Culture/Psychology/Sociology/Linguistics Flashcards
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
- Physiological
- Safety
- Love and Belonging
- Esteem
- Self-Actualization
Hofstede’s Onion Model (Inside to Outside)
-Values
(can’t be directly observed)
-Practices
(way one is expected to behave)
(crosses rituals, heroes, symbols)
-Rituals
(collective activities)
-Heroes
(models for behaviour)
-Symbols
(visible gestures, pictures, objects that carry particular meaning)
4 Personality Types according to Hippocrates (Ancient Greek physician) and their related element/season/humour (body substance) and characteristics
Sanguine (blood, air, spring) - pleasure-seeking and sociable
Choleric (yellow bile, fire, summer) - ambitious and leader-like
Melancholic (black bile, earth, autumn) - analytical and literal
Phlegmatic (phlegm, water, winter) - relaxed and thoughtful
Universal Grammar
Theory of Noam Chomsky
-innate biological component of the language faculty
-predisposition our brains have for certain structures of language
eg. observation in support of this theory
-recursion
-pidgin used by slaves from different places to communicate on the plantations developed into new languages called creoles as their children added grammatical complexity)
Sapir’s belief & the stronger and weaker interpretations of the Sapir-Whorfian Hypothesis
Sapir believed language is essential to understanding one’s worldview and that difference in language implies a difference in social reality
-Linguistic Determinism
(thoughts determined by categories and language structures available in L1)
-Linguistic Relativism
(L1 influences perception/thought/behaviour)
eg. Inuit tribe has many terms for snow so perhaps had a more refined perception of snow
Remote learning in 1960s Italy
TV series, ‘Non é mai troppo tardi’ hosted by Alberto Manzi taught Italian to the general population, especially elderly and in rural areas, at a time when illiteracy was almost 10%
Characteristics of Individualism in West
Protestant Culture
-individual rights and freedoms
-economic freedom
-the rule of law
-self-reliance
-self-interest
-competition
-private ownership
Catholic Culture emphasises other values such as family and community interactions
Carl Jung’s Cognitive Functions and Quote
Main psychological functions: thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition
(led to Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI)
‘sensing establishes what is given, thinking enables us to recognise its meaning, feeling tells us its value, and finally intuition points to the possibilities of whence and whither that lie with the immediate facts’
DSM-5
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders –publication by the American Psychiatric Association
-5th edition revised in 2022
-handbook for healthcare professionals with standard criteria for diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders
Female Hysteria
-diagnosis originating in Ancient Greece and very popular in 1800s
-symptoms may have been only way of rebelling against prescriptive roles in 19th and early 20th century
-observed by Freud and Jung
WEIRD (acronym, purpose)
Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic
-highlights sampling bias present in studies conducted in cognitive science, behavioural economics and psychology
WEIRD v non-WEIRD culture (*be wary of dichotomy)
personal attributes, specialised abilities and dispositional virtues
(greater independence, less deference to authority, more guilt, stronger use of intentions in moral judgements, personal achievement)
(self-obsessed, overconfident, suicide-prone)
Vs
friendships, lineages and family alliances
(tradition, elder authority, general conformity)
Carl Jung - Attitudes and Related Pathology
internally focused/subjective (introverted) or externally focused/objective (extraverted) tendency
(Daniel Pink’s ambivert theory, combination as we exist on a bell curve)
Jung believed that pathology in introversion had a tendency towards schizophrenia and pathology in extroversion had a tendency towards manic or depressive episodes
MMR vaccine and Autism (anti-vax community)
Wakefield published article in Lancet in 1998 falsely claiming link between the vaccine for Measles, Mumps and Rubella and autism
Features of European Expansion after 1500
imperialism
extractive economic policies
war
genocide
slavery
Important Characteristics to compare pandemic response across Texas, Germany and East Asia
Individualism
Conformity/Tightness (ability to shame deviants into compliance)
Trust in Government
Obedience to Authority
Ethnocentrism definition and benefits of rejecting it
-evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture
-greater tolerance of difference, openness to foreigners and trust in strangers resulting in increased innovation and economic growth
EU and languages
-a politico-economic union of 27 member states
-24 official and working languages
Schengen Agreement
creates area of free movement of people and labour across EU
(minus Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland and Romania)
(plus non-EU: Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein)
Patois
a regional dialect of a language (especially French) considered substandard
eg. pidgins, creoles (Creole French in Carribean), dialects, vernacular
French language policy
-certain percentage of TV and songs given radio play must be in French to protect language
-advertisements and signs must be in French unless there’s no alternative
-patois (eg. Occitan, Breton, Alsacien) not supported by state
Occitan
language spoken in southern France, northern Spain, Monaco, Italy’s Occitan Valleys, Calabria
