Download - Language and Communication
Language and Communication Anthropological / sociological interest in
language
How is Language Related to Culture?
Mini-Exam #1 on April 9, 2014
True/False Multiple-choice Short answer
Multiple Choice Culture
1. is predominantly transferred through genes
2. is more developed in Shanghai than in Tibet
3. is being destroyed by globalization
4. None of the above
TRUE/FALSE
Research in cultural anthropology is mainly based on ethnographic fieldwork, although other methods may be used that do not involve fieldwork.
Short Answer
On the basis of his experience in the Trobriand Islands during WWI, B. Malinowski is generally considered to be the “father” of the method called _________ ________
Getting Started - the structure and nature of animal
communication and how it differs from human communication.
- the nonverbal forms of communication like gestures, expressions, and movements.
Ex. Facial expression of Bush vs. Gore’s “wooden” body language
Getting started Language as key element in the development of
culture as an attribute of human existence. In other words, without language, human culture cannot exist.
Language and worldview – Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (words & worlds)
Language as an element of cultural process - Socio-linguistics of identity - Classification of social & cultural reality - Inventories of social and cultural resources Tools of linguistic analysis as tools for cultural
analysis during field research (the way people communicate what is meaningful or what is not meaningful)
Properties of Human Language 人类语言的属性 13 design features (Charles Hockett 1960)1) Multimedia potential - Linguistic messages transmitted through a variety
of media (writing techniques; ASL; Morse code, Internet, etc.)
2) Discreteness - Combine discrete units according to rules. 3) Arbitrariness (the relationship between sounds
and meanings of words) Ex: I love you (Te amo; Je tai me;)
4) Productivity - Speakers’ ability to create totally novel
sentences and a listener’s ability to comprehend them
5) Displacement - Ability to talk about objects, people, things,
and events that are remote in time and space (E.T., ghost, ancestors, goblins)
* Human language as the most precise and complete system of communication
Nonverbal forms of communication
Is our interpretation of stated and implied
language inherent or derived from our culture?
real vs. implied meanings of hand gesture while driving.
Example: Giving someone “the finger” in U.S. culture has specific connotations (road rage), but does the same gesture have similar meaning in China?
Chinese Sign Language
Seeing Voices
What Really HappensCommunicationMethods
Context Field Settings
Linguistic Forms
Sign Languages used by the real deaf people
Used for communication between the deaf
Or between the deaf and those “who could hear”(听人 )
“Natural Sign Language”
自然手语
CSL (Chinese SignLanguage)
For “those who could hear” only
Ex. Television News; Showcases such as Expo
Official Chinese Sign Language
CSL + Oral Expression
People who could hear but could barely use CSL
CSL + Oral Expression
Written Language
Those who have no knowledge of CSL
Written Chinese
What Really Matters The discrepancies between two systems of
knowledge The official CSL as a standardized form of
linguistic communication A form of “paralanguage” that is
1 ) extremely context-dependent
2 ) facial expression & body languages
3 ) flexible and improvising
4) Strong indication of “adaptive wisdom”
The validity of “soft data”
“participant observation”- immersing oneself in
the local community (long-term residence)
- working through the native language
the goal of ethnographic fieldwork is to
“grasp the native point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world”
(Malinowski 1922: 25)
Culture is SYMBOLIC As is true of all symbols, such as
flags, the association between a symbol (water) and what is symbolized (holiness) is arbitrary and conventional.
