Obra ressenyada: Alessandro DURANTI, Linguistic anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997

Cortés, Susana

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authors from achieving their originalintention. Only those who have somefamiliarity with current linguistic theoryand psychology are able to follow andevaluate the reasoning put forward. Otherreaders can either skim the technicalitiesor run to the nearest university to take anaccelerated course in Linguistics. Bothoptions are quite inappropriate, but thething is that this book deserves more thanjust being read: it must be understoodand, hence, enjoyed as a whole.Anna Morillas MillánUniversitat Autònoma de BarcelonaSpain218 Links & Letters 7, 2000 Book ReviewsLinguistic anthropology is a welcome text-book that focuses on the cultural impor-tance of language and speaking, that is, itstudies language as part and parcel of ourlives. The insightful ethnographic approachto linguistic fieldwork provided by thebook is really appealing and extremelyuseful to anyone interested in carrying outresearch in first and second languageacquisition. Divided into ten chapters, thefirst three are devoted to theoretical issues,whereas chapters four and five focus onhow to carry out effective fieldwork.Chapters six, seven, and eight present dif-ferent trends within the field of Linguis-tic Anthropology in the last decades.Finally, in chapter nine, Duranti developshis interest in the role of participants inspeech events, which is followed by hisconclusions summarized in chapter ten.On the whole, the book is well writ-ten, clear and neatly organized. Perhapsthe only exception is the discussion ofcertain theoretical concepts which arecomplex due to their multiple meanings.For example, the terms ‘culture’, ‘lin-guistic relativity’ and ‘speech communi-ty’ have been differently defined by var-ious authors and, therefore, the readermay find problems when trying to figureout which specific definition the authoris referring to.In the first chapter, Duranti pointsout that Linguistic Anthropology ismainly concerned with language use andthree theoretical notions, namely perfor-mance, indexicality, and participation.Performance has to do with the powerof words because words do things asAustin’s notion of performative verbsshows. For instance, when a person says(i) “I promise I’ll be good”, the uttering ofthese words is the act of promising itself.This notion displays a ‘creative’ and‘dynamic’ view of language, which is theone assumed throughout the book. Inrelation to indexicality, the author men-tions Gumperz’s concept of ‘contextual-ization cues’ which are features of talk(not only linguistic) that contribute tothe interpretation of sentences and situ-ations. For instance, intonation of anutterance gives the hearer clues about themeaning that the speaker wants to con-vey. Thus, the utterance (ii) ‘You don’tknow him’ would be interpreted as aquestion if spoken with a rising intona-tion. However, the same utterance pro-nounced with a falling intonation is anassertion meaning ‘you do not knowwhat he is capable of ’. Participationtakes into account that the participantsin linguistic interaction are crucial for itsdevelopment as a social activity. There-fore, these three concepts are important,but a notion that has been left out is thatof context. Context both in the fixed anddynamic sense is also essential for inter-Alessandro DURANTI, Linguistic anthropology. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1997. xxi + 398 pages.preting social and linguistic behaviour.Since it is closely linked to the notion ofparticipation, the reader misses its devel-opment in the book.Since Duranti defines language as a‘cultural resource’, a whole chapter isdevoted to the notion of ‘culture’, inwhich several theories of culture are pre-sented. All these theories share an impor-tant focus on language as a conceptualand social tool which is a product and aninstrument of culture. Duranti managesto make the reader realize how complexthe notion of culture is. This chapter isvery useful for researchers or studentswho are not familiar with this term andits diverse implications.The author also highlights the impor-tance of ‘linguistic diversity’. He stressesthe fact that formal grammarians havealways taken for granted that speechcommunities are homogeneous whereasLinguistic Anthropology is preciselyinterested in studying the differenceswithin them. Since diversity is the mainpoint in chapter three, Duranti dealswith concepts such as ‘variety’, Gumperz’s‘linguistic repertoire’, and different defi-nitions of ‘speech community’. Whentrying to explain ‘linguistic diversity’, hediscusses Whorf ’s notion of ‘linguisticrelativity’. It refers to different worldviewsresponsible for variation among lan-guages. Nevertheless, according to theauthor, linguistic relativity is not the onlyissue to examine when studying languagein culture; an anthropological study oflanguage should be concerned with lan-guage as both a product and a process.In chapter four, the reader finds ahelpful piece of writing about how a lin-guistic anthropologist should undertakefieldwork. This chapter focuses on theethnographic principles and methodsthat may be used by linguistic anthro-pologists to concentrate on the culturalpart of linguistic exchanges. The authorsuccessfully illustrates the problems onemay encounter when carrying out field-work with conflicts he himself or otherwell-known researchers had to