Explore the Fascinating World of Ethnolinguistics and Ethnosemantics

Ethnolinguistics and Ethnosemantics: A Summary

• Ethnolinguistics is a branch of anthropological linguistics that studies the relationship between language and non-linguistic cultural behavior of people.
• Ethnolinguists study how perception and conceptualization influence language and how that is linked to different cultures and societies.
• Cultural linguistics is a related branch of linguistics that explores the relationship between language and cultural conceptualizations.
• Ethnosemantics is a method of ethnographic research and ethnolinguistics that focuses on semantics by examining how people categorize words in their language.
• Ethnosemantics studies the way people label and classify cultural, social, and environmental phenomena in their world to understand the cultural meanings behind the way people describe things in their world.
• Anthropologists who use ethnosemantics to create models believe that they are a representation of how speakers of a particular language think about the topic being described.
• Componential analysis is a method used in ethnosemantic analysis to describe the criteria people use to classify concepts by analyzing their semantic features.
• Cultural Linguistics draws on and expands the theoretical and analytical advancements in cognitive science and anthropology.
• Ethnosemantics as a method relies on Franz Boas' theory of cultural relativity, as well as the theory of linguistic relativity.
• Cultural Linguistics is viewed as deeply entrenched in the group-level, cultural cognition of communities of speakers.
• The approach of Cultural Linguistics has been adopted in several areas of applied linguistic research, including intercultural communication, second language learning, Teaching English as an International Language, and World Englishes.
• Ethnosemantics can help anthropologists to discover how a particular culture thinks about certain topics.