13 - Causal dynamics of language

Summary

This chapter sketches that larger conceptual apparatus by defining a set of six frames that are useful for orienting work in the anthropology of language. The frames are qualitatively distinguished in terms of the different types of underlying processes and causal-conditional mechanisms that define them. Each of the six frames, microgenetic, ontogenetic, phylogenetic, enchronic, diachronic, synchronic (M.O.P.E.D.S) is distinct from the others in terms of the kind of causality it implies, and thus in its relevance to what we are asking about language and its relation to culture and other aspects of human diversity. In a microgenetic frame, the author considers the processes by which linguistic behaviors such as simple utterances are psychologically processed. In an ontogenetic frame considers the processes by which an individual's linguistic capabilities and habits are acquired and/or change during the course of that individual's lifetime.