Theory Of Anthropology
Theories attempt to directly refute
well established schools of thought which are widely held as fact. It should be
noted that “science [as well as social science] does not rest upon solid
bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp.
It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above
into the swamp, but not down to any natural or ‘given’ base; and if we stop
driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We
simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the
structure, at least for the time being.” (Popper LSD 2002: 122)
In attempting to explain and rationalize
the world, Popper defines scientific theories as "universal
statements" used to cast a net to "catch" the world. Popper
believes our goal is to make the holes in the net as small as possible through
modification and revision.(Popper 2002: 37, 38) Consequently, "scientific
theories are perpetually changing" (Popper LSD 2002: 50). Furthermore,
strict universals are non-verifiable "all-statements" that can not be
reduced into a finite number of singular statements, thus they are theories or
natural laws.(Popper LSD 2002: 40-42)
Just as science
speculates reality of the structure of the universe that we live in, social
science comments on the social reality in which we live in. The social reality
in which we live in, or as anthropologists, in which we observe, is constantly
changing. As post-modernity has progressed, the world has become increasingly
globalized, which has created a hybridization of culture. America serves as a
paradigmatic example, certain elements of American culture are integrated into other
countries of the world. However, discovering what parts of western culture have
taken hold in other areas of the world and why cannot be explained in real
time, but must be observed then speculated upon. Clearly, not all the
contributing factors will be brought to light. By the time many of the
contributing factors have been speculated upon the culture will have shifted to
a new paradigm.
Theories in social science heavily
reflect the time period in which they were written in. Therefore, not all of the
premises in the theory which may have been true during the time it was written
would still remain so contemporarily. A large problem with social theories is
that they are heavily reliant upon the people, while in science an experiment
can be conducted over and over again under similar circumstances. Often
anthropologists rely on less than reputable members of society which will
deceive them for their own ends, as was often the case in early anthropology.
Similarly the biases of the anthropologist come into light when analyzing the
data gathered. Given that there is no Truth which we can observe, in light of the
fact that would take an onyperspective,
we are left with creating theories based on our senses on which to constantly
revise both in science and social science.
Post-Modern
Anthropology is subdivided into 5 distinct categories:
2. Archeology
1.
AppliedAnthropology
The practical application of anthropological data, methodology, perspective and theory to asses and solve contemporary social problems.
The practical application of anthropological data, methodology, perspective and theory to asses and solve contemporary social problems.
2.
Archeology
The study of past cultures based on the excavation of their habitation, burial, and environmental sites.
The study of past cultures based on the excavation of their habitation, burial, and environmental sites.
3. Biological Anthropology
Tracks the biological evolution of humanity through genetic inheritance, primatology and the fossil record.
Tracks the biological evolution of humanity through genetic inheritance, primatology and the fossil record.
4. Cultural Anthropology
The study of populations based on historical records and ethnographic observations. Ethnographies consist of an anthropologist living among another culture participating and observing it as an outsider.
The study of populations based on historical records and ethnographic observations. Ethnographies consist of an anthropologist living among another culture participating and observing it as an outsider.
5.
Linguistic Anthropology
Brings linguistic methods as applicable solutions for anthropological problems.
Brings linguistic methods as applicable solutions for anthropological problems.
Anthropology Linguistic
Anthropology is the study of man and culture as a whole. On the one hand man is the creator of culture, on the other hand culture "created" human beings with their environment. Thus, the intertwined relationship of reciprocity is very close and compact between the people and culture.
In culture, language occupies a unique place and honorable. Besides as an element of culture, language also serves as an important tool in inheritance, development and dissemination of culture.
Coverage of study related to the very broad language, because language covers almost all human activities. Until finally reveal a movement toward linguistic studies are multidisplin, one of which is linguistic anthropology.
Entomology linguistics is a branch of linguistics that examines the relationship between language and culture, especially to observe how language is used everyday as a tool in social action. (Lauder, 2005:231) also called ethno linguistic Anthropology examines not only the language of its structure alone but more on functions and their use in the context of socio-cultural situation. The study linguistic anthropology, among others, reviewed the structure and family relationships through kinship terms, the concept of color, the pattern of parenting, or examine how community members communicate with each other in certain situations such as in indigenous ceremonies, and then connect it to the concept of culture.
Example: speech acts pastor '.... With this, I declare you as husband and wife ...' addles an action through language arrives in the community have the authority to establish a pair of wedding became a husband and wife in a legal and legitimate terterima by the community.
In America the melopori science is linguistic anthropology Franz Boas, while in Europe they use the term ethno linguistic (Durante, 1997). Through linguistic anthropology approach, we look at what people are doing with language and speech-speech that is produced; silence and gesture associated with turnout context (Durante, 2001:1).
