Part I
Language:
Some Basic
Questions
Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology, First Edition. Laura M. Ahearn.
© 2012 Laura M. Ahearn. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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The Socially Charged Life
of Language
All words have the ‘taste’ of a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, a
particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age group, the day
and hour. Each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has
lived its socially charged life…
Bakhtin 1981:293
Words do live socially charged lives, as Bakhtin observes in the epigraph
that opens this chapter. Language is not a neutral medium for communication but rather a set of socially embedded practices.The reverse
of Bakhtin’s statement is also true: social interactions live linguistically charged lives. That is, every social interaction is mediated by
language – whether spoken or written, verbal or nonverbal. Consider
the following three examples.
Example 1: Getting Stoned in San Francisco
During the 1995–1996 school year, a special anti-drug class was run
as an elective in a large high school in the San Francisco Bay Area.1
Students were trained as peer educators in preparation for visiting
other classes to perform skits about the danger of drugs and tobacco.
The class was unusually diverse, with boys as well as girls and with
students from many different class ranks, ethnicities, and racial groups.
On the day that the students were preparing to perform their skits in
front of an audience for the first time, they asked the teacher, Priscilla,
Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology, First Edition. Laura M. Ahearn.
© 2012 Laura M. Ahearn. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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The Socially Charged Life of Language
Figure 1.1 Cartoon demonstrating how certain styles of speech can both
reflect and shape social identities.
Source: Jump Start © 1999 United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
what they should say if someone in the audience asked whether they
themselves smoked marijuana. Priscilla recommended that they say
they did not. Then the following exchange took place between
Priscilla and the students:
Priscilla:
Remember, you’re role models.
Al Capone: You want us to lie?
Priscilla:
Since you’re not coming to school stoned – (students
laugh)
Calvin:
(mockingly) Stoned?
Priscilla:
What do you say?
Calvin:
I say high. Bombed. Blitzed.
Brand One: Weeded.
Kerry:
Justified.
Brand One: That’s kinda tight.
Example 2: Losing a Language in Papua New Guinea
In 1987, the residents of the tiny village of Gapun in Papua New
Guinea (a country north of Australia) were some of the last speakers
of a language called Taiap, which at the time had at most 89 remaining
speakers.2 Adult villagers were almost all bilingual in Taiap and in Tok
Pisin, one of the three national languages of Papua New Guinea, and
all children were exposed to rich amounts of both Taiap and Tok Pisin
in their early years. By 1987, however, no child under the age of ten
actively spoke Taiap, and many under the age of eight did not even
possess a good passive knowledge of the language. The usual theories
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about how and why so many of the world’s languages are becoming
extinct did not seem to apply to Taiap. Material and economic factors
such as industrialization and urbanization were not sufficiently
important in the remote village of Gapun to explain the language
shift away from Taiap. Why, then, was Taiap becoming extinct? According to linguistic anthropologist Don Kulick, the adults in Gapun
claimed that the shift was occurring because of the actions of their
(often preverbal) children. Kulick writes: “‘We haven’t done anything,’
one village man explained when I asked him why village children
don’t speak the vernacular, ‘We try to get them to speak it, we want
them to. But they won’t … They’re bikhed [big-headed, strongwilled]’” (Kulick 1992:16).
Example 3:The Pounded Rice Ritual in Nepal
On a warm February afternoon in 1993, a wedding procession made
its way down a steep hill in Junigau, Nepal. Several men carefully
maneuvered the bride’s sedan chair around the hairpin turns. At the
foot of the hill, under a large banyan tree, the wedding party settled
down to rest and to conduct the Pounded Rice Ritual.3 The bride,
Indrani Kumari, remained in her palanquin, while some members of
the wedding party, including the groom, Khim Prasad, approached
her. Taking out a leafplate full of pounded rice, a popular snack in
Nepal, Indrani Kumari’s bridal attendant placed it in her lap. Khim
Prasad, coached by his senior male kin, tentatively began the ritual,
holding out a handkerchief and asking his new wife to give him the
pounded rice snack. He used the most polite, honorific form of “you”
in Nepali (tapa-i), and so his remark translated roughly as a polite
request to someone of higher social status: “Please bring the pounded
rice, Wife; our wedding party has gotten hungry.”
