Anthropology Midterm Part 6

Question 1

For anthropologists, a couple of major questions are:

Answer 1

▪ How much does language affect the thought processes of people raised in different cultures?
▪ Is language, in some way, deterministic of thought and reality?

Question 2

cultural construction of reality

Answer 2

Cultural construction refers to the idea that humans actually create the reality of the worlds in which we exist

Question 3

essentialism/positivism

Answer 3

essentialism or positivism refers to the idea that there is a single reality out there, but we might perceive it differently.

Question 3

how do anthropologists look at the cultural construction of reality

Answer 3

by seeing how kinship, or family ties, are conceived of in different cultures. Below are diagrams showing several different kinship terminology systems:

Question 4

the Eskimo terminology system

Answer 4

an individual (the square in the diagram) has different terms for his or her biological mother and his or her aunt (mother’s sister). This means that, on some level at least, these relatives play different roles vis-à-vis the individual

Question 5

the Hawaiian terminology system

Answer 5

an individual refers to his or her biological mother and his or her aunts (in fact, both their mother’s sisters and the father’s sisters) by the same term – mother. This means that, at least on some level, these relatives play a similar role vis-à-vis the individual

Question 6

the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Answer 6

Instead of seeing language structure and cognition as separate, some anthropologists and linguists have argued that language has the power to shape the way people see the world.

Question 7

Edward Sapir

Answer 7

was a student of Boas, and was interested in developing Boas’ ideas about the connection of language and cognition.

Question 8

Benjamin Whorf

Answer 8

Sapir’s student also conducted research in this area, and together their body of work has come to be known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Question 9

Whorf argued that

Answer 9

the Hopi experience time differently than English speakers. The Hopi have a sense of time that is of continuous duration rather than broken up into discrete units, which is more common in European cultures. This is because Hopi language has a preference for aspect over tense.

Question 10

aspect

Answer 10

(grammatical components in verbs which situate the action in relation to the passage of time such as duration, repetition, habituality, etc.)

Question 11

tense

Answer 11

(which marks actions as having been completed in either the past, present, and future)

Question 12

Hopi language stresses

Answer 12

continuity, cyclicity, and intensity while English divides times into bounded and objectified chunks.

Question 13

The Sapir-Whorf has been criticized for being too deterministic…

Answer 13

meaning that some have interpreted it as stating that language will determine how people within a particular culture think. This would reduce patterns of thought and culture to the patterns of the grammar that supposedly caused them. But, if language determined thought in this way, it would be impossible to learn another language or to ever translate from one language to another.

Question 14

most linguistic anthropologists would agree that there is indeed some connection between language and cognition

Answer 14

just as there is some connection between culture and cognition. Language and culture, in fact, work in a dialectical way, with each having an influence on the other: culture shapes language, which in turn shapes the way people think, which then shapes culture.

Question 15

people speaking different languages do organize and even process their experiences differently

Answer 15

For example, one study found that the brain waves of bilingual children differed while listening to a story in English and while listening to the same story in Navaho. This shows that the brain was indeed working differently to some degree.

Question 16

In another study, it was shown that the very content of what is said by bilingual individuals varies according to which language is being spoken. Working with bilingual Japanese American women in San Francisco, the anthropologist Susan Ervin-Tripp found that the responses to the same question by the same women varied significantly depending on whether they were speaking English or Japanese.

Answer 16

For example, when asked in English to finish the statement “Real friends should…,” one respondent answered “be very frank.” When asked the same question in Japanese at a different time, she answered “help each other.” And when asked to complete the sentence “When my wishes conflict with my family…,” the answer in English was “I do what I want.” In Japanese it was “it is a time of great unhappiness.”
When speaking in English, then, the respondent was more apt to give a more typically “American” response, and when speaking in Japanese, she was more apt to give a typically “Japanese” response.

Question 17

Speaking a language is also a cultural act.

Answer 17

You are utilizing the world view of that culture, as well as its linguistic system. So it at least shows that culture and language are greatly intertwined with one another.

Question 18

color terminology

Answer 18

We know that languages break up the color spectrum at different points, but what does this mean about how they actually perceive colors, if it does at all?

Question 19

cultures think differently about color

Answer 19

This does not mean that cultures which have fewer or even no words for color do not actually perceive color differences. What it does show however, is that cultures think differently about color, giving additional credence to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Question 20

the work of Lera Boroditsky

Answer 20

focused extensively on the connection between language and thought and has expanded our understanding of this connection.

Question 21

Boroditsky’s findings include the following:

Answer 21

1. People who speak different, or multiple, languages think differently.
2. Many aspects of language shape thinking, such as the grammar, lexicon, and even orthography
   (writing form) of a language.
3. Language effects even low-level perceptual decisions such as color or time.
4. Learning new languages can change the way you think.
5. Sometimes, people think differently when speaking different languages.
6. In bilinguals, both languages are at least somewhat active, meaning that the languages you speak
   affect your thinking in general.
7. Therefore, learning a new language can even change the way you speak your native language.
8. Each language provides its own cognitive toolkit, which encapsulates the knowledge and worldview developed over thousands of years within a culture.

Question 22

Other linguists, such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, also look at the connection between the way we use language and how it shapes our thinking.

Answer 22

they focused on metaphors

Question 23

metaphors

Answer 23

figures of speech that make an implicit or implied comparison between two things that are unrelated but share some common characteristics. They argue that these concepts, which we learn through language, actually govern our thoughts, often in an unconscious way.

Question 24

the concept “argument is war”

Answer 24

an idea about argument that is continually reinforced through our use of metaphors such as:
“Your claims are indefensible.”
“His criticisms were right on target.” “He shot down all of my argument.”

Question 25

Metaphors, then, are a window onto to culturally-specific ways of thinking.

Answer 25

Not all cultures view argument, for example, in this same way, and would not, therefore, use these same metaphors to talk about argument.