face. Lin-guistic Anthropology uses, on the onehand, methods such as participant-observation, interviews, ‘identifying andusing the local language(s)’ and writinginteraction, and, on the other, techno-logical material such as video and taperecorders and digitized images. After this‘theoretical’ introduction to fieldwork,chapter five is concerned with the out-come of such practice, namely, tran-scriptions and other representations oflinguistic practices. The main point ofthis section is that words are importantin any transcript but actions should alsobe present in records of interactions byusing different symbols or digitizedimages and sketches. A problem readersmay find is that some of the transcrip-tion symbols Duranti uses are notexplained for the reader. For example,Duranti presents a system devised byRudolph Laban to match words withaction. Nevertheless, the symbols thatrepresent actions are neither explainednor exemplified.On the whole, the ethnographic me-thods and transcription systems describedin these two chapters, together with theappendix at the end of the book, whichprovides the reader with useful tips onrecording interaction, should be of greatvalue for both L1 and L2 acquisitionresearchers. One should note, however,that whereas some of these methods, suchas interviews, are widely used in L2 acqui-sition research, they may not be suitablefor research in L1 language acquisitionbecause of the limited mental develop-ment of children at the early stages oftheir language learning process.Duranti goes on to review grammati-cal descriptions over the past decades.He focuses on structuralism and analyzeseach one of the linguistic subfields toshow how systematic grammatical analy-ses are undertaken. The author developsmorphology largely due to its creativeBook Reviews Links & Letters 7, 2000 219power that makes it substantial for thedynamic view of language assumed here.This development simultaneously high-lights the importance of use in the orga-nization of grammatical systems.Pragmatic approaches to language,performance, and the power of words arealso discussed in the book. ‘Speech ActTheory’, the first pragmatic approach takenup by Duranti, is a theory developed byAustin and Searle. This model states thatwords not only describe the world but canalso change it. This view is excellentlyexemplified by Austin’s ‘performativeverbs’. The basic tenets of Speech ActTheory are followed by a critique ofsome of its key concepts such as truth,intentions and ‘speaker as a social actor’.Duranti succeeds in proving the culture-specific nature of these concepts by refer-ring to an ethnographic work carried outin a community in the Philippines. Adiscussion of Wittgenstein’s notion of‘language game’ as part of larger activitiesis included to provide more evidenceagainst the universality of these conceptsbut Duranti does not manage to make aclear point. Then, ‘Conversation Analy-sis’, a field that studies the structure oftalk, is discussed. The author points outthat linguistic anthropologists do notgenerally make use of ConversationAnalysis because it is primarily interest-ed in ‘conversational sequences’ whereasLinguistic Anthropology is more con-cerned with ‘social actors’.Due to the importance of participantsin linguistic interactions, Duranti dedi-cates a chapter to discussing this issue.His treatment of participants and his dis-cussion draw from Goffman’s analysis oftalk from the point of view not only ofthe speaker and the hearer but also ofany person present during the exchange.Therefore, he calls all these people ‘par-ticipants’. Thus, Duranti concludes thatif participants and the place and timewhere and when interactions take placeseem to be crucial for an analysis of talk,we should analyze something more thanjust words. With such a conclusion, Theauthor here seems to suggest that Con-versation Analysis on its own is not verysuitable for linguistic anthropologicalstudies because it just focuses on struc-ture. However, the combination of bothConversation Analysis and ethnographicmethods would be a good way to under-take linguistic anthropological research,if the analysis does not impose theresearcher’s point of view.Chapter ten provides unity to thebook. Duranti’s general view of Linguis-tic Anthropology is clearly shown in thefollowing quotation:“From the view of language as a sys-tem of classification, a window on men-tal reality and hence an instrument forthe study of culture as a system of know-ledge, linguistic anthropologists havebeen moving toward a notion of languageas an aggregate of features, tendencies,and acts that are sometimes the back-ground and other times the foregroundfor the constitution of the social worldin which we live” (Duranti, 1997: 338).This textbook is addressed to socio-linguistic, pragmatic and anthropologicalstudents interested in both First and Sec-ond Language Acquisition. No doubt, itwill be useful for these readers as well asfor researchers of disciplines other thanLinguistic Anthropology eager to enterthis field of study. This book is highlyrecommended to people who want tounderstand why we say what we say ingiven situations and how we can changethe world by using our species-specificfeature called language.ReferenceGOFFMAN, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Phi-ladelphia: University of PennsylvaniaPress.Susana CortésUniversitat Autònoma de Barcelona,Spain220 Links & Letters 7, 2000 Book Reviews

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