Oswald Werner

2000 "How to reduce an unwritten language to writing: I," Field Methods 12.1: 61-71.

1994 The Sapir Whorf Hypothesis. (Contract Number 17106A/0217) The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Paragon Press and Aberdeen University Press, 25 pages.

1994 Short Take 13.: Ethnographic Sampling, Cultural Anthropology Methods 6.2.

1994 Ethnographic Translation: Issues and Challenges, Sartoniana 7:59-135. (Lecture presented on the occasion of being awarded the Sarton Medal, Universiteit Gent, Belgium).

1992 Short Take 7.: How to Record Activities, Cultural Anthropology Methods 4.2:1-3.

Werner was active in his profession and served on committees of the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Anthropological Association, the Linguistic Society of America, and the Central States Anthropological Society [1]. He also served as President of Cultural Anthropology Methods (renamed Field Methods) in 1989 having had a regular column in the journal.

1989 How to Teach a Network, in M. Evens (ed.), Network Models in Semantics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 141–166. (Also read at pre-conference meeting of the Society for Computational Linguistics on Semantic Networks.)

1987 (with G. Mark Schoepfle, et al.) Systematic Fieldwork, Volume 1: Foundation of Ethnography and Interviewing (416 pages), Volume 2: Ethnographic Analysis and Data Management (355 pages), Sage Publishing Co.

Systematic Fieldwork earned the nomination as best-selling book of the year on that publisher's list. Seventeen entries between 1986 and 1989 are listed by WorldCat. In total, he has over 1300 entries in member libraries worldwide.

1986 (with H.R. Bernard, P.J. Pelto, J. Boster, A.K. Romney, A. Johnson, C.R. Ember, and A. Kasakoff, The Construction of Primary Data in Cultural Anthropology, Current Anthropology 27:382-96.

1983 Microcomputers in Cultural Anthropology, APL Programs for Qualitative Analysis, BYTE 7.7:250-80.

1983 (with A. Manning and K. Y. Begishe) A Taxonomic View of the Traditional Navajo Universe, in A. Ortiz, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 10, Smithsonian Institution, pp. 579–91.

1980 (with D. Brokensha and D. M. Warren, eds.) Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Development, University Press of America.

1979 (with G. Schoepfle.) "Handbook of Ethnoscience: Ethnographies and Encyclopedias." Evanston, Illinois: Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University.

1978 The Synthetic Informant Model: On the Simulation of Large Lexical/Semantic Fields, in M. D. Loflin and J. Silverberg, Discourse and Inference in Cognitive Anthropology: An Approach to Psychic Unity and Enculturation, Mouton, pp. 45–82.

1978 (with L. E. Fisher) Explaining Explanation: Tension in American Anthropology, Journal of Anthropological Research 34:194-218.

1976 (with M. D. Topper) On the Theoretical Unity of Ethnoscience Lexicography and Ethnoscience Ethnography. Proceedings, Georgetown University Roundtable on Language and Linguistics 1976, in Clea Rameh, ed., Semantics: Theory and Application, pp. 131–70.

1975 (with M. D. Kinkade and K. L. Hale, eds.) Anthropology and Linguistics: Essays in Honor of Carl F. Voegelin, Peter DeRidder Press, 700 pages.

1975 (with Gladys Levis, Bonnie Litowitz, and Martha Evens) An Ethnoscience View of Schizophrenic Speech, in B. Blount and Mary Sanches, eds., Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Use, Academic Press, pp. 349–80.

1975 On the Limits of Social Science Theory, in Kinkade et al., eds., pp. 677–90.

Through his writings as well as teachings, he influenced many undergraduate and graduate students. He insisted on individual choice and responsibility by his students. Starting in 1974 he founded and directed the Northwestern University Ethnographic Field School in Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology outside Gallina, New Mexico, not far from the Navajo Nation. Both undergraduate and graduate students were immersed in ethnographic field methods. They worked together with communities on the Navajo Nation and with Hispanic communities in northern New Mexico. In fact, research done there has already felt its influence in additional studies regarding the Navajo by his students with Werner's guidance.

