Lecture 12: Religion, Ritual and Language

Question 1

wallace

Answer 1

belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces

Question 2

reese

Answer 2

bodies of people who gather together regularly for worship

Question 3

communitas

Answer 3

intense feeling of social solidarity

Question 4

animism

Answer 4

belief in spiritual beings

Question 5

polytheism

Answer 5

belief in multiple gods

Question 6

monotheism

Answer 6

belief in a single, all-powerful deity

Question 7

magic

Answer 7

supernatural techniques intended to accomplish specific aims.

Question 8

evidence early religious activity

Answer 8

neandertal burials and representations of shamans on European cave walls.

Question 9

evolving of religion through stages

Answer 9

1. animism
2. polytheism
3. monotheism

Question 10

ritual

Answer 10

formal—stylized, repetitive, stereotyped behaviour, often based on a liturgical order. Rituals convey information about participants and their culture. Rituals are social acts.

Question 11

totem

Answer 11

animal, plant, or geographic feature associated with specific social group, to which that totem is sacred or symbolically important. Members of each totemic group believed themselves to be descendants of their totem. Uses nature as a model for society.

Question 12

cosmology

Answer 12

system, often religious, for imagining and understanding the Universe. Totemic principles continue to demarcate groups.

Question 13

religious figures

Answer 13

All societies have religious figures

Question 14

shamans

Answer 14

part-time magic-religious practitioner

Question 15

usage of religion

Answer 15

Religion can be used to mobilize by instilling hatred or fear. Many religions have formal codes of ethics to prohibit or promote certain behaviours. Leaders have used religion to promote and justify their views and policies.

Question 16

religion and social order

Answer 16

Religion helps maintain social order –> religious leaders also may seek to alter or revitalize their society

Question 17

revitalization movements

Answer 17

social movements that occur in times of change.

Question 18

syncretisms

Answer 18

Cultural, especially religious, mixes, emerging when two or more cultural traditions come into contact. These are things like voodoos etc. Religious responses to expansion of the world capitalist economy.

Question 19

cargo cults

Answer 19

syncretic revitalization movements arising in colonial situations that attempt to achieve success magically by mimicking European behaviour and symbols

Question 20

trend religion now

Answer 20

the number of people giving no religious preference is growing rapidly in western societies. Sociological research suggests that levels of religiosity in western societies have not changed much in the past century.

Question 21

anti-modernism

Answer 21

rejecting modern in favour of what is perceived as earlier, purer, and better way of life, e.g. to salvage planet earth.

Question 22

secular rituals

Answer 22

Include formal, invariant, stereotyped, earnest, repetitive behaviour, and rites of passage taking place in nonreligious settings.

Question 23

linguistic diversity

Answer 23

Regional diversity, generational differences, gender differences, social diversity and cultural diversity

Question 24

language

Answer 24

primary means of communication (spoken or written)

Question 25

origins of language

Answer 25

A mutated gene, FOXP2

Question 26

kinesics

Answer 26

study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and facial expressions

Question 27

several levels of organization in the study of spoken language

Answer 27

1. phonology
2. morphology
3. lexicon
4. syntax

Question 28

phonology

Answer 28

study of speech sounds

Question 29

morphology

Answer 29

forms in which sounds combine to form morphemes

Question 30

lexicon

Answer 30

dictionary containing all morphemes and their meaning

Question 31

syntax

Answer 31

arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences

Question 32

speech sounds

Answer 32

1. phoneme
2. phonetics
3. phonemics

Question 33

phoneme

Answer 33

a sound contrast that makes a difference or differentiates meaning

Question 34

phonetics

Answer 34

the study of human speech sounds in general

Question 35

phonemics

Answer 35

studies only the significant sound contrasts of a given language

Question 36

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Answer 36

grammatical categories of different languages lead their speakers to think about things in particular ways

Question 37

Focal vocabulary

Answer 37

specialized sets of terms and distinctions that are important to certain groups

Question 38

Semantics

Answer 38

language’s meaning system

Question 39

Ethnosemantics

Answer 39

study of lexical (vocabulary) categories and contrasts

Question 40

Sociolinguistics

Answer 40

investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation, or language in its social context.

Question 41

Style shifts

Answer 41

varying speech in different contexts

Question 42

Diglossia

Answer 42

regular style shifts between “high” and “low” variants of same language

Question 43

differences language between men and women

Answer 43

Men and women have differences in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary as well as in body stances and movements that accompany speech. Traditional Japanese women tend to adopt artificially high voice, for politeness. Women’s speech tends to be more similar to standard dialect than is men’s speech.

Question 44

Honorifics

Answer 44

terms of respect; used to honour the recipients

Question 45

Historical linguistics

Answer 45

examines long-term variation of speech by studying protolanguages and daughter languages

Question 46

Daughter languages

Answer 46

languages that descend from same parent language that have been changing separately for hundreds or even thousands of years

Question 47

Protolanguage

Answer 47

original language from which daughter languages descend

Question 48

Subgroup

Answer 48

languages within a taxonomy of related languages that are most closely related