As a linguistic anthropologist, you might travel the globe to study different cultures and their languages. This could include living within unfamiliar cultures and climates for long periods of time, potentially in rugged conditions that require physical exertion. However, when not traveling, you'll generally work regular hours and spend the majority of your time performing research, writing reports and presenting your findings. You might split your time between research, writing and teaching by working as an anthropology instructor at a college or university. Because so many languages are in danger of disappearing, linguists are trying to learn as much about them as possible, so that even if the language disappears, all knowledge of the language won't disappear at the same time. Researchers make videotapes, audiotapes, and written records of language use in both formal and informal settings, along with translations.
In addition, they analyze the vocabulary and rules of the language and write dictionaries and grammars. Linguists also work with communities around the world that want to preserve their languages, offering both technical and practical help with language teaching, maintenance, and revival. This help is based in part on the dictionaries and grammars that they write. But linguists can help in other ways, too, using their experience in teaching and studying a wide variety of languages. They can use what they've learned about other endangered languages to help a community preserve its own language, and they can take advantage of the latest technology for recording and studying languages.
When a community loses its language, it often loses a great deal of its cultural identity at the same time. Although language loss may be voluntary or involuntary, it always involves pressure of some kind, and it is often felt as a loss of social identity or as a symbol of defeat. That doesn't mean that a group's social identity is always lost when its language is lost; for example, both the Chumash in California and the Manx on the Isle of Man have lost their native languages, but not their identity as Chumash or Manx. But language is a powerful symbol of a group's identity. Much of the cultural, spiritual, and intellectual life of a people is experienced through language. This ranges from prayers, myths, ceremonies, poetry, oratory, and technical vocabulary to everyday greetings, leavetakings, conversational styles, humor, ways of speaking to children, and terms for habits, behaviors, and emotions. When a language is lost, all of this must be refashioned in the new language—with different words, sounds, and grammar— if it is to be kept at all. Frequently traditions are abruptly lost in the process and replaced by the cultural habits of themore powerful group. For these reasons, among others, it is often very important to the community itself that its language survive. Much is lost from a scientific point of view as well when a language disappears. A people's history is passed down through its language, so when the language disappears, it may take with it important information about the early history of the community. The loss of human languages also severely limits what linguists can learn about human cognition. By studying what all of the world's languages have in common, we can find out what is and isn't possible in ahuman language. This in turn tells us important things about the human mind and how it is that children are able to learn a complex system like language so quickly and easily. The fewer languages there are to study, the less we will be able to learn about the human mind.
As a linguistic anthropologist, you might expect a salary of $25,760-$130,893,which was the annual earnings range for most anthropologists as reported by PayScale.com in November 2011.