Born in 1922 he was able to play a crucial role in setting up how future scholars looked at language, culture, and social meaning.
He worked with several great thinkers across disciplines (including: psychology, sociology, linguistics, anthropology) in order to establish his framework around Interactional sociolinguistics.
An example of an anthropologist who employed this type of methodology in her work is Deborah Schiffrin who isolated 12 words to analyze in her study of Jewish communities and their use of speech in Philadelphia.
[7] In her work she discusses the usefulness of Gumperz's theory in her methodology as it stresses conversational analysis for the purpose of interpreting different linguistic practices, in this case humor and joking.
Utilizing Gumperz's framework this way that showed that this type of therapy is perhaps creating a bigger divide between patients and staff.
Here Grainger uses Interactional sociolinguistics to understand how power structures are established and maintained, whether deliberately or unwittingly.
The theories behind Interactional sociolinguistics have no limit to the fields and areas of study to which they can be applied, for they provide answers to the ever present question of the relationship between culture and language.