“…Though the genre of "life history" has coexisted with "ethnography" throughout the history of anthropology, its focus on individual lives, as opposed to the social group, has attracted comparatively little attention from scholars. With notable exceptions (e.g., Dinwoodie 2006;Hill 1995;Johnstone 1996;Timm 1986;Webster 2015), this is especially true in linguistic anthropology where scholars have historically preferred to focus on language and speech communities rather than on linguistic individuals. Linguistic anthropologists such as Sapir, in the following quote, have certainly recognized the dynamic role of individuals even if they have not succeeded in capturing it in substantive rather than programmatic writings: That culture is a superorganic, impersonal whole is a useful enough methodological principle to begin with but becomes a serious deterrent in the long run Submitted January 27, 2020; accepted May 4, 2020; published online February 1, 2021.…”