Language is based on arbitrary, learned association between words and the things for which they stand
The arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified
RED and GREEN
Traffic light (stop / go)
Christmas
Fashion statement
Colors of a European Flag
The arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified
Objectives
Language and Context Be familiar with the central argument of
the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or the theory of linguistic relativity
Know what sociolinguists study: gender speech patterns; how social stratification manifests itself in language; how social variables influence people’s use of language)
Language and World “The limits of our worlds are the
limits of our words.” – Wittgenstein
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:language structures the cognition of reality and contributes to cultural differences
Ex. “your are what you speak/write”
Language & Thought Processes * “linguistic relativity” (as a form of
cultural relativism)
Example: problems of “word-for- word” translation (Eskimo words for “snow”)
Strong version: “linguistic determinism”
Example: patterns of thought and culture as patterns of grammar (Gender marked nouns)
Language & Thought Processes
Some interesting examples: Color terminology: number of
basic/key color terms a language might have is highly variable.
Calendars (solar vs. lunar calendars) Naming practices English Counting Words
Color Terms Counting Words
English terminologies: 11
African and Latin American terminologies: 2, 3, or 4 basic color terms
Quantity / units used for uncountable nouns (liquid, seed, food, etc)
Specific quantity/unit words used with predetermined countable nouns: a of lions, a of geese, a of pheasants, a of oxen; a of sheep; a of birds, a of cattle; a of fish; a of kittens
Chinese Lunar Calendar
12 animals represent a 12-year cycle based on the lunar calendar: Rat, Cattle, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. Each animal has different underlying personalities that it passes to people born during that year.
Prosperous EIGHT “8”
What shall we make of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Can it be tested? If a language shapes the way we perceive
and think about the world, we would expect a people’s worldview to change at a rate roughly comparable to the rate their language changes.
The weaker version of linguistic relativity can help us understand the relationship between language, thought, and culture.
LANGUAGE & POWER
- Sociolinguistics: study of the relation between linguistic performance and the SOCIAL CONTEXT of that performance
- Linguistic Diversity - Gender Speech Contrasts - - Stratification and Symbolic
Domination
EX. Japanese Honorifics A complicated set of contextual norms
governs the degree of formality and politeness people normally use to show respect to those of higher social position. For instance, verbs and personal nouns have several alternative forms that speakers must choose between in addressing others. Women often address men with the honorific verb forms that symbolically express “male superiority.”
Different forms of personal nouns to reflect the relative status of the parties.
Language and Status Position Status-linked dialects affect the
economic and social prospects of the people who speak them, a situation to which Bourdieu applies the term symbolic capital (ex. a form of cultural capital).
P. BOURDIEU 1984 DISTINCTION
Two forms of capital: - Economic - Symbolic (Social & CULTURAL)
The value of a dialect – its standing in a “linguistic market” – depends on the extent to which it provides access to desired positions in the labor market.
EX: My Fair Lady
Case: My Fair Lady
Professor Higgins teaches Eliza how to speak like an English aristocrat (the acquisition of “cultural capital.”
“The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.”
Language and Power
1) "A dialect is a language with a losing army.”Ex. Shanghainese & Cantonese dialects2) Black English Vernacular (BEV) & the Great
Ebonics Controversy (discussed in the Haviland Book)
3) Linguistic Nationalism (an attempt by whole countries to proclaim their independence by purging their vocabularies of “foreign” terms).
Ex. Former colonial countries of Africa, French attempt to purge Americanism, revival of Hebrew as Israel’s first language (vs. Yiddish).
Words borrowed into English…
Chinese: tea/chai, ketchup, ginseng, lichee, typhoon, fengshui, kowtow…
Japanese: tsunami, geisha, judo, sake, kimono, karaoke, sushi, tempura, and WALKMAN!
Turkish: yogurt
Malay: bamboo
Scots Gaelic: whisky
Norwegian: ski; Finnish: sauna
India: curry, punch (drink), cashmere, shampoo
New Words in English Affluenza (affluence + influenza) App Bromance (brother + romance) Geek Netizen (Net + Citizen)
Selfie
Code switching The process of changing from one level of
language to another or from one dialect of a language to another.
Ex. Martin Luther King’s
skill at code switching
between Standard English
& Afro-american vernacular
English.
Ex. The complexity of Navajo language and its use as code by U.S. Marines in the Pacific during
WWII.