But this first request was not very effective. Indrani Kumari and her
bridal attendant poured just a few kernels of the pounded rice into
the handkerchief Khim Prasad was holding. Upon further coaching
from his elders, Khim Prasad asked a second time for the rice, this
time in a more informal manner using “timi,” a form of “you” in
Nepali that is considered appropriate for close relatives and/or familiar equals.This time, Khim Prasad’s request could be translated roughly
as a matter-of-fact statement to someone of equal social status: “Bring
the pounded rice, Wife; our wedding party has gotten hungry.” But
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The Socially Charged Life of Language
Figure 1.2 Khim Prasad (left) during the Pounded Rice Ritual, with the
bride, Indrani Kumari (seated at the right, completely covered by a shawl),
and the bridal attendant (standing in the center).
Source: Laura M. Ahearn, Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social
Change in Nepal. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.
again, the bridal attendant and Indrani Kumari poured only a few
kernels of pounded rice into Khim Prasad’s waiting handkerchief.
One last time Khim Prasad’s senior male kin instructed him to ask for
the rice, but this time he was told to use “tã,” the lowest form of “you”
in Nepali – a form most commonly used in Junigau to address young
children, animals, and wives. Khim Prasad complied, but his words
were halting and barely audible, indicating his deeply mixed feelings
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about using such a disrespectful term to address his new wife. This
third request translated roughly as a peremptory command to someone of greatly inferior social status: “Bring the pounded rice, Wife!
Our wedding party has gotten hungry!” Hearing this, Indrani Kumari
and her attendant finally proceeded obediently to dump all the
remaining rice into the groom’s handkerchief, after which he handed
out portions of the snack to all members of the wedding party.
As different as these three examples are, they all describe situations in
which neither a linguistic analysis alone nor a sociocultural analysis
alone would come close to providing a satisfying explanation of the
significance of the events.The purpose of this book is to show how the
perspectives and tools of linguistic anthropology, when applied to events
as wide-ranging as an anti-drug class in a San Francisco high school,
language shift in Papua New Guinea, or a ritual in Nepal, can shed light
on broader social and cultural issues as well as deepen our understanding of language – and ourselves. As we move through the chapters that
follow, we will be addressing a number of questions, including:
?
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What can such situations tell us about the ways in which language
is enmeshed with cultural values and social power?
How do dimensions of difference or inequality along lines such as
gender, ethnicity, race, age, or wealth get created, reproduced, or
challenged through language?
How can language illuminate the ways in which we are all the
same by virtue of being human as well as the ways in which we
are incredibly diverse linguistically and culturally?
How, if at all, do linguistic forms, such as the three different words
in Nepali for “you” or the various slang words for “stoned,” influence people’s thought patterns or worldviews?
How might people’s ideas about language (for example, what
“good” language is and who can speak it – in other words, their
“language ideologies”) affect their perceptions of others as well as
themselves?
How does the language used in public rituals and performances
both differ from and resemble everyday, mundane conversations?
What methods of data collection and analysis can we use to determine the significance of events such as those described above?
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The starting point in the search for answers to all of these questions
within linguistic anthropology is this fundamental principle: language
is inherently social. It is not just a means through which we act upon
the social world; speaking is itself a form of social action, and language
is a cultural resource available for people to use (Duranti 1997:2). We
do things with words, as the philosopher J.L. Austin (1962) reminded
us decades ago. Even when we speak or write to ourselves, our very
choices of words, as well as our underlying intentions and desires, are
influenced by the social contexts in which we have seen, heard, or
experienced those words, intentions, and desires before. Linguistic
anthropologists therefore maintain that the essence of language cannot be understood without reference to the particular social contexts
in which it is used. But those contexts do not stand apart from linguistic practices or somehow “contain” them, as a soup bowl would
contain soup.4 Rather, social contexts and linguistic practices mutually constitute each other. For this reason, language should be studied,
Alessandro Duranti writes, “not only as a mode of thinking but, above
all, as a cultural practice, that is, as a form of action that both presupposes and at the same time brings about ways of being in the world”
(1997:1).
This approach to language differs from the popular view of language as an empty vehicle that conveys pre-existing meanings about
the world. Language, according to this view, which is held by many
members of the general public as well as many linguists and other
scholars, is largely a set of labels that can be placed on pre-existing
concepts, objects, or relationships. In this mistaken way of thinking,
language is defined as a conduit that merely conveys information
without adding or changing anything of substance (Reddy 1979).
