Talk:Linguistic anthropology

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Article Checklist for "Linguistic anthropology"

Workgroup category or categories	Anthropology Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developed article: complete or nearly so
Underlinked article?	Yes
Basic cleanup done?	No
Checklist last edited by	Richard J. Senghas 13:40, 9 April 2007 (CDT)

To learn how to fill out this checklist, please see CZ:The Article Checklist.

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Original Authorship

Note: The original form of this CZ article has been written by James Wilce, who wrote the version that first appeared on Wikipedia.[1] He has moved the article here to CZ, in its original form ready for further development.

Style

What if we applied CZ:CZ4WP#Get_ready_to_rethink_how_to_write_encyclopedia_articles.21 (and the links that points to) to this? ---Stephen Ewen 14:57, 9 April 2007 (CDT)

Maybe I'm just tired, but I'm not sure exactly which style issues in those articles you are most concerned about here. Is one of them voice/register? If so, I find this prose at a level appropriate for university readers, as called for in the articles you mention. Also, the narrative structure of the article is built sensibly on the chronological trajectory of the discipline, highlighting how it emerged and then can be seen to fall within three discernible paradigms (a useful way of characterizing that history, in my opinion), highlighting the key *kinds* of contributions of the subdiscipline and the names of scholars associated with those concepts. I think most of the initial wikifying process (links, referencing & typeface conventions) will help make it more readable to those outside the (sub)discipline. Do you have other particular style concerns that should be addressed before approval? ---Richard J. Senghas 00:33, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

There is some really great stuff here, so don't get me wrong -- this is a wonderful starting point that Dr. Wilce has given. The "meat" of it is just great. My issue is that I find the article to be too inaccessible for the university level person. It is quite jargon-laden, lacks adequate elucidation, is not really a narrative (which often show more than they tell) but is written in dense prose that exhibits erudition more than really introducing a topic to someone who needs one. It reads to me like a summary of the field written for graduate students who are already familiar with other anthropological sub-disciplines. One illustrative quote is, "It is the ideology that people should "really" be monoglot and effeciently targeted toward referential clarity rather than diverting themselves with the messiness of multiple codes in play at a single time." Most readers (assuming they keep reading that far) will probably think, Translation please? -- and I venture to say that will probably not be the first time they will have asked themselves that question during the reading.

By narrative, I have something like this in mind, which is similar in pattern to the intro I wrote for anthropology, although this was done as just a quick sketch for illustration:

Linguistic anthropology is the study of the relationship between language and culture. As one of the four primary fields within American anthropology, it developed during the 19X0s as anthropologists studied how the languages and thought processes of North American native people groups transmitted their culture to the succeeding generations. While such study remains an important focus of linguistic anthropologists today, many have applied their perspective to the study of kinship patterns and naming categories among diverse people groups. [Show several examples]. Throughout all their work, lingusitc anthropologists are guided by a fundamental question: Do differing people groups understand the world differently from one another because of cultural and structural differences in their languages? They seek to understand how peoples' understandings of the world may be encoded in their talk and texts.

I see no reason to rush this to approval -- or perhaps you can share the reason if there is one?

Stephen Ewen 02:14, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

Sources

I think I got all of the sources. Feel free to re-adjust the format. --Joe Quick (Talk) 19:35, 9 April 2007 (CDT)