Mission Statement

The Language and Culture Research Centre (LCRC) promotes interdisciplinary research leading to comprehensive documentation of indigenous languages and cultures. This feeds into generalisations concerning human language capacity, and the interaction between parameters of linguistic and cultural behaviour. Our core members are anthropologically-oriented linguists and we maintain a dialogue with anthropologists, sociologists, archaeologists, educationalists and other scholars in the humanities, social sciences and relevant natural sciences. The LCRC's primary focus is on the autochthonous peoples of New Guinea, Australia, Amazonia, East Asia and South Asia.

Our Mission

Our mission is to provide anthropologically informed grammars and analyses of languages and linguistic areas. Our endeavour 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 LCRC also puts forward generalisations about human languages, cultural practices and cognition. We enquire how a language reflects the environment in which people live, their system of social organisation, food production techniques, and the ways in which a community views 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 to 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.

Another focus of study concerns the ways in which languages influence each other. What kind of words, and meanings, are likely to be borrowed between two languages spoken next to each other, and under what social circumstances? Are some kinds of systems particularly open to diffusion, so that they are likely to spread over all the languages in a geographical area, and are other kinds of systems less likely to be diffused?

LCRC organises International Workshops and Colloquia, regular roundtable meetings, and various events through the year. We reach out to the community, through advising and assisting concerning language renewal and revitalisation.