Introduction to Langauge: 8 Flashcards
Know important terms, and how to connect them to the readings.
Why can’t language be limited and only understood through grammar?
Language cannot be limited to grammar and a verbal index as language is based on the contexts of culture such as . . .
a. History
b. Geographical contexts
c. Beliefs
d. Normalities
What are examples of language extending far beyond the contexts of grammar?
Agar: a german pronunciation which uses the words (Du, and Sie) to identify specific peoples.
Die: is for people that are close to you (colleagues, boyfriend, girlfriend, ect).
VS. Sie: more informal and is often used to refer to a stranger or someone a person is not close to.
What was Lippe-Greens thought experiment?
His experiment was done by asking his college students if all American people were the same (women were 5’9 and 140 pounds), and (men were 6’0 and 175 pounds)
How does Lippie-Greens experiment relate to language?
shows that we cannot limit language to just categories. Language is complex, and cannot be categorized, since society is has different ideologies which inform the structure of language.
shows that language and its differences are both tools which form identity, ground for discrimination, and power.
How is language related to culture, and thought?
- culture informs thought
- thought Is informed by language
- language is informed by culture
What do anthropologists question when looking at language?
- Language: Is it human? What does it mean to speak a language?
- Language and social interaction: how do we learn language, and how do we communicate it properly? How are interactions culturally and socially shaped?
- Language, power and ideologies: How is language embedded within cultural values and power? How do differences and inequalities get created, produced, or challenged within a language?
What is Historical lingustics?
It identifies the historical contexts which shape the geographical meaning of language.
Why are all languages similar?
All languages have similar verbal structure due to histroical colonization in which words were exchanged similarly from place to place.
Whats an example of similar languages?
English “father”
Vs.
German: Vater
Both mean the same thing, and even sound similar.
What is language?
A warehouse of vocabulary items, and a source of comparison to others.
Ex: how to say father in English and German).
What is the goal of language?
To analyse the prototype of language embedded within all languages.
Ferdinand De Saussure:
“The father of modern-day linguistics”
- He questioned what matters to speakers, not the historical contexts between social interactions and speakers. But, the systems and structure of the languages they speak now.i
Language is like a . . .
It is synchronic/diachronic, and symbolic objects.
Sychronic:
Now, how is the language spoken now and under what contexts?
Diachronic:
How did language work throughout history, and under what contexts.
Symbolic objects:
that only means terms of what they do and their position in the game (conversation)
- Arbitrary, the nature of linguistic sign.
What did Saussure refer to language as a game of chess?
It is like chess because what you or the other person says is depending upon the topic/move within the conversation.
Why was Saussure a structuralist?
- Only interested in the structure of language not its actual usage.
- Speech is the “messy stuff” language is cleaned through a set of rules that makes it grammatical and understandable
What is Langue (Language) VS. Parole (speech)?
Language is not complete from the speaker but also from the collectivity of universal language
How are sounds made (according to Saussure)
Argue that you need to figure out the system which underlines the messiness of language (the structure, and rules which allow people to effectively communicate)
Why are words symbolic (arbitrary):
a. Their relation to other words (ex: prototype of all languages)
b. Their position within a sentence
Meaning is derived from a words position in the structure of language (its original meaning)
What does language mean, and how does it operate?
According to saussure it is a “circle” around language (threw speech out in favour of language)
Symbols have arbitrary meanings: this won’t get us to culture. . .
What is indexicality:
a concept which helps pinpoint the ways in which language and social relations intersect
Introduced by Charles S.Pierce (complicates Sassures perception and ideologies of knowledge)
What is the definition of semiotics:
The study of signs
What is Semiosis?
It formulates the meaning of words - What do words signify?
- Tripartite theory of sign (a sign or the sign “vehicle” (the object it refers to/the interpretant)
What is an Icon:
A sign that refers to its object by means of similarity . . .
- Images. Maps, and diagrams
Words like “meow”, “Chop, Chop, Chop” (ootomotapia)
Note: even icons can be conventiona
What is an index:
It “points to something”
- A sign that refers to an object “because its dynamical (including spatial) connection both with the individual object, on the one hand, and with the sense and memory of the person for whom it serves as a sign, on the other hand”
(Peirce 1955, 107)
* Indexicality: understanding how linguistic forms point to aspects of social or cultural context and identities
What is a Symbol:
A sign that refers to its object by virtue of a convection or have (most words are in this group)
Ex: Starbucks
