Anthropology Midterm

Question 1

anthropology

Answer 1

the study of human beings, and especially the study of human variation around the world

Question 1

language

Answer 1

the most human and variable of all cultural traits.

Question 2

what are the four disciplines of anthropology?

Answer 2

archaeology, biological, cultural, linguistic.

Question 3

archaeology

Answer 3

The study of the lifeways of past cultures through excavation and
analysis of material remains

Question 4

biological anthropology

Answer 4

The study of how humans evolved as a species, our
biological traits and proclivities, and human physical variation around the world.

Question 5

cultural anthropology

Answer 5

the study of the beliefs and practices of living cultures and peoples.

Question 6

Linguistic Anthropology

Answer 6

The study of human communication systems around the world.

Question 7

The basis of the course

Answer 7

the study of language variation, why those variations exist, how those variations are used, and what those variations mean
when they are used in different contexts.

Question 8

when did the discipline of anthropology begin?

Answer 8

19th century

Question 9

Why do when people think of anthropology, they often think of the study of small-scale and indigenous cultures

Answer 9

Anthropologists studied subjects not yet
claimed by other disciplines. This left the non-literate indigenous peoples of
the world who were, at the time, considered “primitive” or “savage.”

Question 10

the inclusion of linguistic anthropology is…

Answer 10

uniquely American

Question 11

Where did linguistic anthropology have its beginnings in the US?

Answer 11

America!

Question 12

salvage anthropology

Answer 12

the documentation of indigenous life before it became extinct

Question 13

what happened when anthropology emerged in the early 1900s?

Answer 13

anthropologists in this country took on the task
of attempting to “salvage” the disappearing cultures of Native Americans

Question 14

how would anthropologists go about salvage anthropology?

Answer 14

merely collecting and cataloguing the remnants of those cultures as the US began to usurp more and
more of indigenous land.

Question 15

Who first carried out salvage anthropology missions?

Answer 15

non-anthropologists and
instead amateur ethnologists under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution beginning in 1846, and then later by the Bureau of American Ethnology founded in 1879.

Question 16

John Wesley Powell

Answer 16

The first director of the BAE for 23 years who was an explorer and adventurer.

Question 17

who is the person most identified with salvage anthropology?

Answer 17

Franz Boas

Question 18

Franz Boas

Answer 18

the founder of
anthropology as a discipline in the United States. He founded the first department of anthropology at a
university in this country – Columbia University – in 1897

Question 19

what was Boas trained in?

Answer 19

a physicist.

Question 20

what was Boas’ dissertation written on?

Answer 20

the optical properties of
water, focusing on the color of sea water among the Inuit

Question 21

what did boas learn about language and connection?

Answer 21

Boas investigated the different words used for the color of sea water by the Inuit and found that the Inuit have a number of different words, thereby showing that they are able to perceive slight
variations in color that other Americans could not.

Question 22

why was the discovery about the different names for water important?

Answer 22

Forthe Inuit, since their livelihood was based on fishing, they had become so attuned to the slight
gradations in sea water because it enabled them to detect schools of fish and other things under the
water.
cultural emphasis!

Question 23

what provides us with deep insight into culture?

Answer 23

Language.

Question 24

cultural emphasis

Answer 24

how cognition and perception can be altered by culture. Because of the cultural
emphasis, able to perceive things in a way that others cannot.

Question 25

What did Boas know about snow?

Answer 25

he actually stated that there were only 4 root words dealing with snow in the Inuit language.

Question 26

what are the two issues about the confusion between so many different words for snow?

Answer 26

1) there are many “Eskimo” languages, not
just a single language.
2) what we are looking at is indeed a question of cultural emphasis, as Boaz
discussed.

Question 27

what led to the publication of 4-volume series of books titled the Handbook of American Indian Languages?

Answer 27

he trained all of his students – the entire first
generation of American anthropologists including Margaret Mead, Alfred Kroeber, Edward Sapir,
Ruth Benedict, and others – to undertake a systematic study of the vocabulary and grammatical
structures of the remaining indigenous languages

Question 28

what was the first work of linguistic anthropology?

Answer 28

the Handbook of American Indian Languages.?

Question 29

What startled Boas about his student’s findings?

Answer 29

the differences in linguistic
structure between English and the wide array of Native American languages his students studied.

Question 30

how and why do human languages
differ so dramatically if all humans are endowed with the same neurological equipment –
the brain?

Answer 30

to see language as a key component of culture

Question 31

culture

Answer 31

learned set of ideas and behaviors that are acquired by people as members of a
society

Question 32

linguistic particularism or linguistic relativity

Answer 32

each language has to be analyzed in terms of its own particular and unique structure

Question 33

Cultural relativity

Answer 33

an understanding of a culture on its own terms

Question 34

Ethnocentrism

Answer 34

the judging of another culture and its practices based upon the belief that
one’s own culture is correct or right.

Question 35

Linguistic relativity

Answer 35

stresses the need to recognize that languages have
different ways of encoding information about the world, and thus different ways of experiencing the
world.

Question 36

fieldwork

Answer 36

an in-depth knowledge of other cultures by living within them for extended
periods of time.

Question 37

what is the main methodology of feildwork?

Answer 37

participant-observation, which requires
anthropologists to not just observe but also participate in the cultural practices they study

Question 38

how did boas respond to this “the idea that there was a correlation between a given language and race, or between culture and
race for that matter”

Answer 38

he argued against racism and race as a biological category that includes culture, language,
personality trait

Question 39

how did boas respond to this ““primitive” societies had primitive, or less complex languages”

Answer 39

all languages have structure. And, in fact, the languages of non-literate
cultures are often more complex in structure than Western European languages

Question 40

what is a dialect?

Answer 40

form of the language that is spoken in a particular part of the country or by a particular group of people