After decades of neglect, both the field of ethnopoetics and the principle of linguistic relativity are being revived in both North American and European anthropology, and largely in interdiscipinary contexts. This paper recalls their original formulations and subsequent decline and considers a few examples of their recent revival and transformation.
Paper long abstract:
After some decades of neglect, both the field of ethnopoetics and the principle of linguistic relativity are being revived, both in North American and in European anthropology, and largely in interdisciplinary contexts. This paper briefly recalls the original formulations of linguistic relativity in the 1920s and 30s and of ethnopoetics in the 1970s and 80sm and their subsequent decline. It then focuses on a few examples of revival and transformation: 1) of "practical linguistic relativity" in translation theory and practice, as well as in recent anthropological treatments of the implications of grammar; 2) of experimental linguistic relativity in the recent explosion of cross-linguistic studies in cognition; 3) of ethnopoetics in practice in much North American work and as an explicit named interdisciplinary school in Europe, involving not only anthropologists, but linguists, classical philologists, and ethnomusicologists.