Within the field of linguistics, a similar approach to language is
dominant: one in which language is reduced to a set of formal rules.
Such reductionism extends back hundreds of years but was made the
dominant approach of the field of linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure,
a famous Swiss linguist who lived a century ago. De Saussure maintained that it was not only possible but necessary to decontextualize
the study of language: “A science which studies linguistic structure
is not only able to dispense with other elements of language, but is
possible only if those other elements are kept separate” (Saussure
1986[1916]:14).5 This perspective was reinforced by Noam Chomsky,
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an American linguist who revolutionized the field and has dominated
it for the past 50 years. Chomsky and his followers are interested in
discovering Universal Grammar (UG), which they define as: “The
basic design underlying the grammars of all human languages; [it] also
refers to the circuitry in children’s brains that allows them to learn the
grammar of their parents’ language” (Pinker 1994:483).
This is not to say that linguistic anthropologists are uninterested
in grammar or believe that linguistic forms cannot be studied
systematically – on the contrary, many build upon the “considerable
progress in the understanding of formal properties of languages” made
by scholars in the field of linguistics (Duranti 1997:7), but they ask
very different kinds of questions that explore the intersections between
grammar and social relations, politics, or emotion. Even linguistic
anthropologists who value the work done by linguists believe that in
order to acquire a comprehensive understanding of language, it must
be studied in real-life contexts (cf. Hanks 1996). Grammar, according
to linguistic anthropologists, is just one part of language’s “socially
charged life” (Bakhtin 1981:293).6
So, What Do You Need to Know in Order
to “Know” a Language?
In order to understand what it means to study language as a linguistic
anthropologist would, it is helpful to ask what it means to “know” a
language (Cipollone et al. 1998). Linguists generally use the Chomskyan
distinction between “competence,” the abstract and usually unconscious knowledge that one has about the rules of a language, and
“performance,” the putting into practice – sometimes imperfectly –
of those rules. De Saussure made a similar distinction between langue
(the language system in the abstract) and parole (everyday speech).This
distinction is partly analogous to the way a person might have abstract
knowledge about how to knit a sweater but in the actual knitting of
it might drop a stitch here or there or perhaps make the arms a bit
shorter than necessary. In both the Chomskyan and Saussurean
approaches, it is the abstract knowledge of a language system (competence or langue) that is of primary, or even sole, interest for a science
of language; performance or parole is irrelevant.
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To take the knitting analogy further, if Chomsky were a knittist
instead of a linguist, he would be interested only in the abstract rules
of Knitting (capitalizing the word, as he does with Language) such as
the following: Row 20: P 1, (k 1, p 1) 11(13-15) times, k 5, T R 2, k 4,
T R 2, k 1, p 12, k 1, T L 2, k 4, T L 2, k 5, p 1, (k 1, p 1) 11(13-15)
times.7 Chomsky the knittist would posit the existence of a Knitting
Acquisition Device (KAD, rather than LAD, a Language Acquisition
Device), a specialized module of the brain that allows people to acquire
knitting skills.While he would acknowledge that people require exposure to knitting in their social environments in order to learn how to
knit, he would be completely uninterested in the following:
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How or why people learn to knit in various cultures and communities.
How knitting practices have changed over time.
The gendered nature of knitting and other handicrafts in many
societies (although knitting is often associated with girls and
women in this society, for example, handicrafts such as weaving
were until recently conventionally produced by lower-caste men
in Nepal).
The role of Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles
Dickens, as she secretly encodes the names of counterrevolutionaries into her knitting.8
The global economics involved in the many different yarns people
use to knit – anything from yak wool from Nepal to Icelandic
wool to synthetic mohair.
The many different kinds of products of economic, social, or emotional value that are made by knitters to be worn by themselves,
given to loved ones, donated to charity, or sold to tourists.
The ways in which knitting is viewed by different groups in the
society – as a hip, in-group practice by some, as an old, fuddyduddy practice by others, as a useful, money-making skill by yet
others.
How one’s individual and social identities can be reflected in and
shaped by whether, how, what, and with whom one knits.
