16
These barriers are probably still as valid for linguistic research today as they
were in 1972, but linguists are increasingly turning to the study of language as a
means of “ communication in everyday life ”—the burgeoning fi elds of enquiry into
bi-/multilingualism, code switching, discourse/conversation analysis, formulaic
speech and many others clearly demonstrate this trend.
Still, many commentators have argued for a further widening of the scope of
linguistic investigation. Viewing grammatical and semantic complexity through the
lens of kinship systems, Evans [ 74 ] puzzles over the reasons why the effects of cul-
ture on language structure tend to be excluded even in functionalist approaches to
grammar. By his account, culture can select for language structure in two ways: (1)
things that are talked about more by a language community (e.g. culturally salient
phenomena such as kinship) are more likely to get grammaticalised; and (2) conver-
sational implicatures that draw on mutually shared knowledge (might this overlap
signifi cantly with culture-specifi c ‘encyclopedic knowledge’?) become ‘semanti-
cized’, i.e., freed from particular contexts. While optimistic about the possibility
that many instances of culturally-driven grammatical structure remain to be uncov-
ered, Evans urges a disciplined, empirically-based and explicit methodology, like
the one suggested by Simpson [ 75 ]. Ultimately, however, what is required is a radi-
cal overhaul of the way linguists go about the business of data collection:
More complete accounts will also require linguistic practitioners to gather information on
“not yet grammaticalized” collocations. The grammar-writing traditions of descriptive lin-
guistics focus on structures that have already emerged; but to explain where they come
from, we must look at the messier data of actual speech. This needs larger, more fi nely
transcribed corpora. (p. 28)
Similarly, Linell [ 76 ] has criticized the research agendas of many linguists as
‘monologic’, and as a counter, has called for “ an emphasis on interaction and
contexts, on language being used in situational and socio-cultural contexts, in inter-
action with others and with our physical and social surroundings ” (p. 157). A ‘dia-
logic linguistics’ is needed, says Linell, that engages with holistic chunks of
linguistic praxis, such as communicative projects, episodes in discourse, communi-
cative activity types, and ‘social representations’. In studying these concrete mani-
festations of linguistic competence, a linguist must keep in mind that the meaning
of utterances is more than simply the meaning of its constituent parts, and that
interpretations emerge in different ways in different dialogical situations and com-
municative genres.
The preceding discussion has a great bearing on the kinds of research that could be
carried out in ethnobiology as well. The situation here is not irretrievably bleak, and
there are indeed ethnobiological studies that focus on language as the object of inves-
tigation. However, the abstract and the acontextual appear to dominate here as well,
for most of these studies deal with the elucidation of folk taxonomies of living organ-
isms. Notable exceptions, where naturalistic speech is presented as evidence to back
up the author’s taxonomic claims include Baker [ 13 ] and McKnight [ 77 ]. Unfortunately,
a signifi cant majority of taxonomic studies appear to be aimed at testing the universal-
izing claims made by Berlin [ 9 ], and tend not to venture beyond considerations of how
named plants and animals can be hierarchically arranged in a given language.