Linguistic anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages and has grown over the past century to encompass most aspects of language structure and use.

Linguistic anthropology explores how language shapes communication, forms social identity and group membership, organizes large-scale cultural beliefs and ideologies, and develops a common cultural representation of natural and social worlds.

Linguistic anthropology emerged from the development of three distinct paradigms that have set the standard for approaching linguistic anthropology. The first, now known as "anthropological linguistics," focuses on the documentation of languages. The second, known as "linguistic anthropology," engages in theoretical studies of language use. The third, developed over the past two or three decades, studies issues from other subfields of anthropology with linguistic considerations. Though they developed sequentially, all three paradigms are still practiced today.

The first paradigm, anthropological linguistics, is devoted to themes unique to the sub-discipline. This area includes documentation of languages that have been seen as at-risk for extinction, with a particular focus on indigenous languages of native North American tribes. It is also the paradigm most focused on linguistics. Linguistic themes include the following:

The second paradigm can be marked by reversing the words. Going from anthropological linguistics to linguistic anthropology, signals a more anthropological focus on the study. This term was preferred by Dell Hymes, who was also responsible, with John Gumperz, for the idea of ethnography of communication. The term linguistic anthropology reflected Hymes' vision of a future where language would be studied in the context of the situation and relative to the community speaking it. This new era would involve many new technological developments, such as mechanical recording.

This paradigm developed in critical dialogue with the fields of folklore on the one hand and linguistics on the other. Hymes criticized folklorists' fixation on oral texts rather than the verbal artistry of performance. At the same time, he criticized the cognitivist shift in linguistics heralded by the pioneering work of Noam Chomsky, arguing for an ethnographic focus on language in use.

Hymes had many revolutionary contributions to linguistic anthropology, the first of which was a new unit of analysis. Unlike the first paradigm, which focused on linguistic tools like measuring of phonemes and morphemes, the second paradigm's unit of analysis was the "speech event". A speech event is defined as one with speech presented for a significant duration throughout its occurrence (ex., a lecture or debate). This is different from a speech situation, where speech could possibly occur (ex., dinner). Hymes also pioneered a linguistic anthropological approach to ethnopoetics. Hymes had hoped that this paradigm would link linguistic anthropology more to anthropology. However, Hymes' ambition backfired as the second paradigm marked a distancing of the sub-discipline from the rest of anthropology.

The third paradigm, which began in the late 1980s, redirected the primary focus on anthropology by providing a linguistic approach to anthropological issues. Rather than prioritizing the technical components of language, third paradigm anthropologists focus on studying culture through the use of linguistic tools. Themes include: