Sapir, Edward (1884-1939)
American anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884-1939), one of Franz Boas’ most prominent disciples, devoted himself particularly to linguistics (his original training). He worked in several North American Indian contexts, both in the United States and Canada, within a salvage ethnography framework, while proposing a classification of the continent’s linguistic families that became a reference. Combining language, culture and psychology, he also explored historical and theoretical questions about scriptless languages.
Keywords: Linguistics | Culturalism | 20th century | United States of America | Canada | Amerindian studies
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“Crossing Three Worlds: The Intellectual Life of Edward Sapir”
Leila Monaghan, 2017
Linguistic anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884-1939) negotiated between multiple worlds of linguistic study. Writing for American Mercury magazine in 1924, Sapir argued, “There are two ways, it seems, to give linguistics its requisite dignity as a science. It may be treated as history or it may be (…)
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« Significant Form - une forme significative. La poétique phonémique de Sapir »
Richard Handler, 2020
« Le rythme doit avoir un sens. » Ezra Pound (1916 : 322) Les anthropologues supposent souvent que la théorie de la culture et l’histoire de l’anthropologie occupent des espaces qui s’excluent mutuellement dans notre discipline . Nous pourrions même les interpréter comme les deux pôles (…)
Secondary sources
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“A Note on Unconscious Structure in the Anthropology of Edward Sapir”
C.N. Modjeska, 1968
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“Edward Sapir’s Anthropology: Style, Structure, and Method”
Richard J. Preston, 1966
Primary sources
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Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech
Edward Sapir, 1921
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Time perspective in aboriginal American culture, a study in method
Edward Sapir, 1916
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“Culture, Genuine and Spurious”
Edward Sapir, 1924
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“Edward Sapir”
Ruth Benedict, 1939
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