distantly related to Catalan
Spanish language on American Continent
17/35 countries are Spanish-speaking
Nigerian language policy
-English was made the official language after British colonisation ended in 1960 for cultural and linguistic unity
-English spoken as L1 of small minority of urban elite
-250 ethnic groups communicate in over 500 languages
-major languages are Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo
-corresponding three hegemonic ethnic groups: Hausa-Fulani(north), Yoruba(southwest), Igbo(southeast)
-intense ethnic polarisation and conflict
Spanish language policy
-Franco’s dictatorship (1939-75) aimed to make Spain one so language restricted to only Castilian Spanish
-now others like Catalan, Basque/Euskera (oldest living language in Europe), and Galician are protected
-inconclusive referendum in 2015 for Catalonian independence
Worldwide number of languages, variations, most native speakers v most spoken
about 7000
-Chinese has 13 variations
-Arabic has 20 variations
Most native speakers: Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese
Most spoken: English, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, French
Belgium language distribution
Dutch 59%, French 40%, German 1%
South Africa language
speaks English, Afrikaans, Xhosa (native language of Nelson Mandela) and Zulu among others
Linguistic relativism examples
Space
-no left/right in Kuuk Thaayorre Aboriginal language in Australia, instead position laid out in absolute space so speakers are always aware of orientation
Time
-English speakers think of time left to right
-Hebrew and Arabic speakers think of time right to left
-Kuuk Thaayorre speakers think of progression of time in line with sun East to West
Gender
-more marked it is, the more salient it is
-study of how much time it took children to recognise their own gender (results: Hebrew faster than English faster than Finnish, gender not marked in Finnish)
-representations in art etc. if objects corresponded to their gender in the language
Intentional vs Accidental Events
-English (don’t differentiate) vs Spanish and Japanese (differentiate and were more likely to forget accidental events)
Laswell’s Model of Communication
Who? (communicator)
Says what? (message)
In what channel? (medium)
To whom? (recipient)
With what effect? (effect)
Carl Jung
Swiss Psychiatrist/Psychoanalyst, 1875-1961
Richard Dawkins
British evolutionary biologist
Wrote The Selfish Gene & The God Delusion
Coined the word meme
Universalist View of Language
All humans share the same neurological configuration and similar basic cognitive patterns. Variation due to cultural differences is negligible
Pidgin
An alternative language developed to facilitate communication between speakers of two different languages
eg. international sign language
eg. West African pidgins such as Nigerian pidgin or Jamaican Maroon language, the result of slaves brought over, which evolved to become Jamaican Creole
Creole
A combination of 2 first languages which has become a new native tongue for a group of people
Interlanguages
Second languages held in common by speakers of different native tongues
eg. Modern Standard Arabic
Main difference between pidgins and creoles
Creole language must be a native tongue learned as a first language from infancy
Internet language
Certain images (memes) and words like lulz and pwn3d invoke a common understanding between people who don’t share a first language
May develop into an internet pidgin language in coming decades
Halley’s Comet
Short period comet with roughly 76 year orbit
Discovered by Edmond Halley in mid 18th century
Next visible as it passes Earth in 2061
Theobald Wolfe Tone
Irish revolutionary
One of the founding members of the United Irishmen
Regarded as the father of Irish Republicanism
Auguste Rodin
Late 19th century French sculptor
Most famous works:
1-The Thinker (bronze)
2-Monument to Balzac (in honour of French novelist Honoré de Balzac)
3-The Kiss (marble)
4-The Burghers of Calais (commemorates Calais’s surrender to the English during the Hundred Years’ War)
5-The Gates of Hell (bronze depiction of the Inferno, the first section of Dante’s Divine Comedy)
Catch-22
title of a novel by Joseph Heller (1961), in which the main character feigns madness in order to avoid dangerous combat missions in WWII, but his desire to avoid them is taken to prove his sanity
Simone de Beauvoir
20th-century French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist
Wrote:
The Second Sex
She Came To Stay
The Mandarins
Cinderella Effect
in evolutionary psychology, phenomenon of higher incidence of different forms of child abuse and mistreatment by stepparents than by biological parents
Cinderella Complex
women’s fear of independence – an unconscious desire to be taken care of by someone else
Italian Dialects
- Lombard dialect – Milan
- Venetian dialect/Veneto – Northern Italy (4 million)
-influenced by German/Greek, many foreign words
-spoken in Croatia, Slovenia, France, and Austria - Tuscan dialect (also spoken in northern Sardinia)
- Sicilian dialect (influenced by Arabic and Greek)
- Neapolitan dialect - Naples
-wide vocabulary
-dropped syllables - Piedmontese dialect
- Calabrese dialect
- Romanesco dialect
- Abruzzo dialect
Received Pronunciation (RP accent)
the standard and most prestigious form of spoken British English
Sir Francis Bacon
- English philosopher, statesman, scientist, and author
- proponent of the scientific method
-served as Lord Chancellor of England under King James I in early 17th century - career ended in disgrace
Margarita Pizza
invented in honour of the Queen of Italy, Margarita of Savoy, and the unification of Italy