Oswald Werner

Oswald J. Werner (February 26, 1928 – March 26, 2023), better known as Ossy Werner, was a Czechoslovakian-born American linguist.

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.

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.

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.

Werner 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).

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 to 1989.

Seventeen entries between 1986 and 1989 are listed by WorldCat.

In total, he has over 1300 entries in member libraries worldwide.

Not only did the book establish procedures and methods for anthropological field work, but it set precedences in the ways personal computers can be used in the field for data collection, management, and analysis.

Werner also intensively explored the pragmatic aspects of employing the ethnoscience approach to data collection through mentoring his students in the Northwestern University Summer Ethnographic Field School.

He pursued this interest to the policy level through his leadership of the Northwestern University Program on Ethnography and Public Policy, which helped define the contours of the relationship of ethnography to applied anthropology and the formation and execution of government policy.

Also of note, ethnoscientists, following anthropological linguists such as C.F. Voegelin, were among the first ethnographers to begin using the term "consultant" as opposed to "informant".

He also served as president of Cultural Anthropology Methods (renamed Field Methods) in 1989 having had a regular column in the journal.

Oswald Werner died in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 26, 2023, at the age of 95.

Werner was a student of Navajo folk knowledge for over 30 years and moved easily between linguistics and cultural anthropology.

Noting lapses in how others approached ethnography led him to develop methodologies for cultural anthropology and ethnoscience.

In particular, ethnoscience was used to analyze Navajo culture by delving into their world view, specifically botany and folk-science.

Werner edited books and authored over 70 publications on the Navajo, cultural anthropology, and anthropological methodology.

The often cited two-volume Systematic Fieldwork with G. Mark Schoepfle was one of his most significant contributions.

It is the only book on ethnographic method that deals with ethnographic translation.

The methodological tools that the volumes discuss are used to describe cultural systems of knowledge.

One of the tools is the use of semantic network models, which can be used to build an encyclopedia of cultural knowledge.

For work such as this, he is considered by James F. Hamill as "...a leading theoretician in cognitive anthropology."

Systematic Fieldwork earned the nomination as best-selling book of the year on that publisher's list.

He was 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.

Werner retired from Northwestern in 1998.

After retiring, Northwestern University's anthropology department created The Oswald Werner Prize for Distinguished Honors Theses in Anthropology.

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.