Language and Communication

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Language and Communication

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

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Mini-Exam 1 on April 9, 2014

• True/False
• Multiple-choice
• Short answer

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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

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TRUE/FALSE

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

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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 _________ ________

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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

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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)

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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)

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• 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

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Nonverbal forms of communication
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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?

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Chinese Sign Language
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Seeing Voices
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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
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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

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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)

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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

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The arbitrary relationship between the signifier
and the signified

• RED and GREEN
• Traffic light (stop / go)
• Christmas
• Fashion statement
• Colors of a European Flag

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The arbitrary relationship between the signifier
and the signified

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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)

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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.

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Prosperous EIGHT 8
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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.

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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

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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.

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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).

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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

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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.

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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).

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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

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New Words in English

• Affluenza (affluence influenza)
• App
• Bromance (brother romance)
• Geek
• Netizen (Net Citizen)
• Selfie

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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.

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