On Being a Linguistic Anthropologist

Abstract

Like those who have preceded me in writing Overviews for the Annual Review of Anthropology, I became an anthropologist through a series of accidents. It was still true during my undergraduate years at Columbia (1932-36) that anthropology programs existed only at the graduate level, and even then at only a few universities. The central figure was, of course, Franz Boas at Columbia, and anthropology programs at other universities were, to my knowledge, all founded by students of Boas. Anthropology during that period had a very important component in museums and governmental institutions such as the Bureau of American Ethnology, a role which has diminished proportionally during my life. Because of Boas' stature in the field and its chronological priority, the Columbia program during the period that I was an undergraduate there had an indisputable primacy in the country. As an undergraduate, however, I was completely unaware of all this until the summer of 1935, just before I entered my senior year. During that summer I chanced to read a volume edited by Calverton, The Making of Man (5), available in the then popular and easily affordable Modem Library series. My

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