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intro to cultural anthropology - linguistic anthro lecture
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Language & Communication
Nepali students talk with Forest Foragers - Raute women
Language and Communication
What Is LanguageNonhuman CommunicationNonverbal CommunicationThe Structure of LanguageLanguage, Thought, and CultureSociolinguisticsHistorical Linguistics
What Is Language?
Transmitted through learning as part of enculturation
Based on symbols - arbitrary, learned associations between words and the things they represent
• Primary means of communication (spoken or written)
What Is Language?
Conjure up elaborate images Discuss the past and future Share experiences with others Benefit from their experiences
Anthropologists study language in its social and cultural context
• Allows humans to:
Nonhuman Communication Automatic and cannot
be combined At some point in human
development, ancestors began to combine calls and to understand the combinations
• Call Systems – limited number of sounds that are produced in response to specific stimuli
Nonhuman > Human Communication
Communication came to rely almost totally on learning
• Call Systems– Number of calls expanded, eventually
becoming too great to be transmitted even partly through genes
Animal Communication
More recent experiments show that apes can learn to use, if not speak, true language
• Sign Language
Washoe, a chimpanzee, eventually acquired vocabulary of over 100 ASL signs
Animal Communication
Washoe and Lucy exhibited several human traits
Koko, a gorilla, regularly uses 400 ASL signs and has used 700 at least once.
– Lucy, another chimpanzee, lived in a foster family and used ASL to converse with foster parents
Hominoid: Pongids: Orangutans
Chantek, an orangutan, has learned more than 150 ASL words
Nonhuman Communication
Cultural transmission of a communication system through learning is a fundamental attribute of language
Productivity – combined two or more signs to create new expressions
Displacement – ability to talk about things that are not present
• Koko and the chimps show that apes share linguistic ability with humans
Nonhuman Communication
Experiments with ASL demonstrate that chimps and gorillas have rudimentary capacity for language
There are no known instances where chimps or gorillas in the wild have developed a comparable system of signs on their own
Hominoid: Chimps & Human
Language Contrasted with Call Systems
p. 112
The Origin of Language
Language developed over hundreds of thousands of years from human ancestors’ call systems
Language is effective for learning; enables humans to adapt rapidly to new stimuli
Tower of Babel; courtesy Gustave Doré's Illustrated Bible
The Structure of Language
Phonology – study of speech sounds Morphology – forms in which sounds
combine to form morphemes Lexicon – dictionary containing all its
morphemes and their meanings Syntax – arrangement and order of words
in phrases and sentences
• Scientific study of spoken language involves several levels of organization
The Structure of Language
Phoneme – sound contrast that makes a difference, that differentiates meaning
Phonetics – study of human speech soundsIPA - International Phonetic Alphabet
Phonemics – studies only the significant sound contrasts of given language
• Speech Sounds
Phonetic Chart of Vowel Positions
KhoeKhoegowab Lesson No:1
The Khoekhoe language
International Phonetic Alphabet
The Nama people’s Khoekhoe implosive sounds
/ - dental ! - alveolar # - palatal // - lateral
Language, Thought, and Culture
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis – grammatical categories of different languages lead their speakers to think about things in particular ways
• Noam Chomsky argues human brain contains limited set of rules for organizing language, so all languages have common structural basis
Hopi Verb Tenses
Realis - present & past; things that are real
Irrealis - future & conditional - things not accomplished
Language, Thought, and Culture
Specialized sets of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups
Vocabulary is area of language that changes most rapidly
Language, culture, and thought are interrelated Types of olives, terms used in a sport, etc.
• Focal Vocabulary
Ethnosemantics – study of how speakers of particular languages use sets of terms to organize, or categorize, their experiences and perceptions
The ways people divide up the world – the contrasts they perceive as meaningful or significant – reflect their experiences
e.g. Hockey
Language, Thought, and Culture
Meaning
Sociolinguistics
Investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation, or language in its social context
Sociolinguists focus on features that vary systematically with social position and situation
Linguistic Diversity
Diglossia – regular style shifts between “high” and “low” variants of the same language We rank certain speech patterns as better
or worse because we recognize they are used by groups that we also rank
Politicians speak w/ Southern drawl in the South/Northern accent in the North
• Style Shifts – varying speech in different contexts
Gender Speech Contrasts
In North America and Great Britain, women’s speech tends to be more similar to standard dialect than men’s speech
Men and women have differences in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, as well as in the body stances and movements that accompany speech
Gender Speech Contrasts
Men tend to make reports, reciting information that serves to establish a place for themselves in a hierarchyWomen use less powerful words - gosh/god, darn/damn, shoot/shit...