While this analogy with knitting is not by any means a perfect one,
it does nevertheless demonstrate how narrowly Chomsky and most
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other linguists view language. Other practices such as playing music,
dancing, or painting would work equally well in the analogy I set up
above because knitting and all these other practices are – like
language – socially embedded and culturally influenced. Of course
there are abstract cognitive and biological dimensions to anything that
we as humans do, including language, but to reduce language solely to
these dimensions, as Chomsky and others do when they claim they
are interested only in competence and not in performance, is to miss
the richness and complexity of one of the most fundamental aspects
of human existence.
Linguistic anthropologists therefore reject the Chomskyan/Saussurean distinction between competence (langue) and performance
(parole), though they do so in various ways. Some deny the existence
of any distinction at all between competence and performance (langue
and parole), while others give primacy to performance (parole). Still
others either expand the definition of competence to include the
ability to use language skillfully and appropriately in particular social
contexts (cf. Hymes 2001[1972]), and many view competence and
performance (langue and parole) as equally important.What all linguistic anthropologists agree upon, however, is that to know a language,
one must know far more than an abstract set of grammatical rules.
What else must one know in order to know a language, then, aside
from grammatical rules? According to Cipollone et al. (1998:8-11),
there are five basic components of a language that can be studied, and
one must master all five of these areas in order to know a language:
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Phonology. The study of sound in language. In order to know a
language, one must be able to recognize and produce the sounds
that are meaningful in that language. In the case of sign languages,
instead of sounds, one must be able to recognize and produce the
appropriate gestures.
Morphology.The study of the internal structure of words. In order to
know a language, one must be able to use suffixes, prefixes, or infixes
(depending on the language). In English, for example, one must
know how to create plurals by placing an “-s” on the end of most
(but not all) words, and must know what adding “un-” to the beginning of a word does to its meaning. In many Native American languages, these sorts of affixes are placed inside a word to create infixes,
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while in Chinese languages, each morpheme, or unit of meaning, is
a separate word, including morphemes indicating tense or plurality.
Syntax.The study of the structure of sentences, including the construction of phrases, clauses, and the order of words. In order to
know a language, one must be able to combine subjects, verbs, and
objects in a grammatically correct way.
Semantics. The study of meaning in language, including analysis
of the meanings of words and sentences. In order to know a language, one must know how to construct and interpret meanings.
Pragmatics. The study of language use, of actual utterances, of how
meanings emerge in actual social contexts.This includes culturally
and linguistically specific ways of structuring narratives, performances, or everyday conversations. In order to know a language,
one must be able to use language in socially and culturally appropriate ways.
Most linguists focus primarily or solely on one or more of the first
three components (phonology, morphology, or syntax), with syntax
being accorded primacy ever since Chomsky became dominant in the
field. In contrast, most linguistic anthropologists (as well as some scholars in related fields such as sociolinguistics or discourse analysis) study
the final two components (semantics and pragmatics) in ways that
integrate these two components with the first three. Indeed, linguistic
anthropologists consider phonology, morphology, and syntax to be so
fundamentally affected by the social contexts in which these aspects of
language are acquired and used that to consider them in isolation from
these contexts is at best artificial and at worst inaccurate. For the linguistic anthropologist, every aspect of language is socially influenced
and culturally meaningful. To use language, therefore, is to engage in a
form of social action laden with cultural values.
So, How Do Linguistic Anthropologists Study
Language as Social Action?
While linguistic anthropologists hold in common the view that
language is a form of social action, there is nevertheless great diversity
in topic choice and research methods within the field. Chapter 2 will
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Figure 1.3 “Zits” cartoon about the varying cultural meanings associated
with language use.
Source: Reproduced with kind permission of Dan Piraro and Bizarro.com.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
examine the various research methods used by linguistic anthropologists, so what I present here are some examples of the topics scholars
have chosen and an explanation of how these topics contribute to our
understanding of language as a form of social action. These studies
illustrate but by no means exhaust the wide-ranging diversity of contemporary linguistic anthropology.
Keith Basso
Keith Basso’s (1996) ethnography, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and
Language Among the Western Apache, explores “place-making” as a linguistic and cultural activity.This book was written after Ronnie Lupe,
chairman of the White Mountain Apache tribe, asked Basso to help
make some maps: “Not whitemen’s maps, we’ve got plenty of them,
but Apache maps with Apache places and names. We could use them.
