Methods of Linguistic Anthropology as an Intellectual Tool - Essay Example

Linguistic anthropology is an intellectual tool that man uses in thinking and acting in his daily life. It helps humans to have a deeper understanding of themselves and their values together with the environment. It is a social tool that defines its own purpose in human culture. The various methods that can be applied in the research include participant’s observation. A sample of participants are selected and keenly scrutinized so as to note the characteristics and record appropriately. The other method may include cross-cultural comparison.

This may involve the comparison of varied linguistic users basing on their culture. Survey research can also be applied to the research work so as to find the general trend of linguistic aspects. It may also involve interviewing of participants and use of archival research retrieval. Media analysis of the same can be done in order to carry out an efficient historical analysis. There are various indigenous languages that face the risk of extinction. This call for the need of anthropologists to carry out research on the community.

In this article, the above methods have been used to carry out the research on pormpraaw which is an aboriginal community in Australia. Native languages which are faced by extinction may be chosen for such analysis in order to prevent the language from extinction. From this linguistic method analyzed from the research, the main objectives of the research are realized.