Abstract
In this innovative textbook Alessandro Duranti introduces linguistic anthropology as an interdisciplinary field which studies language as a cultural resource and speaking as a cultural practice. He shows that it relies on ethnography as an essential element of linguistic analyses, and that it draws its intellectual inspiration from interactionally oriented perspectives on human activity and understanding. Unlike other current accounts of the subject, it emphasizes that communicative practices are constitutive of the culture of everyday life and that language is a powerful tool rather than a simple mirror of pre-established social realities. An entire chapter is devoted to the notion of culture, and there are invaluable methodological chapters on ethnography and transcription. The theories and methods of linguistic anthropology are introduced through a discussion of linguistic diversity, grammar in use, the role of speaking in social interaction, the organization and meaning of conversational structures, and the notion of participation as a unit of analysis.
