Evolution And History

Anthropology and Its Fields 13

schools, marriage practices, conflict resolution, corporate
bureaucracies, and health-care systems in Western cultures.

ETHNOLOGY

Largely descriptive in nature, ethnography provides the raw
data needed for ethnology—the branch of cultural anthro-
pology that involves cross-cultural comparisons and theo-
ries that explain differences or similarities among groups.
Intriguing insights into one’s own beliefs and practices may
come from cross-cultural comparisons. Consider, for exam-
ple, the amount of time spent on domestic chores by indus-
trialized peoples and traditional food foragers (people who
rely on wild plant and animal resources for subsistence).
Anthropological research has shown that food foragers
work far less time at domestic tasks and other subsistence
pursuits compared to people in industrialized societies.
Urban women in the United States who were not working
for wages outside their homes put 55 hours a week into their
housework—this despite all the “labor-saving” dishwash-
ers, washing machines, clothes dryers, vacuum cleaners,
food processors, and microwave ovens. In contrast, aborigi-
nal women in Australia devoted 20 hours a week to their
chores.^3 Nevertheless, consumer appliances have become
important indicators of a high standard of living in the
United States due to the widespread belief that household
appliances reduce housework and increase leisure time.
By making systematic comparisons, ethnologists seek
to arrive at scientific explanations concerning the function
and operation of social practices and cultural features and
patterns in all times and places. Today cultural anthro-
pologists contribute to applied research in a variety of
contexts—ranging from business to education to health
care to government intervention to humanitarian aid.

Linguistic Anthropology

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the human species
is language. Although the sounds and gestures made by
some other animals—especially apes—may serve func-
tions comparable to those of human language, no other
animal has developed a system of symbolic communica-
tion as complex as that of humans. Language allows people
to preserve and transmit countless details of their culture
from generation to generation.
The branch of anthropology that studies human lan-
guages is called linguistic anthropology. Although it shares
data and methods with the more general discipline of lin-
guistics, it differs in that it uses these to answer anthropo-
logical questions related to society and culture, such as
language use within speech communities. When this field
began, it emphasized the documentation of languages of
cultures under ethnographic study—particularly those

whose future seemed precarious. Mastery of Native Ameri-

can languages—with grammatical structures so different

from the Indo-European and Semitic languages to which

Euramerican scholars were accustomed—prompted the no-

tion of linguistic relativity. This refers to the idea that lin-

guistic diversity reflects not just differences in sounds and

grammar but differences in ways of looking at the world.

For example, the observation that the language of the Hopi

Indians of the American Southwest had no words for past,

present, and future led the early proponents of linguistic

relativity to suggest that the Hopi people had a different

conception of time.^4 Similarly, the observation that English-

speaking North Americans use a number of slang words—

such as dough, greenback, dust, loot, bucks, change, paper,

cake, moolah, benjamins, and bread—to refer to money

could be a product of linguistic relativity. The profusion

of names helps to identify a thing of special importance to

a culture. For instance, the importance of money within

North American culture is evident in the association be-

tween money and time, production, and capital in phrases

such as “time is money” and “spend some time.”

Complex ideas and practices inte-

gral to a culture’s survival can also

be reflected in language.

For example, among the

Nuer, a nomadic group

that travels with graz-

ing animals throughout

southern Sudan, a baby

born with a visible defor-

mity is not considered a

human baby. Instead it is

called a baby hippopota-

mus. This name allows

for the safe return of the

hippopotamus to the river

where it belongs. Such in-

fants would not be able to survive in this society, and so lin-

guistic practice is compatible with the compassionate choice

the Nuer have had to make.

The notion of linguistic relativity has been challenged

by theorists who propose that the human capacity for lan-

guage is based on biological universals that underlie all

human thought. Recently, Canadian cognitive scientist

Stephen Pinker has even suggested that, at a fundamental

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linguistic anthropology The study of human languages—

looking at their structure, history, and relation to social and

cultural contexts.

(^4) Whorf, B. (1941). The relation of habitual thought and behavior to
language. In L. Spier, A. I. Hallowell, & S. S. Newman (Eds.), Language,
culture, and personality: Essays in memory of Edward Sapir (pp. 75–93).
Menasha, WI: Sapir Memorial Publication Fund.
(^3) Bodley, J. H. (1985). Anthropology and contemporary human problems
(2nd ed., p. 69). Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield.