Bethel University - Spire Yearbook (St Paul, MN)

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I Dr. Larson Comments On The Role Of Anthropology I am a linguist who developed an interest in anthropology because I was interested in aspects of linquistics which are very close to the border of an thropology. It is a field which is called anthropological linguistics by the linguists or linguistic anthropology by the anthropologists. My first interest, which was Greek, eventually led to an interest in how language was learned and this brought me closer to linguistics. As I became involved in a language school for missionaries, this interest developed in response to a need to understand the nature of man from a broader point of view. I began to find myself drawn more and more to aspects in the realm of what we call cultural anthropology, but I did not teach anthropology as such before I came to Bethel. I hope to help young people today to expand their world view. I have always been a strong believer in the liberal, or, the liberating, education, and I have seen and continue to see anthropology as a very significant means by which this liberating could come about. I recognize the tremendous dangers that are involved in liberation. This is a traumatic experience for many. We have to take this risk because it is part of our Christian responsibility to rise above our own culture and to have a sort of global citizenship as part of God's family at the same time that we are part of a country or state or city. Furthermore, we are living in a new world where students are oriented towards a type of globalism; the whole world is their home. I think that anthropology is going to become increasingly important to the globally-oriented student and especially so for those who are Christians. Anthropology and linguistics are valid for any liberal arts course of study and would be the most obvious major for the church-oricnted vocation. To understand the cultural differences which keep men apart is fundamental if the Christian is going to have any success at all in stepping across those cultural boundaries and translating his experience into other terms. Anthropology

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Anthropological linguistics is interested not only in the structure of language but also in its function in society. Verbal behavior is, in many ways, the key to understanding man. Man is different from animals primarily because of the nature and the extent of his communication capacity. We need to develop an awareness of the central position of language in man's total cultural experience. Language is one of the forms which men utilize in attempting to ascertain who they are in relation to one another. Each man is motivated by a twofold desire: to know that he is part of a continuum, that he is not an isolate. Life does not begin and end with his awareness of it (birth) nor his death (passing from life, or perhaps into another awareness of it). In this is both solace and challenge. How a society and culture view and verbally couch the concepts of self and other will influence how a person becomes himself. The seemingly infinite variables are the study of the anthropologist and his fellow social scientists. Elizabeth A. Eckstrom Anthropology

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Art: Developing ones powers of visual observation Art ■