CULTURE Ch. 4 Language & Communication

Question 1

Linguistic Anthopologist

Answer 1

Study what people ACTUALLY say rather than what they SHOULD say.

• They study language in SOCIAL and CULTURAL contexts.
• They also explore the role of language in COLONIZATION and GLOBALIZATION.
• They can RECONSTRUCT ANCIENT LANGUAGES that result in NEW DISCOVERIES about history.

Question 2

Sociolinguistics

Answer 2

Keywords: How Language Changes with Society

SOCIOLINGUISTICS is the study of rhe RELATIONSHIP between SOCIAL and LINGUISTIC VARIATION as well as the study of LANGUAGE in its SOCIAL CONTEXT

• Deals with DIGLOSSIA, STYLE SHIFTS, PRESTIGE DIALECTS, and BLACK ENGLISH VERNACULAR
• Asks: How different speakers use the same language? How do features of the language change with class, ethnicity, and gender?
• VARIATION WITHIN a LANGUAGE at a given time is Historical changes in progress as these changes have PRODUCED LARGE-SCALE LINGUISTIC CHANGE over the centuries.
• When new ways of speaking are associated with social factors, they are imitated and spread. This is HOW LANGUAGE CHANGES.

Question 3

Linguistic Facts

Answer 3

• Men are more likely to speak UNgrammaticaly than women.
• Language (Written or spoken) has existed for about 6,000 years.
• Language is based on ARBITRARY, LEARNED associations between words and the things they stand for.
• Human Language differs from other animal’s communication systems in that it allows us to discuss the PAST and the FUTURE.

Question 4

Call Systems (Primate Communication)

Answer 4

Though ONLY HUMANS SPEAK, other PRIMATES (monkeys and apes) have a NATURAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM named the CALL SYSTEM.

• These CALL SYSTEMS consist of a limited NUMBER of SOUNDS – CALLS – that are PRODUCED ONLY when PARTICULAR ENVIRONMENTAL STIMULI are encountered.
  
  • CALLS are uttered ONLY WHEN the stimulus is PRESENT.
• Ex: They have a CALL for FOOD and a CALL for DANGER, but they do NOT PUT CALLS TOGETHER to form anything like a sentance.

Question 5

Primate Communication (Nonhuman)

Answer 5

Nonhuman Primates can use CALL SYSTEMS, but nothing approaching the complexity of HUMAN LANGUAGE.

• Apes simply do NOT have the physical VOCAL TRACT necessary for SPEECH.
  
  • One APE (Vicki) was taught to speak 4 words “Mama, Papa, Up, and Cup”

APES HAVE, however, been TAUGHT SIGN LANGUAGE.

• Washo, a Chimpanzee who learned ASL (American Sign Language), REVOLUTIONIZED the discussion of the language-learning abilities of apes.
• Washoe learned more than 100 signs (representing English words) and was able to structure simple sentances like “You, me, go, out, Hurry”.
• Lucy was another Chimp to learn ASL.
  
  • Both Washo and Lucy began exhibiting human traits once they learned ASL, joking, swearing, telling lies, and trying to teach ASL to others.
• Kanzi, a Bonobo, learned to communicate with symbols (called LEXIGRAMS). When Kanzi was just 8, his trainer said he could communicate at the level of a human 2-year-old.
• Koko the Gorilla, however, outshines them all – by a lot. Koko’s vocabulary surpasses that of any chimp. She regularly employs fouf hundred ASL signs and has used about 700 at least once.

Question 6

Cultural Transmission

Answer 6

CULTURAL TRANSMISSION of a communcation system through LEARNING is a FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTE of LANGUAGE.

Question 7

Productivity

Answer 7

PRODUCTIVITY is the ABILITY to USE the RULES of one’s LANGUAGE to CREATE NEW EXPRESSIONS comprehensible to other speakers,

• This is a BASIC FEATURE of LANGUAGE.
• BOTH APES and HUMANS have this ability.
• Ex: Making up a word like “Baboonlet” (Using the suffix -let, designating the young of a species) to refer to a baboon infant would be understood by most English speakers.
• The Chimp, Lucy, did this – combining two signs creating the word “Drinkfruit” for watermelon.

