The Influence of Jakobson on British Social Anthropology

Roman Jakobson believed that to a unique degree our possession of language distinguishes mankind in a quite crucial way from all other species. His influence on my own immediate bit of the words has been mainly indirect. My own academic subject is the English version of social anthropology. It is rooted in the work of Bronislaw Malinowski, a Radcliffe-Bran and Raymond Firth - all of whom I have had the good fortune to be closely associated. British social anthropology would not exist in its present form if it had not in recent years developed a kind of dialectical relationship with the work of Claude Louis Stroz.