Communication lectures on:

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Communicationlectures on

• Language Using Patterned Sound
• Non-Verbal Communication Using the Body
• The Meaning of Objects Using Style
• Manipulating Space Using our Surroundings

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Language and Society

• Language
• Distinguished from a call system by the use of
  arbitrary symbols
• Arbitrary symbols are culturally agreed-upon
  meanings for sounds that are not like the thing
  they describe
• Non-human chimps cannot speak but can communicate
  (as does Koko, with American Sign Language)

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Language Origins

• Have long been debated
• Due to languages characteristics (it is
  performative and ephemeral, like dance) and the
  difficulty of connecting language with durable
  physical characteristics (except for the hyoid
  bone) a definitive answer is unlikely

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• What is clear is that the activities of our human
  ancestors, at least since H. erectus times, would
  have required some sort of sophisticated
  communication system to indicate abstract
  concepts such as time, distance, longing, intent,
  etc

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Language History

• (of the more recent sort) is considerably easier.
  
• Termed historical linguistics, the relationships
  between languages can be discerned through
  comparison.
• Glottochronology studies the rate of linguistic
  change to derive approximate dates for when
  languages split from one another (e.g., Latin
  into French, Spanish, Italian)

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Latin English German French
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Language Change

• occurs all the time
• slang,
• regional dialects,
• borrowing from other languages
• an example of English language change is
  Chaucers fourteenth century English Canterbury
  Tales

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The Canterbury Tales1347-1400

• Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
• The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
• And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
• Of which vertu engendred is the flour
• Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
• Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
• The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
• Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
• And smale foweles maken melodye,
• That slepen al the nyght with open eye
• So priketh hem Nature in hir corages
• Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

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Slangcan you date these?

• Im down with that.
• Cool.
• Twenty-three skidoo.
• Awesome.
• Bad.
• Whatever.
• Dig?
• Groovy.
• Sweet.
• Hidey-ho!

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The Most Highly Conserved Words in All Languages
are

• I/me, you, two, who, language, name, eye, heart,
  tooth, no/not, fingernail/toenail, louse/nit,
  water, tear(drop), death, hand, night, blood,
  horn (animal), full, sun, ear, salt.

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An Example of Conservationand Loss

• ouche (Fr) from olca (Celtic) from oc
  (Indo-European)
• terre de bonne qualite --a good parcel of land
  near a dwelling for overflow gardening and
  keeping small or sick animals
• read about ouches on the class website in the
  article From Garden to Globe under Handouts

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Transmitting Identity across Generations

• transmitted in large part by language
• people let their language stand for much else in
  their culture
• language, dialect, accent, and speech are always
  political and have power
• think about the importance of
• speakers language choice among potentially
  usable languages
• the power of an accent to telegraph to the
  listener the speakers class, gender,
  ethnicity, etc

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Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• is that language predisposes people to see the
  world in a certain way and guides their thinking
  and behavior
• For example, sustainable in English
  characterizes a renewable resource like
  well-managed agricultural land or wind power
• First used by scholarly, then business community
• But sustentable from Fr. sustenter (support) is
  not understood.
• Instead durable, (hardy, lasting) or
  lentretien du paysage (land management) is used
• Used by agricultural community

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Faux Amis

• A foreign word that looks deceptively like a word
  in ones own language
• preservatif, je suis pleine examples
• Note gesture in photos

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Code Switchingan example at the dialectical level

• the smooth movement a person makes from one
  dialect to another in different circumstances
• includes grammar and syntax, word choice, tone,
  volume, gendered speech differences, etc
• roof (rooof ruf), tomato, orange
• NC dialectical differences Kerrville
  (Cur-ville) but Carr Mill and Kerr Drugs and
  Kerr Lake Carolinian pronounced Caroleenian

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Male/Female Communication

• Studies show that, in general,
• women ask questions, keep the conversation going
  with verbal and non-verbal responses, and protest
  using silence
• men interrupt more, challenge more, more direct
  declarations of fact and opinion

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Phoneme

• A minimally distinct sound in the context of a
  particular spoken language
• For example, in American English /p/ and /b/ are
  distinct phonemes because pat and bat are
  distinct however, the two different sounds of
  /t/ in tick and stick are not distinct in
  English, even though they are distinct in other
  languages such as Thai.

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Morpheme

• The smallest contrastive unit of grammar.
• A minimally distinctive unit of meaning in the
  context of a particular language.
• For example, cats consists of two morphemes cat
  and -s, the plural suffix. The -s is called a
  bound form while cat is a free (or stand alone)
  form. dogs also has the -s but it is pronounced
  /z/.

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Phonetics and Phonology

• Phonetics is the study of the production,
  transmission, and reception of speech sounds
• Phonology is the study of rules (grammar)

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Signals

• Signal a gesture with (culturally) self-evident
  meaning. Silent non-verbal communication by
  signals or signs
• Examples "He signaled his disapproval with a
  dismissive hand gesture" "The diner signaled the
  waiter to bring the bill"

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Symbols

• Symbol stands for something else. Nixons V
  and Bushs hook em are interesting non-verbal
  (but not cross-cultural!) examples, but all
  language is symbolic