Linguistic Anthropology

The study of language has been part of anthropology since the discipline started in the 1ate 1870s. This site is a place for linguistic anthropologists to post their work and discuss important events and trends in the field.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Lingo and Niches

It'd be interesting to compare "lawyer lingo" (described by Language Log) with the allegedly obscurantist tendencies of early 1990s deconstructionists, described by a computer professional as an ecological niche. The way I see them, both phenomena relate to the connection between epistemology, communication, and social role.

2 Comments:

Blogger John Curran said...

Alexandre-- If you're interested, there's an article which does exactly that:

Fuchs, S. & Ward, S. (1994) “What is Deconstruction, and Where and When does it Take. Place? Making Facts in Science, Building Cases in Law”
American Sociological Review 59:481-500.

4:06 PM  
Blogger Alexandre said...

John,
Thanks for the reference. The article is on JSTOR (stable URL).
Looks like a straightforward description of different methods for deconstruction with some discussion of the terms used. One thing that interested me in Morningstar's description is the "language ideology" component of his critique. A bit like naturalizing Grice's maxims.

9:19 PM  

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