Language, Culture, and Society: A Book of Readings [Paperback]

Ben G. Blount (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1995 | ISBN-10: 0881338508 | ISBN-13: 978-0881338508 | Edition: 2

Twenty-four articles representing a diversity of interests and approaches have been brought together in this collection intended to define and develop topics of central interest to language, culture, and society. Opening pieces include enduring, classic writings by Boas, Sapir, Whorf, Mead, and others, giving the volume an important historical orientation. These contributions form the groundwork for the wide sampling of more recent and contemporary works that follows. The selections chosen for Language, Culture, and Society, Second Edition, reflect several major themes within the field: language in relation to thought and cognition; language in relation to the cultural partitioning of the environment; language in relation to self-as-social; language in relation to social differentiation; and language in relation to its emergence as a sociocultural phenomenon. The editor's helpful introductions point out significant ideas and trace the development of the twenty-four contributions that form a diverse, well-balanced, and up-to-date volume.

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Waveland Press; 2 edition (May 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881338508
• ISBN-13: 978-0881338508
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #827,622 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars An alternative to Duranti's view of language as culture in US anthropology, July 30, 2010

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MASATAKA YAMAGUCHI - See all my reviews

This review is from: Language, Culture, and Society: A Book of Readings (Paperback)

If we want to gain insights into future directions in sociolinguistics/linguistic anthropology, we should `look back' to the foundational collections published in 1970s in which cognitive anthropological studies were nicely integrated into sociolinguistics (e.g., Blount 1974; Blount & Sanches 1977; Giglioli 1972; Gumperz & Hymes 1972; Sanches & Blount 1975). Blount's collection under review is one of the most important ones in this respect. This collection captures the tendencies from 1950s-1990s well. In his introductory remarks to each period (1910-1940s; 1950-1970s; 1980-1990s), Blount provides a `cognitive' alternative to Duranti (2003) in which `three paradigms' are discussed. This book is an expanded version of Blount (1974), which divides the study of language, culture, and society into three periods: 1910-1940s as the formative period, 1950s-1970s as the period of paradigm development, and 1980s-1990s as the period of (new) directions. Among the selected ten papers published between 1950s and 1970s, two papers fall within the category of cognitive anthropology (Charles O. Frake's `The Ethnographic Study of Cognitive Systems' and Brent Berlin's `Speculations on the Growth of Ethnobotanical Nomenclature'). Michael Silverstein's `Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description' published in 1976 plays a prominent role in synthesizing the cognitive papers with other more sociological and/or interactional papers (see pp. 106-107 for Blount's account).

This collection is also notable in that Ben G. Blount selects cognitive anthropological papers published in 1980s (Eugene Hunn's `Ethnoecology: The Relevance of Cognitive Anthropology for Human Ecology' in 1989) and in 1990s (Paul Kay, Brent Berlin, and William Merrfield's `Biocultual Implications of Systems of Color Naming' in 1991), as well as a synthetic semiotic-cognitive paper `Whorf's View of the Linguistic Mediation of Though' by John A. Lucy published in 1985. Interestingly, these cognitive papers are chosen along with a `postmodern' or non-cognitive paper by Charles L. Briggs and Richard Bauman's `Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power' published in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology in 1992 (which was also edited by Blount). If we follow Duranti (2003), the period of paradigm development between 1950s and 1970s should have no `classic' cognitive anthropological papers. However cognitive lines of inquiry are `alive and well' even in 1980s and 1990s. Thus, we question Duranti's statement that "language was no longer a window on the human mind ... Rather it was primarily a social phenomenon, to be studied ... in the midst of speech events or speech activities" in 1970s and 1980s (Duranti 2003: 329). The reader is invited to think about the issue of cognitive versus anti-cognitive linguistic anthropology.

Reference
Duranti, A. 2003. Language as Culture in U.S. anthropology: Three paradigms. Current Anthropology 44(3): 323-347.