Dell Hymens was largely responsible
for launching the second paradigm that fixed the name "linguistic
anthropology" in the 1960s, though he also coined the term
"ethnography of speaking" (or "ethnography of
communication") to describe the agenda he envisioned for the field. It
would involve taking advantage of new developments in technology, including new
forms of mechanical recording.
Dell Hymens was largely responsible
for launching the second paradigm that fixed the name "linguistic anthropology"
in the 1960s, though he also coined the term "ethnography of
speaking" (or "ethnography of communication") to describe the
agenda he envisioned for the field. It would involve taking advantage of new
developments in technology, including new forms of mechanical recording. A new
unit of analysis was also introduced by Hymens. Whereas the first paradigm
focused on ostensibly distinct "languages" (scare quotes indicate
that contemporary linguistic anthropologists treat the concept of "a
language" as an ideal construction covering up complexities within and
"across" so-called linguistic boundaries), the unit of analysis in
the second paradigm was new—the "speech event." (The speech event is
an event defined by the speech occurring in it—a lecture, for example—so that a
dinner is not a speech event, but a speech situation, a situation in which
speech may or may not occur.) Much attention was devoted to speech events in
which performers were held accountable for the form of their linguistic
performance as such.
Hymes also pioneered a linguistic
anthropological approach to ethno poetics. Hymes had hoped to link linguistic
anthropology more closely with the mother discipline. The name certainly
stresses that the primary identity is with anthropology, whereas
"anthropological linguistics" conveys a sense that the primary
identity of its practitioners was with linguistics, which is a separate
academic discipline on most university campuses today (not in the days of Boas
and Sapir). However, Hymes' ambition in a sense backfired; the second paradigm
in fact marked a further distancing of the sub discipline from the rest of
anthropology.
Anthropological
issues studied via linguistic methods and data
In the third
paradigm, which has emerged since the late 1980s, instead of continuing to
pursue agendas that come from a discipline alien to anthropology, linguistic
anthropologists have systematically addressed themselves to problems posed by
the larger discipline of anthropology—but using linguistic data and methods.
Popular areas of study in this third paradigm include investigations of social
identities, broadly shared ideologies, and the construction and uses of
narrative in interaction among individuals and groups.
Areas
of interest
Contemporary
linguistic anthropology continues research in all three of the paradigms
described above. Several areas related to the third paradigm, the study of
anthropological issues, are particularly rich areas of study for current
linguistic anthropologists.
Identity
A great deal of
work in linguistic anthropology investigates questions of sociocultural
identity linguistically. Linguistic anthropologist Don Kulick has done this in
relation to identity, for example, in a series of settings, first in a village
called Gapun in Papua New Guinea. Kulick
explored how the use of two languages with and around children in Gapun
village—the traditional language (Taiap) not spoken anywhere but in their own
village and thus primordially "indexical" of Gapuner identity, and
Tok Pisin (the widely circulating official language of New Guinea). (Linguistic
anthropologists use "indexical" to mean indicative, though some
indexical signs create their indexical meanings on the fly, so to speak. To speak the Taiap language is
associated with one identity—not only local but "Backward" and also
an identity based on the display of *hed* (personal autonomy). To speak Tok
Pisin is to index a modern, Christian (Catholic) identity, based not on *hed*
but on *save*, that is an identity linked with the will and the skill to
cooperate. In later work, Kulick demonstrates that certain loud speech
performances called *um escândalo*, Brazilian travesti (roughly,
'transvestite') sex workers shame clients. The travesti community, the argument
goes, ends up at least making a powerful attempt to transcend the shame the
larger Brazilian public might try to foist off on them—again, through loud
public discourse and other modes of performance.
Socialization
In a series of
studies, linguistic anthropologists Elinor Ochs and Bambi Schieffelin addressed
the important anthropological topic of socialization (the process by which
infants, children, and foreigners become members of a community, learning to
participate in its culture), using linguistic as well as ethnographic methods.[10]
They discovered that the processes of enculturation and socialization do not
occur apart from the process of language acquisition, but that children acquire
language and culture together in what amounts to an integrated process. Ochs
and Schieffelin demonstrated that baby talk is not universal, that the
direction of adaptation (whether the child is made to adapt to the ongoing
situation of speech around it or vice versa) was a variable that correlated,
for example, with the direction it was held vis-à-vis a caregiver's body. In
many societies caregivers hold a child facing outward so as to orient it to a
network of kin whom it must learn to recognize early in life.
