Methods in Linguistic Anthropology: Experiments

Abstract

This entry explores the fundamental research methods and analytical tools used by linguistic anthropologists with a focus on: (i) how linguistic anthropologists create compelling research questions and plan their research; (ii) how they collect their data; (iii) how they practice participant observation and how they record their ethnographic fieldnotes ; (iv) the key role of qualitative research interviews not only as ways to collect referential information but also as key interactional sites; (v) how researchers engage in transcription and translation of their collected data; and, finally, (vi) how they handle known and emergent ethical issues .

The Challenge of Positioning Space and Time in Systemic Studies of Animal Utterances as Both Embodied and External Contexts

“…Yet, time and space are not only treated as two separate phenomena. They are often perceived as a simultaneous, as an intertwined 'twin', a so-called chronotope, a term used by Mikhail Bakhtin to describe how literature represents time and space (Perrino 2020). The notation spacetime will be used for this particular perception (Nomura 2023).…”

“…The fourth and fifth aspects of utterances are the assumed embodied time and space. Fusing the dyadic chronotope (Perrino 2020) with a traditional triadic version of the utterance (Bakhtin 1986) will nevertheless imply that concrete 'measurable' time and space will still work as objective, external context even for an integrated 'pentagonally' defined utterance. By sticking to the idea that utterances and life-genres both are jointly pentagonal, one will still be left with the epistemological puzzle how time and space 'entered' a living entity or a body in the first place, both in an evolutionary and in an individual perspective.…”

“…Further, the Moser research teams have, as mentioned, shown place-and-time's inter-connectedness or proximity in rats' brains. Hence, after being inspected separately so far the two should now tentatively be seen as a spacetime/chronotope (Perrino 2020). Searches for sources claiming to theorise time and space led to a series of books and articles discussing the topic in relation to fields such as general philosophy, science, science history, media theory, and general semiotic theory.…”