Anthropological Linguistics

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Abstract

Anthropological linguistics is the study of language within the wider context of culture. It is concerned with how humans employ communicative culturally meaningful, or semiotic practices, as resources to forge large and small, transient or permanent social groups. Such semiotic practices are underpinned by abilities and conventions at three levels: individual‐cognitive, interpersonal‐interactive, and sociocultural‐institutional, and the breadth of anthropological linguistics results from the fact that it conducts studies at all three levels, examples of which are presented in this entry.