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  • Essay / How and Why Anthropological Linguistics is Related to Ethnocentrism

    The uses of anthropological findings have been used worldwide for various studies carried out in many fields. Many of these studies require extensive and almost total immersion for data collection. The anthropological term for a study of this type is “ethnographic study” (Ware et al. 2009). However, to achieve this, anthropologists must rid themselves of the prejudices they harbor in order to be able to collect purely scientific data, in particular the prejudices which lead them to judge the culture of their subjects according to their own and to consider theirs as superior and superior. the standard; this is called ethnocentrism (Hammond and Axelrod 2006). It is not easy to get rid of one's prejudices, because a large part of them is installed in people's minds from birth, and one of the first things learned that begins to determine our prejudices is language . More precisely, anthropological linguistics contributes much more to the understanding of ethnocentrism. Anthropological linguistics refers to the study of language and how it is used in different regions and communities and in what social context (Foley 2012). This is important because, especially in a social context, learning about the lived experiences of people from different cultures opens their minds to new possibilities that their ethnocentric minds would not have thought of before. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why violent video games should not be banned'?Get the original essayA major breakthrough occurred in the 20th century where a new theory emerged that the way language is structured could affect the way a person perceives cognitive stimuli (Regier and Xu 2017). He also discussed how people from different cultures, due to their grammar, could perceive the same thing differently and come to different conclusions (Ottenheimer 2012). This theory, called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, opened a new way for anthropologists to look at language and allowed people to objectively consider ethnographic studies and related projects, helping to make sense of the following example. Nineteenth-century European anthropologists sought to determine the origins of language, and one of their two theories was to find a primitive civilization (Hockett 1960). Their hope was that these primitive people would speak a language that, due to the underdevelopment of their society, would bring them closer to the origins of the language and that the older the civilization, the older and less complex the language (Hockett 1960). This was proven false when they discovered that although the civilization was “primitive,” the languages ​​spoken were as complex and developed as any known language (Hockett 1960). What caused these misconceptions among European anthropologists was the culture in which they were raised, which caused them to associate a primitive society with a completely primitive society, even in terms of language. These European anthropologists were raised in an environment very different from that of the people they were researching, the so-called primitive peoples, to the point where they believed themselves to be truly superior. Edward Sapir was quoted as saying in 1921: "It is questionable whether any particular tribe engages in activities worthy of the name of religion or art, but we know of no people who do not possess a fully developed language." » (Hockett 1960: 31) While respecting and recognizing the complexity of their languages, he also considers himself and his..