Ochs and Schieffelin demonstrated
that members of all societies socialize children both to and through the use of
language. Ochs and Taylor uncovered how, through naturally occurring stories
told during dinners in white middle class households in southern California,
both mothers and fathers participated in replicating male dominance (the "father
knows best" syndrome) by the distribution of participant roles such as
protagonist (often a child but sometimes mother and almost never the father)
and "problematizer" (often the father, who raised uncomfortable
questions or challenged the competence of the protagonist). When mothers
collaborated with children to get their stories told they unwittingly set
themselves up to be subject to this process.
Schieffelin's more recent research
has uncovered the socializing role of pastors and other fairly new Bosavi
converts in the Southern Highlands, Papua New Guinea community she studies. Pastors have introduced new ways
of conveying knowledge i.e. new linguistic epistemic markers and new ways of speaking about time. And
they have struggled with and largely resisted those parts of the Bible that
speak of being able to know the inner states of others (e.g. the gospel of
Mark, chapter 2, verses 6-8).
Ideologies
In a third example
of the current (third) paradigm, since Roman Jakobson's student, Michael
Silverstein opened the way, there has been an efflorescence of work done by
linguistic anthropologists on the major anthropological theme of
ideologies[15]—in this case "language ideologies", sometimes defined
as "shared bodies of commonsense notions about the nature of language in
the world."[16] Silverstein has demonstrated that these ideologies are not
mere false consciousness but actually influence the evolution of linguistic
structures, including the dropping of "thee" and "thou"
from everyday English usage.[17] Woolard, in her overview of "code
switching", or the systematic practice of alternating linguistic varieties
within a conversation or even a single utterance, finds the underlying question
anthropologists ask of the practice—Why do they do that?—reflects a dominant
linguistic ideology. It is the ideology that people should "really"
be monoglot and efficiently targeted toward referential clarity rather than
diverting themselves with the messiness of multiple varieties in play at a
single time.
Attitudes toward languages such as
Spanish and English in the U.S. are certainly informed by linguistic
ideologies. This extends to the widespread impression, created by statements
such as that by U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee (in
regards to a recently passed measure making English the "official"
language of the U.S.), that English is "part of our blood." To
Horwitz, this invocation of blood implies that English reflects the deepest
vein of the nation's ancestry, i.e., the oldest language spoken in what is now
the United States. Such a claim, if made openly, would be doubly absurd,
ignoring a) all of the Native American languages severely impacted by the
arrival of Europeans, but also b) Spanish, the language of a rather sizable
number of European explorers and settlers across the length and breadth of what
is now the United States.[19] Thus Alexander is attempting to
"naturalize" language and national identity via the metaphor of
"blood."
Much research on linguistic
ideologies probes subtler influences on language, such as the pull exerted on
Tewa — a Kiowa-Tanoan language spoken in certain New Mexico Pueblos as well as
on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona — by "kiva speech," discussed in
the next section.
Social
space
In a final example
of this third paradigm, a group of linguistic anthropologists has done very
creative work on the idea of social space. Durante published a ground breaking article on
Samoan greetings and their use and transformation of social space.[21] Prior to
that, Indonesianist Joseph Errington — making use of earlier work by
Indonesianists not necessarily concerned with language issues per se—brought
linguistic anthropological methods (and semiotic theory) to bear on the notion
of the "exemplary center," or the center of political and ritual
power from which emanated exemplary behavior.[22] Errington demonstrated how
the Javanese *priyayi*, whose ancestors served at the Javanese royal courts,
became emissaries, so to speak, long after those courts had ceased to exist,
representing throughout Java the highest example of 'refined speech.' The work
of Joel Kuipers further develops this theme vis-a-vis the island of Sumba,
Indonesia. And, even though it pertains to Tewa Indians in Arizona rather than
Indonesians, Paul Kroskrity's argument that speech forms originating in the
Tewa kiva (or underground ceremonial space) forms the dominant model for all
Tewa speech can be seen as a rather direct parallel.
Silverstein tries
to find the maximum theoretical significance and applicability in this idea of
exemplary centers. He feels, in fact, that the exemplary center idea is one of
linguistic anthropology's three most important findings. He generalizes the
notion in the following manner, arguing that "there are wider-scale
institutional 'orders of interactionality,' historically contingent yet
structured. Within such large-scale, macrosocial orders, in-effect ritual
centers of semiosis come to exert a structuring, value-conferring influence on
any particular event of discursive interaction with respect to the meanings and
significance of the verbal and other semiotic forms used in it. Current
approaches to such classic anthropological topics as ritual by linguistic
anthropologists emphasize not static linguistic structures but the unfolding in
realtime of a "'hypertrophic' set of parallel orders of iconicity and
indexicality that seem to cause the ritual to create its own sacred space
through what appears, often, to be the magic of textual and nontextual
metricalizations, synchronized.
References
Komentar
Posting Komentar