Talk:Linguistic anthropology

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Linguistic anthropology vs Anthropological linguistics

I wanted to discuss whether these two articles to should be merged, or if not how to clean them up; it isn't clear to me that both articles should exist and regrettably both have serious quality issues as it stands right now. However, this is not a formal merger discussion as such; I might open one depending on how this discussion goes. This is well outside my wheelhouse, so please correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that, as used today, these terms are largely synonymous, with linguistic anthropology being the generally preferred term. Historically, from what I can gather, the term anthropological linguistics was used in the first several decades of the 20th century by primarily North American academics (the "Americanists") working primarily on Native American languages to refer largely to what would now simply be called linguistics.

Both articles contain claims as to what the difference is between these two topics. However, the overall quality of both articles leaves a lot to be desired, and the exposition of what the supposed differences are is no exception; for example, linguistic anthropology contains the remarkably astute observations that anthropological linguistics, is devoted to themes unique to the sub-discipline (which field isn't? this is a tautology) and The second paradigm [linguistic anthropology] can be marked by reversing the words.

More to the point, the differences either article purports to point out don't actually seem to be borne out in the ways these terms are actually used, and are thus essentially just WP:OR, or, at best, WP:SYNTH— at least as best as I can tell, but if people have sources/evidence indicating otherwise, please provide it. The few sources the articles do provide supposedly attesting to this difference are spotty, inconsistent, or just super low-quality. Take this WordPress blogpost that's given as a source in Anthropological linguistics. First of all, you might notice it hedges its own exposition a lot with such statements as I’ll come up with a simple answer that works (for me) for the time being (I think). Second, if we look at the two main scholarly definitions of the respective fields the author of the post uses... there's just not that much difference:

Anthropological linguistics is that sub-field of linguistics which is concerned with the place of language in its wide social and cultural context, its role in forging and sustaining cultural practice and social structures….[it] views language through the prism of the core anthropological concept, culture, and, as such, seeks to uncover the meaning behind the use, misuse or non-use of languages, its different forms, register and styles…

— (Foley 1997: 3)

vs.

Linguistic anthropologists view language in its cultural framework and are concerned with with the rules of its social use.

— (Salzmann 1998:16)

As the author of the blog themself notes, though, unfortunately for us, [Salzmann'd definition] is really close to what Foley said above.

The same article does cite one academic source, a chapter in the 1995 edition of Handbook of Pragmatics titled "Anthropological Linguistics" by Ben Blount. As this source notes, however, [a]nthropological linguistics, as a characterizing label, is often synonymous with linguistic anthropology. It does try to argue in favor of some difference in usage, but it makes the observation that a big part of this difference is historical, and in actual practice today there's generally a great deal of interchangeability between the fields. The conclusion of this section is especially enlightening for the discussion at hand:

The anthropology of language is a label that would reflect and represent the entire field of inquiry well, but unfortunately it is not widely used. In the meantime, anthropological linguistics and linguistic anthropology overlap and can thus be used interchangeably, as will be done here, but with the recognition that specialists can and often do draw a distinction between them.

Another source that might be helpful is the Preface of Linguistic Anthropology: A Brief Introduction (it is worth noting for our discussion that the first edition of this book was actually titled A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics), available here on Google Books.

Anyways—as I said, this is not a formal merger discussion as such. However, I wanted to get input on what people think about this— specifically, how they feel about the following questions:

1. Do you feel the two terms are consistently used differently in the literature?
2. Do they warrant separate articles?
3. If the answer to the last question is "yes," how can the articles be revised to better reflect the differences between these two fields? Right now there's a lot of overlap, not least because of the fact that each article spends a considerable proportion of it's total length just trying to differentiate itself from the other field.

Brusquedandelion (talk) 12:05, 13 March 2024 (UTC)