then

repeating what others have said

• No speculation about what is going on in a person’s

head when they are using language