Teaching
Linguistic Anthropology
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Unit 2
Language and Diversity
Linguistic anthropology lays plain the dynamic nature of languages and how they make possible a variety of different understandings of the world around us. In this unit, students will consider language creation and extinction, and explore a diversity of languages and the various ways researchers study languages.
Sapiens articles
Do You See What I See?
Cultural groups throughout the world talk about color differently—some don’t even have a word for color. So is color perception a universal human experience or not?
Where Do “New” Languages Come From?
Anthropologists and linguists are working to understand how complex systems of communication emerge—and what they reveal about how to keep rare or threatened languages alive.
Keywords
View All in Communication
![In a pitch-black environment, a person with black smudges on their face wears a fur pelt and holds a lit torch.]()
![On a wood-paneled floor, four barefoot people wearing different outfits in shades of red, yellow, and blue dance in front of a gray wall. Captured in motion, and therefore blurry, each has several of their dance moves overlapping and visible at once.]()
![Two black-haired chimpanzees lie on the dirt ground in front of a blurred background of brown rocks and green, leafy trees.]()
![Four people, one wearing a red baseball cap and another a blue shirt, ride a boat on a khaki-colored river surrounded by dense forest.]()
![A close-up image features a circular street sign with random black symbols such as an exclamation mark and hashtag and a red circle and strikethrough over them.]()
![A colorful mosaic shows several people wearing helmets and holding metal shields in front of a pillared building.]()
How Accurate Is the Stone Age Thriller Out of Darkness?
An archaeologist with expertise in human origins assesses the accuracy of a 2022 film about Homo sapiens who encounter Neanderthals.
Making Anthropological Poetry Reel
In featuring three SAPIENS poems, students in a digital anthropology seminar infused video reels for Instagram with vivid history and powerful emotions.
Spend a Day Tracking Chimpanzees
A series of short videos captures a rare view into the lives of wild chimps through the eyes of a researcher.
Writing Indigenous Oral Tradition to Fight a Dam
In the northern Philippines, the Isnag are documenting their Traditional Stories to sustain their culture and fight a legal battle against dams that would inundate their homelands.
Why I Ask My Students to Swear in Class
An anthropologist uses explicit insults to get students thinking about gender and power in everyday language. Plus, a brief explainer on the slang term “sus.”
The Rebellion Recorded on the Rosetta Stone
An archaeologist explains how recent archaeological finds in Egypt expand our knowledge of a violent revolt discussed on the now-famous Rosetta Stone.
View All in Indigenous
![A large, tan cardboard box sits on a shelf with a label that reads “C2” below it. On two small pieces of black tape on the box’s front side, white letters read “Infant” and “Name Once Known.”]()
![In a wooden structure without walls, three people wearing loincloths and no shirts, and two individuals wearing T-shirts surround and point to spots on a large tan and green map.]()
![Taken from an upward angle, a photograph features a shirtless person wearing a red, blue, yellow, and black feathered headdress, colorful bracelet, and several beaded necklaces. They are holding a yellow and green flag.]()
![Between tall wooden walls, a child peers over a short wooden door. A pitch-black background is behind her.]()
![On a paved city street fenced off and lined with people, three people wearing colorful clothing stand and hold signs. These read: “Monogamy is not for everyone,” “I love my girlfriend’s boyfriend,” and “Sharing is Caring.”]()
![A pair of hands arrange two placards covered with images of two different people’s faces on a table covered with a black tablecloth.]()
Infant, Name Once Known
A poet-anthropologist of the Chickasaw Nation honors infant remains historically used in teaching collections at the University of Illinois.
Finding Footprints Laid at the Dawn of Time
In the Brazilian Amazon, a university-trained archaeologist and Wajãpi Indigenous people understand traces from the past differently—but their partnership bears fruit for both.
Reading the Future of an Amazonian Mine
In Ecuador, Shuar people, an Indigenous group in the region, face increasing threats to their ways of life from industrial mining. But some find strength and courage to resist through knowledge gained by using hallucinogenic plants.
A Mausoleum of Our Everydays/Nai nsang negu herouki
A humanities and social science doctoral student from Manipur, India, takes readers on a journey through ordinary moments interwoven with violence.
What Is “Natural” for Human Sexual Relationships?
