Language and Culture Research Group

It gives us pleasure to announce the establishment of the Language and Culture Research Group within the Cairns Institute at James Cook University.   

The Language and Culture Research Group (LCRG) brings together linguists, anthropologists, social scientists and those working in the humanities, under the leadership of Professor Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and Adjunct Professor R. M. W. Dixon. The primary aim of the LCRG is to investigate the relationship between language and the cultural behaviour of those who speak it, and the relations between human biology, cognition studies and linguistics.

The LCRG is concerned with the fundamental business of linguistics and especially anthropological linguistics — our faculty and research students undertake intensive studies of previously undescribed (or barely described) languages, with a primary focus on the languages of the Pacific (especially the Papuan languages of New Guinea), the languages of Amazonia, and of Aboriginal Australia. We also concentrate on studying minority languages, including languages of immigrants, within the context of the majority populations. We work in terms of basic linguistic theory, the cumulative framework which is employed in most linguistic description, providing anthropologically informed grammars and analyses of languages and language areas. Our work has a sound empirical basis but also shows a firm theoretical orientation, seeking for explanation hand-in-hand with description.

Building on reliable descriptive studies, the LCRG also puts forward inductive generalizations about human languages, cultural practices and cognition. We enquire how a language reflects the environment in which people live, their system of social organization, food production techniques, and the ways in which people view the world. For instance, groups living in mountainous terrain often have to specify, for any object, whether it is uphill, downhill or at the same level as the speaker. And if there is a chiefly system, a special term of address may be required for speaking a high chief, and a different term for a minor chief. Why are languages the way they are? We seek scientific explanation and motivation, combining the expertise of linguists, anthropologists and social scientists from other domains.