Linguistic Anthropology Glossary

The practice of alternating between two or more languages or language varieties within a conversation or utterance as a communicative strategy.

The knowledge required to use language appropriately in social contexts, encompassing grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competence.

A stable natural language that develops from a pidgin when it becomes the native language of a community, acquiring full grammatical complexity.

A sociolinguistic situation where two language varieties coexist within a community, each reserved for distinct social functions such as formal versus informal use.

The study of language in use beyond the sentence level, examining how meaning is constructed through talk, narrative, and interaction.

A language at risk of falling out of use, typically because children are no longer learning it as their first language.

A framework developed by Dell Hymes for studying language use within its cultural and social context through participant observation and analysis of speech events.

Linguistic forms that encode social distinctions such as respect, deference, and relative status between speakers and addressees.

The property of linguistic signs to point to or invoke aspects of the social context, including speaker identity, status, and relationships.

The social situation in which speakers of different languages interact, often leading to borrowing, code-switching, pidginization, or creolization.

The systematic recording and preservation of a language's grammar, vocabulary, texts, and usage patterns, especially for endangered languages.

Culturally shared beliefs and attitudes about language that shape how people evaluate languages, dialects, and speakers, often reflecting social hierarchies.

Official decisions by governments or institutions about the status, use, and teaching of languages within a given political territory.

Efforts to reverse language shift by restoring intergenerational transmission and expanding the domains in which an endangered language is used.

The process by which a community gradually abandons its heritage language in favor of a more socially or economically dominant one.

The process by which children and newcomers acquire linguistic and cultural knowledge simultaneously through participation in communicative practices.

The hypothesis that the structure of a language influences the way its speakers think about and perceive the world. The weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

The capacity of language to create social reality through utterance rather than merely describing it, as when a judge pronounces a sentence.

The study of the sound systems of languages, including the inventory of phonemes and the rules governing their combination and distribution.

A simplified contact language that develops between groups who do not share a common language, typically lacking native speakers.

The study of how context contributes to meaning in language use, including implied meaning, presupposition, and conversational implicature.

A variety of language defined by its situational context, including formality level, topic, and the social relationship between interlocutors.

The proposition that language structure influences or determines thought and perception, existing in strong (determinism) and weak (relativity) versions.

An utterance that performs an action, such as requesting, promising, apologizing, or declaring, as theorized by J.L. Austin and John Searle.

A group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use and interpretation of language.