Linguistic anthropology: ethnography and concepts

Abstract

Since ethnography is born out of anthropological science, the article focuses on ethnographic sociolinguistic research. Froma theoretical andmethodological framework, the notions of social
meaning, speech community and context are dealt with and so is the role of indexicality, particularly non-referential indexicality. Subsequently, several phenomena that have been studied by Catalan sociolinguists following this line of research are identified and significant contributions in each area are underlined:  language choice, code-switching, youth linguistic practices, social inequality and the ethnography of school, intercultural communication, language shift, language attrition and language death, language ideologies and historical linguistic ethnography. Finally, some contributions by Catalan anthropologists studying South American or African indigenous communities are described.

KEY WORDS: language choice, code-switching, language substitution, language ideologies, linguistic ethnography.