ANTROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS

Anthropological linguistics is the study of the relations between language and culture and the relations between human biology, cognition and language.

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This strongly overlaps the field of linguistic anthropology, which is the branch of anthropology that studies humans through the languages that they use.

Franz Boas was one of the principal founders of modern American Anthropology and Ethnology.

His personal research contributions gave him an important place in the history of anthropology.  Even Boas has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology.” Although Boas published descriptive studies of Native American languages, and wrote on theoretical difficulties in classifying languages, he left it to colleagues and students such as Edward Sapir to research the relationship between culture and language.

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—Edward Sapir (1884–1939) was a German-born American anthropologist-linguist and a leader in American structural linguistics. His name is borrowed in what is now called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. He was a highly influential figure in American linguistics, influencing several generations of linguists across several schools of the discipline.

Sapir's classifies all the languages in North America into only 6 families:

—Eskimo–Aleut

—Algonkin–Wakashan

—Nadene

—Penutian

—Hokan–Siouan

—and Aztec–Tanoan.

    Sapir's classification (or something derivative) is still commonly used in general languages-of-the-world type surveys.

—Linguistic relativity is a general term used to refer to various hypotheses or positions about the relationship between language and culture.

  For Sapir, linguistic relativity was a way of articulating what he saw as the struggle between the individual and society. In order to communicate their unique experiences, individuals need to rely on a public code over which they have little control.