ABSTRACT
linguistics occupies a special place among the social sciences,to whose ranks is unquestionably belongs.It is not merely a social science like the others,but,rather,than one in which by far the greatest progress has been made.It is probably the only one which can truly claim to be a science and which has achieved both the formulation of an empirical method and an understanding of the nature of the data submitted to its analysis.This previleged position carries with it several obligations. The linguist will often find scientists from related but different disciplines drawing inspiration from his example and trying to follow his lead. Noblesse oblige. A linguistic journal like Word cannot confine itself to the illustration of strictly linguistic theories and points of view. It must also welcome psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists eager to learn from modern linguistics the road which leads to the empirical knowledge of social phenomena. As Marcel Mauss wrote already forty years ago: “Sociology would certainly have progressed much further if it had everywhere followed the lead of the linguists….” The close methodological analogy which exists between the two disciplines imposes a special obligation of collaboration upon them.
From structural Anthropology. Copyright ©1963 by Basic Books,Inc.,Publishers,New York.Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the author.Claude Lèvi-Strauss is Professor of Social Anthropology,collège de France,Paris.
