6 Theories of culture and how they relate to Language (Duranti Ch.2)

Premise: Language as Cultural Practice What is “Culture”? Critiques: reductive of complexity

- colonial agenda and supremacy - dichotomies “them” versus “us”

Minorities within mainstream Anthropologies need to be aware of their role

Access to elite academic culture

New explore root metaphors and concepts Avoid danger of defining

6 Theories of Culture as1. as Distinct from Nature

(Goodenough)

2. as Knowledge (Levy Strauss)

3. as Communication (Geertz)

4. as a system of Mediation (Marx)

5. as a system of Practices (Bordieu)

6. as a system of Participation (Lave)

Culture as distinct from Nature

Evidence of culture as learnedThe “nature/culture” dichotomyEvidence of “crossroad” in Language

capacity exists, particulars come from experience.

Philosophical assumptions: Kant- Boas

Kant’s defines Anthropology

“What a human being does because of his free spirit, as opposed to the natural laws which govern Human physiology”

Duranti p. 25

Hegel

Culture as the process of estrangement or Entfremdung “getting out”

Stepping out of one’s own limited ways of seeing things

“Buildung” as in “build” and “picture” I.e. the image of God (Gadamer)

Struggle to control instinct

Socialization

Shapes the child’s mind and behavior towards ways of thinking, speaking and acting accepted by a community beyond her family.

Language as part of culture

Rich systems of language specific classification-Kant mathematics!

Linguistic labels give cues about the types of social distinctions relevant for a give group (ex. No term for privacy, or “die” for people, animals and even machines!) -questions addressed by “Linguistic relativism”

Structuralists carry out componential analysis: classes of objects, thoughts, actions, relationships, events, ideas, --

Lexical distinctions (Goodenough, Spradley)

2. Culture as knowledge

Premise: If culture is learned then much of is is Knowledge about the world Re-cognize: objects, places, people ideas Share common patters of thought, ways of

understanding the world Ways of making inferences and predictions

In sum, cognitive view of the world

Goodenough, 1957 quote p. 27

“Culture ….must consist of the end product of learning: knowledge in it’s most general sense.

..Not just things but their ORGANIZATION …The forms people have in mind, their models for perceiving, relating and otherwise interpreting them”

Linguistic homology know a culture=knowing a language. Mental. How can we “explain” that bias?

Goal of ethnography: describe cultural grammars.

Types of knowledge

PropositionalKnow-that

Referential function of language is key

Natural kinds- ethosemantics How do people turn into objects? (p. 29)

Procedural Know how

Shift toward innativist view (Chomsky)

Culture as socially distributed knowledgeHow people think is real situations (Lave)

math in weight watchers, math in grocery shopping

Two assumptions One, Individual is not endpoint of acquisition Two, not everyone has access to same

information or uses of techniques Example Hutchings and navigation as team

Study of quarter-masters

Quote by Hutchins Unit of analysis for

talking about cognition Include human and

environmental resources

“Complex task involves web of co-ordination between media and processes inside and outside the individual task performance

In sum, Knowledge distributed amongstTools and Participants Learning from formal instructions is rare…

More like cooking: need to be in the task, watch an expert

Hence apprenticeship is the most common way to transmit knowledge

Stereotyping through Language

As a system of classificationAs a practice, a way to “taking and giving” to

the world (p32) Implication: using the “same” expression

does not connot4 the “same” meaningRather “capacity for mutual prediction”

Wallace 1962Gumpez (1982) shows how language can

be a barrier to social integration

3. Culture as communication

3.1 Levy Strauss and the Semiotic approachExtends Jacobson to The Cooking

example: The raw and the cooked Binary distinctions

2.3 Clifford Geertz and the interpretative approachCultural differences are not seen as

variations for universal abstract thoughtInterest in method of inquiry “never-ending

interpretative process characteristic of human experience

Following Weber man as “animal suspended in the webs of significance he himself spun”

Ethnography as Thick description

Thick description of a human behavior is one that explains not just the behavior, but its context as well, such that the behavior becomes meaningful to an outsider.

Difference between a “blink” and a “wink” the meaning of a wink depends on the context. As the context so does the meaning of the wink

Thick description describes the context of the practices and discourse in the society

Participation produces and reproduces worldviews, including local notions of Person (or Self)

2.3.3 Indexicality and meta-pragmatics Communicative force of culture entails not just

representing aspects of reality but connecting individuals, groups and individuals to each other.

Communication as a way to point towards, bringing into the context beliefs, feelings, identities, events bringing them into the present= the indexical meaning of signs

Language through indexicalitiy provides a theory of action or a meta-pragmatics

2.3.4 Metaphors as folk theories of the world Define metaphor: “The use of a word or phrase

to refer to something that it isn't, implying a similarity between the word or phrase used and the thing described” Wikitionary

metaphors allow us to understand one domain of experience in terms of another

• Time flies like an arrow • She broke the silence• The head of state (states as beings with a head)

4. Culture as a system of Mediation

Marx

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5. Culture as a system of Practices

Based on Heidegger “way of being in the world”

Heath?

6. Culture as a System of participation

On Predicting and interpreting

Conclusion