ANTHRO 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Cultural Anthropology, Paleontology, Sociolinguistics
Document Summary
How languages change over time and how they may be related. Descriptive or structural linguistics: how contemporary languages differ, in their construction. How language is used in social contexts. Tries to understand how and why people today and in the past differ or are similar in their ways of thinking and acting. Provides data for a description called an ethnography. Ethnohistorian: studies life of a particular group, how they have changed over time. Cross cultural researcher: discovers general patterns about cultural traits, what is universal. Basic research is driven by curiosity with no thought as to where it might lead. Applied or practicing anthropology is explicit in its concern with making anthropological knowledge useful. Applied anthropologists are employed outside of traditional academia. They commonly have a geographic specialty which may be broad or narrow. Helps us understand ourselves and to avoid misunderstandings between peoples. Anthropology is literally the study of humans.
