Culture Comparison Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Culture Comparison - Essay Example The other three disciplines are archeology, bioanthropology and linguistics; anthropological concerns however very often intersect varying spheres. Of particular interest to me are the aspects of language and kinship and descent, which thus cuts across linguistic and cultural anthropology. Linguistic anthropology focuses on how human languages are made and revived, and how they work, change and die (‘Cultural Anthropology/Introduction, n.d.); concern is with understanding language in terms of the historical, cultural and biological milieu in which it develops (‘Cultural Anthropology/Introduction, n.d.), and the linguistic features by which people communicate, including verbal and non-verbal features (‘Cultural Anthropology/Introduction, n.d; O’Neil). ... The second paradigm considered language as both impacting on and impacted by culture, and was concerned with studying language as used by different speakers in different situations; in other words the paradigm focused on language and its environment (Duranti, 2003, p.329-330). The third paradigm was concerned with the interaction of language and documenting and analyzing the way it is reproduced and transformed, both in terms of the moment in time and place (Duranti, 2003, P.333). Linguistic anthropology today has thus realized that in order to understand what it means to study language as culture, focus must be on methodology, theory and history as it relates to linguistics and language. Cultural anthropology as pertaining to kinship pertains to the relationships between people as defined by culture (O’Neil, 2006), either by marriage (affinal relatives) or descent (consanguinal relatives) Morgan (1871), and is fundamental in social organization, interaction, motivation and at titudes of any given community (O’Neil, 2006); in other words the study of kinship is concerned with both general and unique characteristics of the social life of humankind (Singarimbun, 1975). Kinship is determined in different ways within different societies but relate to two underlying principles of descent – unilineal and cognatic (O’Neil, 2006). Societies that are concerned with unilineal descent trace either their father’s (patrilineal) or their mother’s (matrilineal) group; those concerned with both their matrilineal and patrilineal descent are said to be concerned with cognative descent. Cognative traces can involve any of four variations including bilineal