Linguistic anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages and has grown over the past century to encompass most aspects of language structure and use.
A standard language is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that includes a standardized form as one of its varieties. Typically, the language varieties that undergo substantive standardization are the dialects associated with centers of commerce, power and government. By processes that linguistic anthropologists call "referential displacement" and that sociolinguists call "elaboration of function", these varieties acquire the social prestige associated with commerce and government. As a sociological effect of these processes, most users of this language come to believe that the standard language is inherently superior or consider it the linguistic baseline against which to judge other varieties of language.
Anthropological linguistics is the subfield of linguistics and anthropology which deals with the place of language in its wider social and cultural context, and its role in making and maintaining cultural practices and societal structures. While many linguists believe that a true field of anthropological linguistics is nonexistent, preferring the term linguistic anthropology to cover this subfield, many others regard the two as interchangeable.
The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: Language, the open access journal Semantics and Pragmatics, and the open access journal Phonological Data & Analysis. Its annual meetings, held every winter, foster discussion amongst its members through the presentation of peer-reviewed research, as well as conducting official business of the society. Since 1928, the LSA has offered training to linguists through courses held at its biennial Linguistic Institutes held in the summer. The LSA and its 3,600 members work to raise awareness of linguistic issues with the public and contribute to policy debates on issues including bilingual education and the preservation of endangered languages.
Don Kulick is a Swedish anthropologist and linguist who is the professor of anthropology at Uppsala University. Kulick works within the frameworks of both cultural and linguistic anthropology, and has carried out field work in Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Italy and Sweden. Kulick is also known for his extensive fieldwork on the Tayap people and their language in Gapun village of East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea.
Joseph Auguste Anténor Firmin, better known as Anténor Firmin, was a Haitian barrister and philosopher, pioneering anthropologist, journalist, and politician. Firmin is best known for his book De l'égalité des races humaines, which was published in 1885 as a rebuttal to French writer Count Arthur de Gobineau's work Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines. Gobineau's book asserted the superiority of the Aryan race and the inferiority of Blacks and other people of color. Firmin's book argued the opposite, that "all men are endowed with the same qualities and the same faults, without distinction of color or anatomical form. The races are equal". He was marginalized at the time for his beliefs that all human races were equal.
Kira Hall is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology, as well as director for the Program in Culture, Language, and Social Practice (CLASP), at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Mary Bucholtz is professor of linguistics at UC Santa Barbara. Bucholtz's work focuses largely on language use in the United States, and specifically on issues of language and youth; language, gender, and sexuality; African American English; and Mexican and Chicano Spanish.
Justine M. Cassell is an American professor and researcher interested in human-human conversation, human-computer interaction, and storytelling. Since August 2010, she has been on the faculty of the Carnegie Mellon Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) and the Language Technologies Institute, with courtesy appointments in Psychology, and the Center for Neural Bases of Cognition. Cassell has served as the chair of the HCII, as associate vice-provost, and as Associate Dean of Technology Strategy and Impact for the School of Computer Science. She currently divides her time between Carnegie Mellon, where she now holds the Dean's Professorship in Language Technologies, and PRAIRIE, the Paris Institute on Interdisciplinary Research in AI, where she also holds the position of senior researcher at Inria Paris.
Frances Jane Hassler Hill was an American anthropologist and linguist who worked extensively with Native American languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family and anthropological linguistics of North American communities.
Penelope "Penny" Eckert is Albert Ray Lang Professor Emerita of Linguistics at Stanford University. She specializes in variationist sociolinguistics and is the author of several scholarly works on language and gender. She served as the president of the Linguistic Society of America in 2018.
Norma Catalina Mendoza-Denton is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She specializes in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, including work in sociophonetics, language and identity, ethnography and visual anthropology.
Anne Harper Charity Hudley is an American linguist who works on language variation in secondary schools.
Susan Lynn Ehrlich is a Canadian linguist known for her work in both language and gender, language and the law, and the intersections between them. She studies language, gender and the law, with a focus on consent and coercion in rape trials.
Marcia Elizabeth Farr is an American sociolinguist and ethnographer; she is an Emerita Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as an Emerita Professor of Education and English at the Ohio State University.
Kristine Hildebrandt is an American linguist who is known for her research into Tibeto-Burman languages and languages of the Himalayas. Her work focuses on the Nar-Phu and Gurung languages and other languages of the Manang District of Nepal, with an expertise in phonetics.
Tracey Weldon is an American linguist who studies variationist sociolinguistics, Gullah, Quantitative Sociolinguistics, and African American English.
Sonja L. Lanehart is an American linguist and professor of linguistics in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona who has advanced the study of language use in the African American community. Her work as a researcher, author, and editor includes African American English, education, literacy, identity, language variation, women's languages, intersectionality, and inclusivity within the African American community. Lanehart's sociolinguistic orientation prioritizes language as a phenomenon influenced by sociocultural and historical factors. She also utilizes the perspectives of Critical Race Theory and Black feminism in her work. Lanehart was the Brackenridge Endowed Chair in Literature and Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio from 2006 to 2019, and was selected by the Linguistic Society of America as a 2021 Fellow.
Kristin Denham is a linguist and professor in the Department of Linguistics at Western Washington University. Her research and teaching interests include syntactic theory, Native American languages, language teaching and revitalization projects, and linguistics in K-12 education. Denham has studied question formation in Babine-Witsuwit'en, an Athabaskan language, and has also done some work on Salish languages, spoken throughout the Salish Sea region.