Question 8

Displacement

Answer 8

DISPLACEMENT is a linguistic capacity that ALLOWS HUMANS to talk about things and events that are NOT PRESENT (In space or time).

• This does NOT EXIST in nonhuman CALL SYSTEMS.
• HOWEVER, Koko the gorilla has shown that NONhuman Primates DO HAVE The CAPACITY for DISPLACEMENT.

Question 9

Pidgins & Creole

Answer 9

PIDGINS is a MIXED LANGUAGE that develops to ease communication between memnbers of different cultures in contact.

• Forms in situations of ACCULTURATION.

Over Generations of use, the Pidgins grow in sophistication and new generations learn it as their NATIVE LANGUAGE, EVOLVING the simple Pidgin INTO a SOPHISTICATED CREOLE.

• So a CREOLE is the more sophicsticated EVOLUTION of the Pidgin with developed SYNTAX.

Question 10

Universal Grammar

Answer 10

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR (Noam Chomsky 1957) is the idea that the HUMAN BRAIN contains a LIMITED SET of RULES for ORGANIZING LANGUAGE so that all languages have a commons structural basis.

• The FACT that people can learn foreign languages and that words and ideas translate form one language to another SUPPORTS THAT POSITION.

Question 11

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Answer 11

The SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS says that DIFFERNET LANGUAGES actually PRODUCE DIFFFERENT WAYS of THINKING.

• GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES of particular languages lead their speakers to think about thing in different ways.
• Ex: English looks at things in terms of PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE. The HOPI language looks at things in terms of EXIST/DOESN’T EXIST and things that DON’T or DON’T YET (Which refers to both FUTURE events as well as imaginary/hypothetical events).
  
  • This makes HOPI speakers think about time and reality in different ways.
  • They don’t see the need to distinguish between present and past, both of which are real, just that one no longer EXISTS, while the other does.

A COUNTER-ARGUMENT to Sapir-Whorf is that CHANGES in CULTURE DRIVE CHANGES in LANGUAGE.

Question 12

Lexicon

Answer 12

LEXICON is simply the VOCABULARY – a language’s DICTIONARY.

• A Language’s Lexicon (or Vocabulary) is the part that changes the most – almost continuously in large societies.
• Names for things get simpler as they become more common Ex: Television becomes TV)

Question 13

Focal Vocabulary

Answer 13

FOCAL VOCABULARY is a SET of WORDS and DISTINCTIONS that are particularly IMPORTANT to CERTAIN GROUPS (Those with a particular focus of experience).

• Ex: Eskimos (The Inuit) have 5 words for snow – each showing a DISTINGCTION for a DIFFERENT TYPE of SNOW. English has only one word for snow (requiring further words to differentiate – fluffy, wet, heavy, icy, etc.). But for the inuit, differentiating between types of snow might mean life or death to their livelihood.

Question 14

Semantics

Answer 14

SEMANTICS refer to a language’s MEANING SYSTEM.

• Most words have different meanings, but some words have NUANCED differences in MEANING.
• Ex: “destination” and “last stop” technically mean the same thing, but students of semantics analyze their subtle shades of meaning.

Question 15

Diglossia and Style Shifts

Answer 15

Both DIGLOSSIA and STYLE SHIFTS of these refer to the SHIFT from one form of the language to another DEPENDING on the SOICIAL context.

• This often (but not always) shows up in the shift from FORMAL to INFORMAL language depending on our SOCIAL SETTING.

Question 16

“r” Pronunciation

Answer 16

Americans evaluate the SPEECH of low-status groups NEGATIVELY, calling the speech UNEDUCATED. This DESPITE THE FACT THAT the speech is completely LEGITIMATE as a funtioning language.

