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Language and Communication

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Title: Language and Communication


1
Language and Communication
  • Anthropological / sociological interest in
    language
  • How is Language Related to Culture?

2
Mini-Exam 1 on April 9, 2014
  • True/False
  • Multiple-choice
  • Short answer

3
Multiple Choice
  • Culture
  • is predominantly transferred through genes
  • is more developed in Shanghai than in Tibet
  • is being destroyed by globalization
  • None of the above

4
TRUE/FALSE
  • Research in cultural anthropology is mainly based
    on ethnographic fieldwork, although other methods
    may be used that do not involve fieldwork.

5
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 _________ ________

6
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. Gores wooden
    body language

7
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)

8
Properties of Human Language ???????
  • 13 design features (Charles Hockett 1960)
  • Multimedia potential
  • - Linguistic messages transmitted through a
    variety of media (writing techniques ASL Morse
    code, Internet, etc.)
  • Discreteness
  • Combine discrete units according to rules.
  • Arbitrariness (the relationship between sounds
    and meanings of words)
  • Ex I love you (Te amo Je tai me)

9
  • Productivity
  • Speakers ability to create totally novel
    sentences and a listeners ability to comprehend
    them
  • 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

10
Nonverbal forms of communication
11
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?

12
Chinese Sign Language
13
Seeing Voices
14
What Really Happens
Communication Methods 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(??) Natural Sign Language ????
CSL (Chinese Sign Language) 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
15
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

16
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)

17
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

18
The arbitrary relationship between the signifier
and the signified
  • RED and GREEN
  • Traffic light (stop / go)
  • Christmas
  • Fashion statement
  • Colors of a European Flag

19


The arbitrary relationship between the signifier
and the signified

20
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 peoples use of language)

21
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

22
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)

23
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

24
Color Terms Counting Words
  • 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
  • English terminologies 11
  • African and Latin American terminologies 2, 3,
    or 4 basic color terms

25
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.

26
Prosperous EIGHT 8
27
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28
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 peoples
    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.

29
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

30
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.

31
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).

32
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

33
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.

34
Language and Power
  • 1) "A dialect is a language with a losing army.
  • Ex. Shanghainese Cantonese dialects
  • 2) 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 Israels first language (vs. Yiddish).

35
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

36
New Words in English
  • Affluenza (affluence influenza)
  • App
  • Bromance (brother romance)
  • Geek
  • Netizen (Net Citizen)
  • Selfie

37
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 Kings
  • skill at code switching
  • between Standard English
  • Afro-american vernacular
  • English.

38
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39
Ex. The complexity of Navajo language and its use
as code by U.S. Marines in the Pacific during
WWII.
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