Linguistic Anthropology

Citation

Duranti, A. (1997). Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book has a preface, ten chapters, an appendix of practical tips on recording interaction, references and two indexes, in about 400 pages. In the preface Duranti says he has been deliberately selective, avoiding the stereotype of linguistic anthropologists as descriptive, non-theoretical technicians, and that the book is "a statement about contemporary research on language and culture from a particular point of view" and not a comprehensive treatise. The summaries below follow the publicly visible chapter introductions on Cambridge Core and the publisher's description.

Chapter 1: The scope of linguistic anthropology

The first chapter presents linguistic anthropology as a distinct, interdisciplinary field that draws on linguistics and anthropology, and begins to show how it has developed its own identity. The book's primary goal, as stated here, is to explain how the field enhances understanding of language not only as a mode of thinking but above all as a cultural practice, a form of action.

Chapter 2: Theories of culture

Since the field's premise is that language is cultural practice, Duranti discusses the notion of culture. He notes that the concept has been harshly scrutinised, criticised as reducing complexity to simple characterisations and as tied to a colonialist agenda that rests on dichotomies such as "us" and "them" or "civilized" and "primitive". The chapter, which the publisher describes as devoted entirely to the notion of culture, reviews the theories of culture and the criticisms made of the concept.

Chapter 3: Linguistic diversity

The chapter contrasts approaches to differences across languages. Generative grammarians seek a few general principles, a Universal Grammar, and tend to assume homogeneity within a speech community; sociolinguists start from the observation of considerable variation within any community. Both positions frame the book's own approach to diversity.

Chapter 4: Ethnographic methods

This chapter and the next offer a critical review of common data-collection techniques and analytical procedures. Chapter 4 emphasises the logic of research habits more than technical solutions, covering participant observation, work with native speakers on local interpretive glosses, elicitation techniques like those used by typological linguists, and their integration with documentation methods from urban sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and conversation analysis.

Chapter 5: Transcription: from writing to digitized images

The chapter on transcription takes the history from Boas and Malinowski, who could only note down informants' accounts, to the possibility of recording and replaying talk, and examines the practice of transcription in detail. The publisher calls the methodological chapters on ethnography and transcription invaluable.

Chapter 6: Meaning in linguistic forms

This chapter introduces units of analysis used in formal grammar, such as phonemes and morphemes, and principles of structuralist linguistics. It shows how events and participants' roles are marked through nominal and verbal morphology, relates grammatical choices to parameters such as animacy, person, and foregrounding of information, introduces metalinguistic awareness, and illustrates indexicality through the relation of language and gender.

Chapter 7: Speaking as social action

The chapter on speaking as action, opening with the epigraph from Goethe's Faust ("In the beginning was the Deed"), moves from linguistic forms to acts. Chapter 8 refers back to the notion of language game from this chapter, which indicates that it deals with speech as action in the tradition that includes Wittgenstein.

Chapter 8: Conversational exchanges

The chapter turns from individual speech acts to the fact that talk is exchanged. Utterances such as greetings are shown to be organised in pairs and sequences, each part acquiring meaning from its place in the sequence, and everyday speech consists mainly of short utterances by different speakers fitted to one another.

Chapter 9: Units of participation

Duranti argues that earlier chapters have broken discourse into ever smaller units, and asks how speakers connect small units to the larger entities they take part in. He explores "participation" as both a dimension of interaction and a perspective of analysis, drawing on linguistics, anthropology, sociology and psychology.

Chapter 10: Conclusions

A short final chapter faces the question of the whole by foregrounding questions raised or implied earlier. It does not summarise the earlier chapters and instead looks ahead to the field's future.

Appendix: Practical tips on recording interaction

A brief set of practical tips on preparation, microphones and audio and video recording, with pointers to Jackson (1987) and Goodwin (1993) for fuller treatments.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3

• Language as cultural practice: speaking understood as a form of action that creates and reflects culture.
• Universal Grammar and sociolinguistic variation: two contrasting ways of treating linguistic diversity.

Chapters 4–6

• Participant observation, elicitation and local glosses: the methods the book reviews.
• Transcription: the representation of talk, from early note-taking to recorded and digitised data.
• Indexicality: the property of signs by which they point to features of context, illustrated with gender.

Chapters 7–10

• Language game and speech act: speaking considered as action.
• Adjacency pairs and sequences: the organisation of conversational exchanges.
• Participation: a unit of analysis and a dimension of interaction.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear stated point of view. The preface announces that the book is selective and deliberately theoretical, so the reader knows what is and is not being offered.
• Methods are treated seriously. Dedicated chapters on ethnographic methods and transcription, plus the appendix on recording interaction, give practical guidance for people planning to collect data. The publisher calls the methodological chapters invaluable.
• Culture is examined, not assumed. A full chapter reviews theories of culture and the criticisms of the concept.
• Clear and readable. The publisher describes the book as original in its treatment yet eminently clear and readable, and the chapter introductions explain what each chapter will do.

Limitations

• Selective, not comprehensive. Duranti says he did not aim for a comprehensive treatise, so some topics are omitted.
• Dated. The book was first published in 1997 and so does not cover later work on topics such as language ideology, media and digital communication; pair it with a more recent introduction.
• Technical middle chapters. The chapter on meaning in linguistic forms introduces grammatical terminology (phonemes, morphemes, nominal and verbal morphology), which is demanding for readers without linguistics.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the linguistic anthropology course, Duranti is the broad, method-minded graduate-level textbook. Kramsch's Language and Culture is a short introduction, Ahearn's Living Language an introduction treating language as social action, and Stanlaw and Adachi's Language, Culture, and Society a comprehensive textbook; Ahearn's and Stanlaw and Adachi's books are also more recent. Agha's Language and Social Relations is a theoretical monograph that develops one integrated account of registers and reflexivity, and Ahearn's Invitations to Love is an ethnography of love letters in Nepal.

A sensible order is an introduction first, then Duranti for the field's methods and conceptual background, then Agha for a demanding theory or Ahearn's ethnography for an extended case.

How to Use This Book

The book is for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students; some familiarity with basic linguistics (phonetics and grammar) is helpful, as the publisher aims it at both groups. Read Chapters 1 and 2 for the framework, then Chapters 4 and 5 before doing any fieldwork or recording, together with the appendix. Chapter 6 is the most technical and can be read selectively if you have a linguistics background. Chapters 7 to 9 move from acts to exchanges to participation and are best read in order. Chapter 10 is short and helps with orientation. For practice, transcribe a few minutes of recorded conversation and compare your transcript with the issues raised in Chapter 5.