Edward Sapir
Who is Edward Sapir?
Edward Sapir, a linguistic anthropologist, was born on January 26th, 1884 in Lauenberg, Prussia and died February 4th, 1939 in New Haven, Connecticut when he was 55 years old (Siskin 1991: 621).
What is Linguistic Anthropology?
Linguistic Anthropology is the study of the ways language shapes social life. This includes the study of how people use shape patterns of communication, create categories of social identity, and shape beliefs (Durante 2009).
A Brief Bio
Edward Sapir was one of the first and well-known linguistic anthropologists of his time. Sapir was the son of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and in his youth, moved to the United States when he was 5 years old. Later, during his educational career, he attended graduate school at Columbia University and studied under another popular anthropologist, Franz Boas (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franz-Boas). Under Boas's mentorship, he became interested in the field of linguistic anthropology. He most notably studied Indian languages of the Yana, Paiute, and over 37 more indigenous languages central to the Western United States (Siskin 1991: 622).
From 1910-1925, Sapir was the chief of anthropology for the Canadian National Museum. Here, he made many important contributions to ethnology, or cultural anthropology(https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cultural_Anthropology/Introduction). His work concerned cultural change among American Indians as well as Indian languages around the world. When he became a part of faculty at the University of Chicago, he continued his research on Indian languages and helped created six different divisions of classification for a number of Indian languages in the United States, Canada, and Mexico (Anderson, 2019). He then moved from his position at the Canadian National Museum to become a professor at Yale in 1931. There, he founded the department of anthropology and shortly died two years later due to a series of heart attacks (Sciences 1997).
Sapir's Better-Known Works
The foundation of Sapir’s work is centralized through his belief that people sense the world around them through language. Therefore, ethnolinguistics, the study of the relationship between language culture was important. He thought that the evolution of speech may provide insight into the human perspective and help explain the wide variety of behaviors of people coming from different cultural backgrounds (Siskin 1986: 625).
One of Sapir’s best-known work is the Time Perspective in Aboriginal Culture, published in 1916, (http://biblio.wdfiles.com/local--files/sapir-1916-time/sapir_1916_time.pdf) created a methodology between language and culture based on historical reconstruction. In his work, he pushed that sound change in language, unlike other aspects of culture, retained pieces of past historical languages. As a result, genetic relationships could be distinguished from other types of relationships by methods in Indo-European historical linguistics, even without written records (Benedict 1939: 470).
Sapir’s book, Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech (https://www.ugr.es/~fmanjon/Sapir,%20Edward%20-%20Language,%20An%20Introduction%20to%20the%20Study%20of%20Speech.pdf), written in 1921, contains written and unwritten languages that analyze the precision and aesthetics of grammar and typologies as well as the processes through which languages change over time (Siskin 1991: 622).
Sapir's journal article, The Relation of American Indian Linguistics to General Linguistics (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3628530?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents), published in 1947, contains information about how American Indian Linguistics compare to General Linguistics in European countries as well as how they evolve, specifically, the distribution of phonetic elements (Siskin 1991: 621).
Sapir's Work is incredibly extensive, and all of his work is listed and can be found through this website under the "selected publications" section (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sapir#Selected_publications)
Saphir-Whorf Hypothesis
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis states that there are certain thoughts of an individual in one language that cannot be understood by those who live in another language and that the way people think is strongly affected by their native languages (Benedict 1939: 470).
Learn More…
… a scholarly article about the Saphir-Whorf hypothesis
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f34f/8988e2b01a13e4474e4374dc00d00ed4317a.pdf
…a scholarly article about Saphir’s life and work
https://www.jstor.org/stable/662575?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
…a BBC article on how Sapir’s work and linguistics apply today
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180806-can-language-slow-down-time
… The entire collected works of Edward Sapir
https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_2381148_3/component/file_2381147/content
A journal article on the history of Linguistic Anthropology
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30022398?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents
Language, Culture, and Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology By Zdenek Salzmann, James Stanlaw, Nobuko Adachi
Works Cited…
Anderson, S.R. 2019. “Edward Sapir | Linguistics.” Retrieved October 30, 2019 (https://ling.yale.edu/about/history/people/edward-sapir).
Benedict, Ruth. 1939. “Edward Sapir.” American Anthropological Association 41(3): 465-477. (Retrieved from Jstor on October 31, 2019.)
Durante, Alessandro. 2009. “What Is Linguistic Anthropology?” Retrieved October 31, 2019 (https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-linguistic-anthropology-1691240).
Sciences, National Academy of. 1997. Biographical Memoirs: V.71. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Siskin, Edgar E. 1986. “The Life and Times of Edward Sapir.” Jewish Social Studies 48(3): 621-625. (Retrieved from Jstor on October 31, 2019.)
Siskin, Edgar E. 1991. “Edward Sapir: Linguist, Anthropologist, Humanist By Regna Darnell.” Language 67(3):620–24. (Retrieved from Muse on October 31, 2019.)