A biological and anthropological researcher explains how humans' diverse ways of mating might have evolved.
Restoring Faces and Dignity to Skeletal Remains
An anthropologist explains how a South African university used community-driven research to honor human remains acquired unethically.
View All in Language
![Dark gray clouds hang in a pale blue sky. With orange light shining from behind them, these clouds seem to touch dark rolling hills scattered with trees and buildings.]()
![A close-up image features a circular street sign with random black symbols such as an exclamation mark and hashtag and a red circle and strikethrough over them.]()
![A picture features a sky with a large, slightly orange, billowing cloud at its center that morphs on its left side to look like the side profile of dark-skinned woman’s face. To the left of her is a bright-blue sky with clouds.]()
![From an aerial perspective, a photograph features a large circular garden with green shrubs crisply pruned into arc shapes oriented to form a maze. A gazebo topped with similar greenery sits at the maze’s center.]()
![A photograph features five people in colorful clothing standing on cement tiles in front of tall trees and green grass.]()
![A crowd faces a large outdoor screen showing video of a nuclear missile launching into a blue sky. Several buses are visible in the background.]()
Speaking in Tongues
A scholar from Nagaland in India offers visceral, familial insights on language and culture loss in her Indigenous tribal community.
Why I Ask My Students to Swear in Class
An anthropologist uses explicit insults to get students thinking about gender and power in everyday language. Plus, a brief explainer on the slang term “sus.”
Indigenizing What It Means to be Human
SAPIENS offers a curated collection of poems and stories that center Indigenous values, worldviews, and insights, creatively reimagining anthropology and the human experience.
Best of SAPIENS 2022
In a year of continuing global conflagrations, anthropologists investigated a wide range of pressing and curious questions about humanity’s past, present, and future. Here are the editors’ picks for this year's most compelling contributions.
How a Song Bridged Diné and Ndebele Worlds
An anthropologist recounts a magical moment of songwriting collaboration between Diné (Navajo) and Ndebele artists gathered for the WOMAD Festival in South Africa.
What Commentators Get Wrong (and Right) About North Korea
An anthropologist argues that unfair portrayals of North Korea as a hopelessly irrational hermit state has huge implications for policy and security.
Professor Talking Points
- Linguistic anthropologists are well-positioned to consider the cycles of languages: how they are created, how they change over time in numerous ways, and how they die.
- There are an estimated 6,000 languages spoken around the world, and this diversity represents different ways of seeing the world, interacting, and talking about social interactions, the environment, food, politics, and complex abstract concepts about time, space, color, the divine, etc.
- Linguistic anthropologists have been vocal about the predicament in which humanity find itself: that many languages are at risk of extinction.
- The study of linguistics and culture helps make sense of why languages are threatened, allows for a deep appreciation of the power of languages and the diverse perspectives they produce, and permits all of us to consider what can be done to stop this process.
- Some linguistic anthropologists also track the struggles and successes of people who are working to resuscitate dying languages and highlight ways to support these processes.
Academic Articles
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Limerick, Nicolas. 2018. “Attaining Multicultural Citizenship Through Indigenous-Language Instruction: Successful Kichwa Misfires and the Modeling of Modernist Language Ideologies in Ecuador.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 28 (3): 313–331.
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Otheguy, Ricardo, Ofelia García, and Wallis Reid. 2015. “Clarifying Translanguaging and Deconstructing Named Languages: A Perspective From Linguistics.” Applied Linguistics Review 6 (3): 281–307.
Student Discussion Questions
- Discuss the beginnings of languages: Where do they come from? How are they created?
- Name some reasons why languages are at risk of extinction.
- Do you think that it is important to save languages? Do you think there are conditions under which some languages should not be saved?
- What does the 2017 SAPIENS article by Nicola Jones teach us about how language helps people understand the world?
- What is the Limerick (2018) article saying about language diversity and belonging? How does this message apply to the other readings?
Activities
- Have students watch the Hollywood film Arrival and discuss what it says about the nature of language.
Additional Resources
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Article: SAPIENS’ “Why Are Languages Worth Preserving?”
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TED Playlist: How Languages Change Over Time
Unit By
Eshe Lewis (2020)
Teaching
Linguistic Anthropology
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Unit 3
Language and Gender
