Culture

Title
Culture
Publication Date
2009
Author(s)
Goddard, Cliff
Editor
Editor(s): Louise Cummings
Type of document
Entry In Reference Work
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Routledge
Place of publication
London, United Kingdom
Edition
1
UNE publication id
une:7914
Abstract
As Gerd Bauman (1996: 9) observes in his book Contesting Culture, '[n] o idea is as fundamental to an anthropological understanding of social life as the concept of culture'. Given that people's ways of speaking are often, if not always, culturally shaped, it would seem that the same must apply to linguistic pragmatics. Certainly cultural factors play a central part in the ethnography of communication (in anthropology) and in cross-cultural pragmatics (in linguistics). As suggested by Bauman's title, however, the 'culture concept' has lately been subject to sustained scrutiny and criticism for, among other things, its alleged essentialism, over-simplification, failure to accommodate variability and change, and under-estimation of human agency. Ironically though, as Bauman observes, '[a]t the same time, no anthropological term has spread into public parlance and political discourse as this word has done over the past twenty years'.
Link
Citation
The Pragmatics Encyclopedia, p. 121-122
ISBN
0203873068
9780415430968
9780203873069
Start page
121
End page
122

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