• This is particularly noticable in people who do NOT pronounce their R’s at the end of their words – common in the Boston area and the outter borooughs of NYC.
• “Do you like buttuh (butter) on ya (your) toast?” Sounds dopey and uneducated to most Americans.
• This isn’t because these ways of speadking are bad in themselves, but because they have come to symbolize LOW STATUS.
• In America, the pronunciation of the letter R is associated with PRESTIGE.
• Also looked down upon are the use of “Dem, dese, dere” for “Them, these, there”
• Because speech habits help our access to employment, “PROPER LANGUAGE” is a STRATEGIC RESOURCE.

Question 17

Prestige Dialect & Symbolic Domination

Answer 17

BOTH PRESTIGE DIALECTS and SYMBOLIC DOMINATION refer to the HIGHER STATUS of “PROPER SPEACH” over lesser perceived dialiects.

• Even people who speak a ‘lesser dialect’ – don’t say their R’s or say “dem, dose, dere” for “them, those, there” – see PROPER SPEECH as being BETTER than theirs
  
  • PROPER SPEECH is looked up to by EVERYONE.

Question 18

Black English Vernacular (BEV)

Answer 18

BLACK ENGLISH VERNACULAR (BEV) refers to the “relatively uniform dialect spoken by the majority of black youth in most parts of the US today, especially inner-city areas”

• BEV speakers tend NOT TO PRONOUNCE R’s in the MIDDLE of a multi-Syllable word.
  
  • Ex: Carol sounds like Cal and Paris sounds like Pas.
• They also leave -t and -d off the end of words.
  
  • Ex: Past and Passed sound like PASS. Told sounds like Toll, and Child sounds like Chile.
  • This seems so racist, but linguistically it’s not, I guess – I’m Piiiiickle Rick!

Question 19

Vernacular

Answer 19

VERNACULAR refers to ORDINAIRY, CASUAL SPEECH.

Question 20

Historical Linguistics

Answer 20

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS is the Branch of Linguistics that studies changes in LANGUAGES OVER TIME.

• Does this by studying DAUGHTER LANGUAGES, which are languages that descend form the same parent language and have EVOLVED separately.
• The ORIGINAL LANGUAGE from which they diverged is called the PROTOLANGUAGE.
• Compared to Sociolinguistics which studies differences in languages that CURRENTLY EXIST

Question 21

Daughter Languages

Answer 21

DAUGHTER LANGUAGES are languages that DESCEND form the SAME PARENT LANGUAGE and have EVOLVED separately.

• Subsequent divisions of these Daughter Languages are called “GRAND-DAUGHTER LANGUAGES”
• The ORIGINAL LANGUAGE from which they diverged is called the PROTOLANGUAGE.

Question 22

Protolanguage

Answer 22

PROTOLANGUAGE is the ORIGINAL LANGUAGE from which all Languages (DAUGHTER LANGUAGES) Evolve.

Question 23

Language Loss

Answer 23

The LOSS of a LANGAUGE is the loss of Centuries of thinking

• in 2007 it was estimated that an INDIGINOUS LANGUAGE was going EXTINCT EVERY TWO WEEKS
• Colonial Languages (Engliswh, Poruguese, French, Dutch, Russian) have expanded at the expense of INDIGINOUS ones.
  
  • Of approximately 7,000 remaining languages, about 20% are endangered.
• The worlds LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY has been cut in half over the past 500 years – meaning 50% of the languages that existed 500 years ago are now NOT SPOKEN by anyone.

Question 24

FOXP2 Gene

Answer 24

Humans have a DIFFERENT form of the FOXP2 gene than chimpanzees

• This gene appears to play a KEY ROLE in HUMAN SPEECH ABILITY.
• APPEARED in the HUMAN GENOME about 150,000 years ago.

Question 25

KINESICS and Nonverbal Communication

Answer 25

KINESICS is the STUDY of COMMUNICATION through BODY MOVEMENTS, stances, gestures, and expressions.

• NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION (through body movements) is a large part of our communication style.
  
  • These VARY ACROSS CULTURES.
  • Body movements COMMUNICATE SOCIAL DIFFERENCES.
    
    • EX: Brazilians require much LESS PERSONAL SPACE than AMERICANS and so they might stand uncomfotably close to you when speaking face-to-face, while themselves believing the spacing to be normal.