LINGUISTICS AND

ETHNOGRAPHIC
FIELDWORK

Nancy C. Dorian
The Language and Ethnicity
Link: Ideal and Actual
The ideal case.
place a people live
Speak a ceratin language
Name
 The actual point of view
Ethnic labels are not always good guides to the
actual situation where language is concerned (or
customes, for that matter)
Ethnic name:
speak behave very much alike
speak behave quite different from one another
how many groups can be recognized in a study area.
On what basis the distinctions can be made
Ethnicity
Social rather than bilogical
 Socially constructed categories
are subject to change
Great changes:
Warefare and conquest
Voluntary or involuntary migration
Resource scarcity
Resource abundance
intense trade contacts

From cohesive into distinct groups

Develop into subgroups

 Most of the worlds languages are not
confined to their own exclusive areas
Two hundred countries vs
Five thousands languages Official languages are
recognized

Consequences:
Less support less
respect Social standing
Social and economical
opportunities
 Groups whose languages have no oficial
standing try to blur the lines between
themselves and certain other groups.
Shifting to the use of other languages.
Marrying inot other group

Groups with no official languages keep their identity

WHAT FIELD RESEARCHERS HAVE
FOUND WHEN THEY REACHED
THE FIELD
A South Asian Case: Garo in India

Robbin Burling, Anthropologist and Linguists

He went to Northen India in 1954 to study the

lifeway and the language of Garo people

The Garos
 A Southeast Asian Case: Ugong
in Thailand
David Bradley

Ugong (belong to the Burmic division of the

Tibeto Burman language family) western
Thailand

Being Ugong
Thai Identities
A NorthAmerican Case: Cayuga
in Oklahoma
A field worker investigating an Iroquoian
population in Oklahoma found a Native
American Group speaking one Iropuoian
language (Cayuga) but calling themselves
by the name of another (Seneca).
Tribes History Oklahoma 1978, found a half-dozen
people descend from Sandusky
Marianne Mithun a linguist Seneca who were still able to speak
specialing in Iroqoian their ancestral language
languages
 An African Case: The Elmolo of
Kenya
Bernd Heine

few elderly individuals who could

remember the process of changing from
speaking Elmolo from speaking
samburu
The effect of Modern Conditions
on the Language and Ethnicity
Link
The mayority of all human languages are
spoken by relatively small numbers of
people and have no official standing or state
support.
Possibility of extinction.
 Identity-Marking Linksand
Culture-carrying Links

An ethnic language serves its speakers as an

identity marker
Language caries extensive cultural content.
Link between ethnic language and history.