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Reading the Field: The Shape of Linguistic Anthropology

As editor of Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, Alessandro Duranti has tackled the challenge of choosing articles that will accurately reflect the shape of linguistic anthropology as a field. He has succeeded in compiling an excellent reader that many instructors and students will find useful as an introduction to key works in linguistic anthropology. However, those seeking either a historical overview of the field or a volume of diverse ethnographic articles from speech communities around the world will be disappointed. The new reader fits neatly into the gap between two other popular anthologies in linguistic anthropology, Brenneis and Macaulay (1996) and Blount (1995), the former emphasizing articles that richly blend linguistic and ethnographic data and the latter offering a historical overview of the field’s theoretical development. Duranti has here collected a range of previously published articles at both ends of this spectrum as well as review articles that underscore the value of cross-cultural comparisons. Leaders in the theory and practice of contemporary linguistic anthropology are well represented, and all of the articles are excellent; indeed, most are recognized as contemporary “classics” in the field. Duranti’s comprehensive introductory chapter outlines the development of linguistic anthropology and its dialogue with other areas of linguistics, notably sociolinguistics. It also includes a theoretical overview of the development of linguistic relativity as a cornerstone of theory in linguistic anthropology and brief but helpful overviews of theoretical approaches to the topics of the book’s four thematic sections: speech community and communicative competence, performance and language, language acquisition and socialization, and the power of language. A short introduction, including helpful questions to guide students’ reading, precedes each section, making the reader suitable for use in an undergraduate introductory course. Within the sections, articles gen-