Find out something about how we know our country. You should
have done this before” (Basso 1996:xv). When Basso took up this
suggestion and traveled with Apache horsemen to hundreds of locations in the region, he began to notice how place names were used
in everyday Apache conversations in ways that were very new to him.
He also spoke with consultants, asking about the stories associated
with various places. Through entertaining vignettes and engrossing
storytelling, Basso explains how the richly descriptive Western Apache
uses of language and place names (such as “Whiteness Spreads Out
Descending to Water,” “She Carries Her Brother on her Back,” and
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“Shades of Shit”) help reinforce important Apache cultural values.
For example, Western Apache speakers invoke these place names in
conversations to allude indirectly to cautionary tales from recent or
ancient history that may be relevant to the current speakers’ dilemmas. This practice, called “speaking with names,” is a verbal routine
that “allows those who engage in it to register claims about their own
moral worth, about aspects of their social relationships with other
people on hand, and about a particular way of attending to the local
landscape that is avowed to produce a beneficial form of heightened
self-awareness” (Basso 1996:81). In this book, then, Basso shows how
the physical environment is filtered through language to solidify
social relations and strengthen Western Apache notions of wisdom
and morality.
Marjorie Harness Goodwin
In her book, He-Said-She-Said: Talk As Social Organization Among
Black Children, Marjorie Harness Goodwin (1990) chooses a very
different focus: that of a mixed-age and mixed-gender neighborhood group of peers in a Philadelphia neighborhood. By analyzing
“situated activities” such as arguments, storytelling, and gossip,
Goodwin shows how the children’s relationships and values are
reflected in and shaped by their conversations. Her meticulously
transcribed conversations (over 200 hours of tape recordings) provide evidence for the complexity of children’s social worlds. They
also demonstrate the necessity of situating any analysis of language
and gender (or any other social dimension of difference) in actual
contexts, for when this sort of study is undertaken, Goodwin notes,
stereotypes about so-called “female” speech patterns fall apart
(Goodwin 1990:9). Boys and girls do not use language in two
completely different ways, Goodwin discovered, but rather interact
in same-sex and mixed-sex groups using complex, overlapping sets
of linguistic practices. In studying phenomena such as gender differences, therefore, Goodwin argues, it is essential to look closely
at actual conversations, for “talk itself is a form of social action, so
that any rigorous account of human interaction must pay close
attention to the detailed structure of talk that occurs within it”
(Goodwin 1990:2).
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Bonnie Urciuoli
The focus of Bonnie Urciuoli’s (1996) ethnography, Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class, is “language
prejudice” – the ways in which Puerto Ricans in New York City’s
Lower East Side experience, accept, or resist the judgments that they
and others make about what constitutes “good” and “bad” language,
whether Spanish, English, or a mixture.There is a “political economy”
of language, Urciuoli argues, the workings of which she explains as
follows: “[T]he ways in which people formulate, value, and use words,
sounds, phrases, and codes are constituted through power relations:
bureaucratic, economic, racial, and any combination thereof ” (1996:4).
The boundaries between Spanish and English can be clearly demarcated or fuzzy, depending on the context. When the socioeconomic
class of the speakers is similar, as when Lower East Side Puerto Rican
men are playing basketball with their English-speaking African
American neighbors, shifting between Spanish and English (“codeswitching”) occurs more fluidly and comfortably, for example, though
the ways in which this happens differs according to gender, Urciuoli
finds. In contrast, when there is a stark difference in socioeconomic
class, race, or ethnicity between speakers, Urciuoli notes, the boundaries between Spanish and English are strictly enforced, so little if any
code-switching occurs, for example, in interactions between Puerto
Ricans and white social workers, even when those social workers may
speak some Spanish. Language use is therefore an important part of
unequal social relations, Urciuoli maintains, as it both reflects and
sometimes reinforces differences in status.
