22. Pragmatics, linguistic anthropology and history

Abstract

If we take the study of pragmatics to be the study of the relationship between language and context, linguistic anthropology, the study of the relationship between language and culture, can be seen as an exemplar of work in pragmatics. A review of the field, however, shows how contested notions of language and context can be. Alessandro Duranti (2003) described the historical development of what he saw as three distinct but sometimes temporally and ideologically overlapping paradigms in linguistic anthropology.[T]he first paradigm, initiated by Boas, was mostly devoted to documentation, grammatical description, and classification (especially of North American indigenous languages) and focused on linguistic relativity, the second paradigm, developed in the 1960s, took advantage of new recording technology and new theoretical insights to examine language use in context, introducing new units of analysis such as the speech event … The third paradigm … [focuses] on identity formation, narrativity, and ideology (Duranti 2003: 323).In order to understand linguistic anthropologists, Duranti took a step back and placed current discourses within the larger context of the community, specifically within a larger historical context. However, when one looks at writings since the 1960s in linguistic anthropology (the general study of language within anthropology) and the ethnography of communication (often the study of linguistic genre and competence in specific settings), the majority of it does not focus on historical approaches to language but instead limits the contexts of language use to specific examples of performances, speech events.In my work with the New Zealand Deaf community (Monaghan 1993(Monaghan , 1996(Monaghan , 1997a(Monaghan , 2003a and my work on international Deaf culture (Monaghan 2003b; Monaghan et al. 2003), however, I have taken a historical approach. The material has demanded it. Deaf communities often exist despite great opposition to them. At the heart of the struggles over Deaf culture is usually the question of what language should be used. Because Deaf people in New Zealand and elsewhere are acutely aware that they are congregating despite opposition, the stories that they tell about themselves, the performed narratives that construct their culture on an ongoing basis, are about connecting with past events.Section 2 of this chapter examines theoretical approaches developed since the 1960s (and thus part of Duranti's second and third paradigms). The ethnography of communication, language and identity studies, performance studies, and converBrought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/17/15 2:09 AM