Internally, language enables complex thinking processes, although not all mental information processing is linguistic. Externally, language facilitates the development and dynamic maintenance of the complex types of social systems associated with the human condition. Anthropologists also have an interest in studying the relationship between language and culture as interacting symbolic systems and, more particularly, in investigating the world in which linguistic structure organizes a person's perceptions of the natural world. The study of the ways in which language mediates reality is called ethnolinguistics . Many anthropologists find themselves working among groups of people whose languages have never been described.
Languages are constantly in the process of change.
Linguistic anthropologists are interested in how and why these changes occur both in the individual and in the broader society. Since language, like culture, is a symbolic system, an understanding of the processes of language change may shed light on processes of cultural change. Linguistic methods of comparative analysis provide data on linguistic universals and facilitate the classification of languages. This reconstruction yields a variety of cultural information relating to kinship and social organization, technology, environment, religion, etc., because important cultural elements are generally reflected in a society's language, particularly in vocabulary.