Alessandro Duranti
Alessandro Duranti (1994) explores language use in a very different
part of the world. His ethnography, From Grammar to Politics: Linguistic
Anthropology in a Western Samoan Village, analyzes political rhetoric in
the local village council (fono) and shows how speechmakers’ seemingly
apolitical, technical choices of grammatical markers can have important political ramifications. Duranti argues persuasively that a close look
at the micro level of grammar – at one tiny Samoan grammatical particle in particular – offers important insights into how “the choice of
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specific linguistic framings for people’s actions, beliefs, and feelings does
not simply reflect existing power relations, it also constitutes them”
(1994:139). In other words, how people describe their actions, beliefs,
and feelings – how they frame them linguistically – both influences and
is influenced by the power dynamics of the community. Just as the title
of Duranti’s book indicates, a grammatical analysis, when situated in
actual social contexts, can lead to a better understanding of both grammar and politics.
Alexandra Jaffe
Alexandra Jaffe’s (1999) ethnography, Ideologies in Action: Language
Politics on Corsica, also investigates the intersections between language
and politics, though she takes a more macro-level focus than Duranti
in her research on the activities and attitudes of language activists and
ordinary residents on the Mediterranean island of Corsica. Jaffe looks
at the different statuses of the two main languages spoken on the
island, French and Corsican, and shows how attitudes toward them are
intertwined with issues of cultural identity and economic and political power. She argues that “language planning/revitalization is an
immensely complex process … there are no neutral or purely linguistic choices or policies. Language choices and language form are heavily invested, in Corsica, with social and political significance” (Jaffe
1999:7).
James M. Wilce
James M. Wilce’s (1998) ethnography, Eloquence in Trouble: The Poetics
and Politics of Complaint in Rural Bangladesh, looks closely at “troubles
talk,” or complaints, including the special genre of laments (improvised crying songs) in Bangladesh. The “eloquence in trouble” of
Wilce’s title has two meanings: Bangladeshis who resort to laments
to describe their suffering are often quite eloquent; and these sorts
of laments are becoming less and less common, and therefore represent a genre in trouble – that is, in danger of disappearing. Wilce’s
interest in medical and psychological anthropology leads him to pay
special attention to the laments of people others label “crazy.” In so
doing, Wilce demonstrates how laments are more than just lengthy,
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monologic complaints; instead, they are aesthetic performances and
social interactions during which labels can be both attached and
resisted by the performer and the audience members, and realities
can be “officialized” (1998:201). A focus on linguistic practices such
as laments sheds light not only on the experiences of particular individuals’ sufferings, Wilce argues, but also on broader cultural ideas
about appropriate and inappropriate ways to speak and act, especially
for Bangladeshi women.
What these six very different ethnographies have in common is
their insistence that (1) language must not be studied in isolation from
social practices or cultural meanings, and (2) questions about social
relations and cultural meanings can best be answered by paying close
attention to language. The remainder of this book presents a detailed
case for each of these assertions.
Key Terms in Linguistic Anthropology
In order to provide readers with some tools they can use to approach
linguistic anthropology, I have chosen four key terms that provide
insight into the socially embedded nature of language and the linguistically mediated nature of social life: multifunctionality, language ideologies,
practice, and indexicality. These terms draw upon an array of theoretical
approaches from within the field of linguistic anthropology and
beyond. As a rule in this book I try to avoid jargon, but linguistic
anthropology is no different from other fields such as chemistry or art
in having developed a set of specialized terms in order to refer efficiently and accurately to important concepts. The terms that I have
chosen here are “key” in two ways: first, they are central to the main
areas of research in the discipline, and second, they can provide readers with important keys to understanding the social nature of language because they come from the social and linguistic theories that
have had the greatest influence on current scholarship in the field.
Like the terms that are defined in Duranti’s (2001) edited volume, Key
Terms in Linguistic Anthropology, the four terms defined below illustrate
some of the features that unify the discipline and will therefore provide common points of reference as we consider specific topics and
areas of study within the field.
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3. context
(Referential function)
1. speaker
(Expressive function)
4. message
(Poetic function)
——————————-
2. addressee
(Conative function)
5. contact
(Phatic function)
6. code
(Metalinguistic function)
Figure 1.4
Jakobson’s model of the multifunctionality of language.
Source: Thomas A. Sebeok, Style in Language, pp. 150, 154, 350–377, © 1960
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by permission of The MIT Press.
Multifunctionality
In the mainstream view of language that is very common in the
United States, language is thought to be a way to describe events or to
label objects or concepts. Language is much more than this, however –
people accomplish many things with words. Linguistic anthropologists use the term “multifunctional” to refer to all the different kinds
of work that language does. One of the fi