Chapter 9 - Language and Culture Flashcards
Define Culture
- Whatever knowledge a person must have to function in a particular society
- “making sense of the world”
What is high culture?
appreciation of music, art theatre
What is cultural knowledge
- Socially acquired
- Not hereditary
- Required for daily living
People belonging to the same culture will…?
- Interpret the world in the same ways
- Express themselves in ways understood and accepted by each other
What are the 4 possible types of relationships?
- L causes worldview
- Language may predispose toward a particular worldview - Worldview is reflected in the Language
- Culture does not determine the structure of the language it simply reflects it - No relationship (definitely not right)
- Both affect each other
What did Sapir and Whorf both advocate
That the Structure of a L determines the worldview
What was whorf’s example of how L determines worldview?
- People continued to smoke around gas barrels that were “empty”
• Because “empty” is interpreted this as no content, but there was still explosive vapor
What does Sapir claim
- Language and culture are Inextricably related and one can’t be understood without the other
- WE are at the mercy of our L
- The real world is unconsciously built up on our language
- L predisposes worldview
How did Whorf build on Sapir’s view? What were his claims?
• Deterministic relationship between Language and Culture
- L shapes ideas and guides mental activity and impressions
- everything we experience is filtered through our L
- organize impressions through our mental linguistic system
- Structure determines speakers worldview
- we are constrained by our L
What is Whorf’s New principle of reality
All observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe
What did fishmen observe?
- it is easier to talk about things in languages that have vocabulary on the topic
If a canadian child and an Inuit child see snow do they perceive it differently?
Yes according to Sapir Whorf because the inuit child will have to look for different characteristics of it.
why do children in asian countries do better in math
their counting system is easier to understand
What is the strongest version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
- grammatical categories not only help the users to perceive the world but also limit such perception
- You perceive what your language allows you to perceive
- Your language controls your worldview
- we have to make certain observations according to our L
The language affects a person’s relationship to the universe in several ways:
-Vocab:
if you have words to describe something you will perceive it different than a language that doesn’t have that description
Grammar: Distinctions in gender, time, number and Animacy
Who were the Hopi?
- Concept of time is fundamentally different from that of western cultures
- analysis of events in terms of dynamic motion
- They could not understand bus schedules
what did whorf conclude about the Hopi
- Think in terms of cycles of events & sets of processes
- NOT in units of time
- objects/events are not countable
- validity is important - how the speaker came to know this information
Who were the Matses
- live in South america (cat people)
- most secluded culture (1st contact with western society in 1960)
- Their L requires them to specify exactly how they came to know about the info they speak about
- Incorrect evidentiality” = a lie
• E.g. “how many wives do you have” (can’t say he has 2 unless he can see them)– “there were two last time I checked”
How can L. structure affect our observation
- Gender in European Ls (neighbour)
- English you have to specify the tense more specifically
What are the 2 forms of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis
1) Linguistic determinism (the strong form) -people think differnt b/c of L
2) Linguistic relativity (the weaker claim) - L influences perception
What was the study cunducted by Lucy to test the sapir Whorf hypothesis?
- studied Grammatical number in English and in Yucatec Maya
- English: count and mass nouns
- Yucatec: plural for animate nouns - optional
What has the hypothesis of Lucy’s study?
Hypothesis
1) E.speaker – more conscious of the numbers of objects they see
2) E. speakers should perceive more objects as countable
What was the layout of Lucy’s experiment
- speaker sof two Ls shown a scene from normal village life
Results
- Similar responses for words that overlapped in both Ls
- differences where grammars were maximally different
- Yacatec were more consistent with animate counting
