1 - Introduction

Summary

This introductory chapter points out some issues that are central to the anthropology of language. The subdiscipline of linguistic anthropology in the narrow sense is an indispensable source of questions, methods, and solutions in the anthropology of language. The chapter raises some challenges that linguistic anthropology must meet, articulates the questions that define these challenges. It focuses on the implications of a causal account of linguistic transmission, given that the human mind is the niche in which language is propagated and to which language systems come to be adapted. A way to look at the language-culture relation is to examine how the grammatical structures and sub-systems of different languages encode semantic distinctions that appear to correlate with special cultural concerns of the language's speakers. The chapter provides how the other chapters are organized in the book.