Exam 2

Question 1

why is language death and revitalization important? What do we loose?

Answer 1

Language represents the most creative, pervasive aspects of culture. It is a way to see different perspectives of the human mind. Without it we loose the opportunity to appreciate a different capacity of the human mind.

Question 2

Leonard Bloomfield (1933) definition of speech community

Answer 2

A group of people who use the same speech signals are a speech community.

Question 3

John Gumperz 1986

Answer 3

any human aggregate characterized by frequent and regular interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language use.

Question 4

John Gumperz later

Answer 4

a field of action where the distribution of linguistic variants is a reflection of social facts.

Question 5

William Labov on Speech communities

Answer 5

an attitudinal community that involves participation in a set of shared norms and shared patterns of variation or evaluation of linguistic behavior.

Question 6

S. Pit Corder on Speech communities

Answer 6

Is made up of people that regard themselves as speaking the same language it need not have no other defining attributes.

Question 7

Global Hip Hop Speech Community

Answer 7

Is interesting because is not linguisticly or physically located but bound by politics, culture, social norms and shared gestures and style over language use.

Question 8

Guru and MC Solar

Answer 8

You do not have to speak the same language to belong to the same speech community.

Question 9

What are language ideologies? Why should we study them? Why are they important as a concept?

Answer 9

They are beliefs and ideas about languages as used in the social world. They are important to study because they demonstrate how language use and communication practices change and evolve over time..

Question 10

Genetic vs Ideological model of language change

Answer 10

Silverstein. Genetic: language changes slowly, rate of mutation over time. mindsets change over time
Ideological: Changes not just because of slow migration but also due to people’s ideas of a language. Often rooted in who speaks it and who that group is.

Question 11

Michael Silverstein

Answer 11

Sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use. An example is the change of generic he.

Question 12

What is the relationship between anger and knowledge in Gapun?

Answer 12

Anger and knowledge are said to be dangerous when admitted.

Question 13

Sex vs gender

Answer 13

Gender (something done or performed) is socially constructed while sex is what someone has.

Question 14

The female deficit theory

Answer 14

Women must be trained to be assertive because they have a natural deficiency in their personality.

Question 15

The Dual cultural model

Answer 15

-Daniel Maltz and Ruth Borker: wanted to provide a cultural explanation in gendered speech. Tried comparing cross-ethnic communications to gendered different communicaitons. Problem was that ethnicity is not gender. Their argument was that men and women came from different linguistic sub-cultures

Question 16

What are some examples of the dual cultural model

Answer 16

positive versus delayed minimal responses in men and women.

Question 17

The Power Model

Answer 17

Nancy Henlie, Barrie Thorne, challenged Maltz and Borker.Argued that miscommunication results NOT JUST from different socialization patterns for girls and boys; these patterns must also be understood as indicative and constitutive of existing inequalities between women and men

Question 18

Gender Socialization

Answer 18

Imprinted from the moment of birth. Women in pink boys with trucks. Family’s gender norms, chores, etc.

Question 19

The myth of venus and mars

Answer 19

simple proposition that men and women communicate differently.

Question 20

What is the goal of the countless self help books?

Answer 20

To explain that gender-based communication problems are natural. The thoery is that women are the communicators. Solution is equal but separate mentality.

Question 21

Danny’s conversation

Answer 21

Debra Cameron about conversational analysis. Had her students go out and do this. Students sat down with three guys and recorded a conversation then said we have men’s speech. But she went back and said actually in any conversation you can find conversations where men are speaking like women and vice versus. People go into this with preconceived ideas and can find anything they went. Men gossip too women watch sports and drink.

Question 22

cooperation versus competition as formal features.

Answer 22

Cooperating but competing to speak. When you look at transcriptions can see overlaps and notice power.

Question 23

Judith Butler

Answer 23

Gender is not something we have in an unchanging way. It is something that we do. Constantly reaffirmed and publicly displayed by repeatedly performing particular acts that conform to cultural norms about femininity or masculinity

Question 24

Robin Lakoff

Answer 24

Female Deficit Theory

Question 25

Social preference

Answer 25

multilingual situation where you use the most accepted language

Question 26

Race

Answer 26

is a social construct not a biological reality. Best understood as a political construction

Question 27

William Labov on Race

Answer 27

AAVE African American Vencaular English. A dialect with phonological and grammar rules. Most rules are identical to standard English. He critiqued Jensen (said black people’s speech is degenerate and wrong) and cognitive models of difference.

Question 28

Roots of AAVE

Answer 28

1. Regional southern speech

2. Plantation creole. language of traders and enslaved Africans

Question 29

Structural Aspects of AAVE (5)

Answer 29

1. Reduction of consonant clusters at the end of the word like night becomes nigh
2. variants of r
3. construction and deletion of the cupula
4. complex verbal system with the copula
5. multiple negations.

Question 30

Ebonics Debate 1996

Answer 30

Dec. 18, 1996
-Oakland California declared Ebonics the official first language of African American students in that district.
-Jan. 1997
-The LSA adopts Ebonics as equal to “Black English” or AAE
-Professional linguists only start using “Ebonics” after the Oakland resolution.
-Using Ebonics to describe the African American Languages that mixed with European countries.
Oakland: “Ebonics is not a black dialect or any dialect of English”
Linguists: “Any suggestion that American slave descendants speak a language other than English is overstated, linguistically uniformed and frankly wrong”.
The message:
– African-American students are not language
minority students
– Title VII funding is for students who do not
speak English

Question 31

Ebonics, one or multiple languages?

Answer 31

There were numerous regional and national varieties