Gender & Language
Deborah Tannen found women esp. use language and body movements to build rapport, social connections with others
Photo; Www.canuuwomenhistory.ca
Language and Status Position
Honorifics – terms used with people to “honor” them
Americans tend to be less formal than other nationalities, although they include honorifics
British have a more developed set of honorifics
Japanese language has several honorifics
Kin terms can be associated with gradations in rank and familiarity
Stratification
Our speech habits help determine our access to employment and other material resources
• Use and evaluate speech in context of extralinguistic forces – social, political, and economic
Sociolinguistics
Linguistic forms take on the power of the groups they symbolize
Linguistic insecurity often felt by lower-class and minority speakers result of symbolic domination
• Bourdieu views linguistic practices as symbolic capital that properly trained people may convert into economic and social capital
Pronunciation of ‘r’ in NYC Stores
p. 122 William Labov, “What Floor is This?”
When Languages Collide
Pidgen - speaking the dominant colonizer’s language
Creole - regular grammatical rules that combine 2 languages
French Creoles
Louisiana Creole is a combination of French,West African,and the Spanish language
Creoles combine grammar of subordinate language with words of dominant language
Herb Metoyer.www.herbmetoyer.com
English Creoles: Gullah, Sea Island Creole from South Carolina Island Region
Gullah is a creole form of English, indigenous to the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia
Annie Scott weaves a sweetgrass basket Saturday afternoon at the Gullah Flea Market on Hilton Head Island.Photo: J. Dyer
When languages collide...
Codeswitching - speaking with regularized rules using 2 languages
Dialect - a noticeably different way of speaking a language; mutually intelligible with the standard dialect
Linguists view B.E.V. as a dialect of English rather than a separate language
Black English Vernacular (B.E.V.)
William Labov writes B.E.V. is “relatively uniform dialect spoken by the majority of black youth in most parts of the U.S. today . . . ”
Black English Vernacular (B.E.V.)
B.E.V. speakers less likely to pronounce r than Standard English (SE) speakers
B.E.V. speakers use copula deletion to eliminate the verb to be from their speech
th --> d- Omit possessives “That’s the child’s doll --> “Dat
da child’ doll” Use more contractions: Doesn’t --> Don’t “It
doesn’t matter --> It don’t matter” Standard English not superior in terms of
ability to communicate ideas, but it is the prestige dialect
Historical Linguistics
Historical linguists reconstruct many features of past languages by studying contemporary daughter languages
Written forms vs. reconstruction based on oral languages
• Long-term variation of speech by studying protolanguages and daughter languages
Historical LinguisticsDaughter Languages – languages that
descend from same parent language and that have been changing separately for hundreds or even thousands of years
Protolanguage – original language from which daughter languages descendSubgroups – languages within a taxonomy of related languages that are most closely related
Canterbury Tales Woodcut 1484A.D.
Chaucer - The Canterbury TalesA Frere ther was, a wantowne and a
merye, A lymytour, a ful solempne man. In alle the ordres foure is noon that kan so muche of dalianune and fair language.
•A Friar there was, wanton and merry, A limiter [limited to certain districts], a full solemn [very important] man. In all the order four there in none that knows so much of dalliance [flirting] and fair [engaging] language.
PIE Family TreeThe Indo-European languages. Traceable to a protolanguage, Proto-Indo-European (PIE),
*PIE spoken more than 6,000 years ago.
*PIE split into separate languages
*Identify relations using cognates
Indo-Eur. Numerals in IPA*
English French Spanish Nepali
1 wøn ~ø uno Éïk
2 tu d~ø dos dwi
3 ƒri t¿wa tres ti≥
4 for kat¿ra kwat^o
char
IPA=International phonetic alphabet
Ethnologue
www.ethnologue.com
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