1973 "Structural anthropology." Main Currents in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

1973 (with Joann Fenton) "Method and theory in ethnoscience or ethnoepistemology." A Handbook of Method in Cultural Anthropology, pp. 537–578.

1972 (with M.D. Topper) Ethnoscience 1972, in B. Siegel, ed., Annual Reviews of Anthropology, pp. 271–308.

1970 (with D. T. Campbell) Translating, Working Through Interpreters, and the Problem of Decentering, in R. Naroll and R. Cohen, eds., Handbook of Anthropology, Natural History Press, pp. 398–420.

1970 (with K. Y. Begishe) A Lexemic Typology of Navajo Anatomical Terms. I. The Foot. International Journal of American Linguistics 36:247-65 (special issue in memory of Hans Wolff).

1970 Cultural Knowledge, Language, and World View, in P. Garvin, ed., Cognition: A Multiple View, Elsevier. (Paper presented at the Wenner-Gren Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognition, March 1969, Chicago), pp. 15–75.

1969 (with Norma Perchonock) Navajo Systems of Classification: The Domain of Foods, Ethnology 8:229-242.

1969 The Basic Assumptions of Ethnoscience, Semiotica 1:328-38.

1968 (with Kenneth Y. Begishe.) Styles of learning: The evidence from Navaho.

1966 (with Kenneth Y. Begishe.) The Anatomical Atlas of the Navajo. Northwestern Univ.

1966 Pragmatics and Ethnoscience, Anthropological Linguistics 8.8:42-65

1965 Semantics of Navajo Medical Terms: I. International Journal of American Linguistics 31:1-17.

Another work was “The Navaho ethnomedical domain: prolegomena to a componential semantic analysis" (1964) which defines Navajo terms for diseases. Expanding on this was a Navajo Medical Encyclopedia which basically converted Western medicine for application to the Navajo.

Werner started teaching at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1963 as Assistant Professor. Moving through the ranks from Associate Professor in 1969 and finally to Full Professor by 1971, he served as Chair of the department from 1978–83 and then again from 1987-89. Werner retired from Northwestern in 1998.

He received his Master's Degree in Anthropology in 1961 from Syracuse. Wanting to continue his studies under the anthropological linguist, C. F. Voegelin, he was accepted at the University of Indiana at Bloomington in the Department of Anthropology. In many schools, linguistics is considered a sub-discipline of anthropology. With Voegelin as advisor, Werner became interested in "Trader Navajo" which was spoken by the Anglo traders on the then Navajo Reservation, now the Navajo Nation. This simplified Navajo or pidgin spoken at the often isolated trading posts became the subject of his doctoral dissertation, A Typological Comparison of Four Trader Navajo Speakers (Indiana University, 1963).

Starting at Syracuse University's School of Journalism in 1954, he also read and took courses in anthropology. A summer of archaeological field work and photography at Mesa Verde National Park brought him into daily contact with Navajo laborers. This piqued his interest, which led to changing his field of study to anthropology.

Matriculating at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, Germany, he studied Applied Physics, graduating in 1950 with a Bachelor's degree equivalent. Without knowing English, he emigrated in 1951 to the United States, learning the new language while serving in the Army.

Oswald J. Werner (born February 26, 1928), known as Ossy, was a Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics for thirty years at Northwestern University and retired in 1998 as Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Linguistics. During this period he researched the Navajo language and culture. Although specializing in their medicine and science, he impacted anthropology, linguistics, ethnography, ethnographic methodology, ethnoscience, and cognitive anthropology.

Oswald J. Werner was born February 26, 1928 in Rimavská Sobota, Czechoslovakia in what is now south-central Slovak Republic. His father, Professor Julius M. Werner, was Slovak, while his mother, Bella L. (née Toth), was Hungarian. The history of the area with its malleable borders following World War I required an academic family to know all three languages, Slovak, Hungarian, and German.