I had no intention whatsoever of characterizing linguistic anthropology as the loony fringe of disrepute. I very much value the work done in this field. Indeed, much of the book from which this article was excerpted deals with central questions of linguistic anthropology, such as colour. What I meant was completely different, namely that for most linguists who consider themselves in the mainstream, and certainly for cognitive scientists, the influence of language on thought is nowadays almost a taboo subject, and any attempts to explore it are rejected out of hand.

This goes to the heart of the disconnect between anthropology and various technocratic neoliberalisms of the academy, manifest on the web sites like Crooked Timber, and in most economics, philosophy, and political science blogs.

Consciousness is cultural. But even here I’ve had a hard time pointing out what I assumed anthropologists took it for granted, especially when asking about the the graphing of culture in the context of the culture of graphing.

This is all an aside, so I’ll leave it at that.