Language Culture And Society Summary

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BOOK REVIEW Title: Language, Culture, and Society: Key topics in linguistic anthropology Editors: Christine Jourdan and Kevin Tuite Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2006 The book, Language, Culture, and Society is a part of ‘Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language’ series and aims to make contributions to the field of linguistic anthropology. This volume consists of 11 chapters with a long introduction. Each of chapters has written by different authors. In chapter one, ‘An issue about language’ by Charles Taylor, begins with questions such as “How to understand language?…, What is the relation of language to other signs? to signs in general? Are linguistic signs arbitrary or motivated?” and continuous with…show more content…
But mentioning Whorf’s studies and his contributions to linguistics and anthropology, his relationship with other linguists, Darnell defences Whorf and tries to explain how his ideas are grounded in the general approach of Boasian anthropology. And we can clearly see this need of defence from her words as follows: “Whorf who is cited as an ancestor or precursor to cognitive science is not a Whorf who would have been recognized in his own…show more content…
In doing so, she tries to show the relevance of anthropological concepts to readers’ understanding of PCs genesis. Focusing on plantations settings, and starting with culture, she shows that the development of pidgins appeared concomitantly with the development of local cultures. In the end, she comes to conclusion that the genesis of pidgin and creole languages was inevitable. Monica Heller, in chapter 7 ‘Bilingualism’, begins by questioning the place of bilingualism as an area of enquiry for ethnolinguistics and then continuous with a brief consideration of why researchers have been asking questions about bilingualism at all. And in the rest of the chapter, she discusses the approaches related to the bilingualism and purposes a set of concepts which help reader to understand that bilingualism is such a complex process that generates new forms of
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