chapter 9 - words and culture

7/31/2019 Chapter 9 - Words and Culture

1/13

WORDS AND CULTURE

Yesicha RyonaA 1 B 0 1 1 0 4 1


2/13

WORDS AND CULTUREWhorf

Kinship

Taxonomies

Color

Prototypes

Taboo and Euphemism


3/13

One long-standing claim concerning the relationship between language

and culture is that the structure of a language determines the way in

which speakers of that language view the world.

The claim that the structure of a language influences how its speakers

view the world is today most usually associated with the linguist Sapir

and his student Whorf, a chemical engineer by training, a fire prevention

engineer by vocation, and a linguist by avocation.

However, it can be traced back to others, particularly to Humboldt in

the nineteenth century.

Today, the claim is usually referred to as the Linguistic relativity

hypothesis, SapirWhorf hypothesis, or the Whorfian hypothesis. I will

use the latter term since the claim seems to owe much more to Whorf

than it does to Sapir.

Whorf


4/13

Kinship systems are a universal feature of languages, because kinship is

so important in social organization. Some systems are much richer thanothers, but all make use of such factors as gender, age, generation,

blood, and marriage in their organization.

In such an approach, we collect the various kinship terms in use in a

particular society and then attempt to determine the basic components

of each term. We may go even further.

The new longer phrasal terms also indicate the current lack of

importance given to certain kinship relationships, in keeping with a

general linguistic principle that truly important objects and

relationships tend to be expressed through single words rather than

through phrases.

Kinship


5/13

Kinship


6/13

A folk taxonomy is a way of classifying a certain part of reality

so that it makes some kind of sense to those who have to deal

with it.

One of the best-known studies of a folk taxonomy is Frakes

account (1961) of the terms that the Subanun of Mindanao in thesouthern Philippines use to describe disease.

That the Palaung pronoun system is also as neat as it is in the

way it makes use of its various components is also intriguing.

Evidently, language and culture are related very closely, and

much of the relationship remains hidden from view to most of us.

Taxonomies


7/13

Taxonomies


8/13

Our world is a world of color but the amount of color varies from place

to place and time to time. A January flight from Acapulco, Mexico, to

Toronto, Canada, takes one from a sun-drenched array of colors to a

gray drabness.

The terms people use to describe color give us another means of

exploring the relationships between different languages and cultures.

The color spectrum is a physical continuum showing no breaks at all.

All languages make use of basic color terms. A basic color term must be

a single word, e.g., blue or yellow, not some combination of words, e.g.,

light blue or pale yellow.

As we will see in the following section, we can use this idea that people

can and do classify in such a way to propose still another approach to

relating language and culture.

Color


9/13

Rosch proposes that concepts are best viewed as prototypes: a bird is not

best defined by reference to a set of features that refer to such mattersas wings, warm-bloodedness, and egg-laying characteristics, but rather by

reference to typical instances, so that a prototypical bird is something

more like a robin than it is like a toucan, penguin, ostrich, or even eagle. This

is the theory ofprototypes. A variety of experiments has shown that people do in fact classify quite

consistently objects of various kinds according to what they regard as being

typical instances : (1) furniture, (2) fruit, (3) clothing.

Prototype theory, then, offers us a possible way of looking not only at how

concepts may be formed, i.e., at the cognitive dimensions of linguistic

behavior, but also at how we achieve our social competence in the use of

language.

Prototypes


10/13

In the first case we have instances of linguistic taboo; in the second we have the

employment of euphemisms so as to avoid mentioning certain matters directly. Taboo is the prohibition or avoidance in any society of behavior believed to be

harmful to its members in that it would cause them anxiety, embarrassment, or

shame. It is an extremely strong politeness constraint.

Tabooed subjects can vary widely: sex; death; excretion; bodily functions; religious

matters; and politics. Tabooed objects that must be avoided or used carefully can

include your mother-in-law, certain game animals, and use of your left hand (the

origin of sinister).

English also has its taboos, and most people who speak English know what these are

and observe the rules.

Taboo and euphemism affect us all. We may not be as deeply conscious of the

effects as are the Nupe, but affect us they do. We all probably have a few things

we refuse to talk about and still others we do not talk about directly.

Taboo and Euphemism


11/13

text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text


text text text text text text











12/13














13/13













chapter 9 - words and culture

Documents