Two fields of anthropology have played huge roles in interpreting languages so that symbols, experiences, words and meanings of those words in daily life from different cultures could eventually become understood. There are issues that have erupted due to the concern of one linguist anthropologist, Elinor Ochs, as she explained in her essay Experiencing Language (p 143). She drove home a point that both psycho-cultural and linguistic anthropologists need to work together to make sense of the world between and in different types of cultures. Ochs explained several perspectives of language and suggested certain resolutions of these issues regarding language by experience-near and experience-distance outlook, the way symbols are used to communicate meaning, the indexical perspective, where words are lost in translation and the phenomenological actions of words that can make language take on meaning, expressions and a mind of their own.
Ochs used anthropologist Clifford Geertz and Heinz Kohut as examples for her argument which concerned experience-near and experience-distant influences on language (p 145). She felt that the field of psychological anthropology has not fully understood the concept behind experience-near and experience-distance. She claimed that she was held in bias toward her own field when she suggested that psychological anthropology would benefit in understanding language if the profession took initiatives to learn certain areas of linguistics anthropology. Ochs stated, “As a linguistic anthropologist, I hold a great longing for psychological anthropology to honor language, learn languages, and look deeply into the manifold ways in which words by phonology, morphology, syntax, and discourse - is implicated in moment-to-moment thinking, feeling, and being in the world.” (p 144). Ochs expressed in her paper that Heinz Kohut, a psychoanalyst, encircled the experience-near interpretation so the client would adapt to the experience-distant perception...