Midterm exam

Question 1

Denotational theory of language

Answer 1

language is just a collection of labels, language is unable to change the world just describe it.

Question 2

Performativity – constative v. performative

Answer 2

Performative- Language can actually change the word, instead of just describing it (constative- describes situations)

Question 3

Social meaning

Answer 3

aspects of a person’s speech that identify traits of the person’s social identity.
contextual meanings ascribed to words, for example “wicked” to describe something cool or something evil

Question 4

semantic meaning-

Answer 4

the direct interpretation of words. the dictionary meaning

Question 5

Structuralism

Answer 5

-language is a system of signs that enables communication between individuals.
-each word in a language derives it’s meaning from other words in the language
Ex. “Red” derives its meaning from other colors
-theory by Ferdinand de Saussure.
“Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the meaning of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of others”

Question 6

Linguistic diversity

Answer 6

The major differences between languages in terms of grammar, labels, communication etc

Question 7

Linguistic relativity/the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Answer 7

A hypothesis by Sapir-Whorf that suggested that the way we speak influence the way that we view and partition reality
-Our common sense is derived from natural proceedings of the groves laid down by the language we speak instead of the objective nature of the world

-Weak Language relativity
Language can influence the way you think
-Strong Language: Language determines how people think

Question 8

Orderly heterogeneity (in sound change)

Answer 8

the idea that language varies through measurable, organized ways, both through context and through time.
-social factors can influence language variation over time as they dictate who dictates innovative sound changes and how quickly they spread

Question 9

Linguistic insecurity

Answer 9

The theory that people attempt to mimmic the pronounciation of words from social identities they want to be a part of (higher class)

Question 10

Hypercorrection

Answer 10

the idea that low middle class people may over exaggerate their pronounciation of words in their attempt to mimmic higher class speakers
-When a grammatical rule is applied to the incorrect context
-indicator of language variation

Question 11

Doing “being ordinary”

Answer 11

a term by Harvey Sacks, suggesting that people actively put on different personas in order to appear socially acceptable in different situations
-we are able to interact with strangers because we actively put on recognizable personas depending on the situations we are in

Question 12

Adjacency pairs

Answer 12

A way of quantifying conversations. the request is the first part of the pair while the response is the second part. Adjacency pairs may be nested.
-Two utterances by two speakers that are reliant on one another, examples are: question-answer, compliment-thanks, or request-acceptance/denial

Question 13

Interaction rituals

Answer 13

The idea that virtually all of our interactions are based of predefined rules depending on the social identities of the participants, culture, and context.

Question 14

What happens during the Enlightenment that changes the way that people think about language?

Answer 14

The rise of nationalism in Europe made language feel less of a tool and more of a cultural identity marker

Question 15

What theory of language is J.L. Austin known for?

Answer 15

The Speech Act Theory

Question 16

Why does Austin get rid of the constative/performative distinction?

Answer 16

Austin believed that all language is performative and the idea of the constative utterance is incorrect

Question 17

What theory of language is Ferdinand de Saussure known for?

Answer 17

The theory of structuralism

Question 18

How does the structuralist theory of language differ from the denotational theory of language?

Answer 18

The denotational points to words referring to a physical thing in the word, whereas structuralism views words as a label for mental representations

Question 19

Do languages just vary in terms of what words they have for things? What other parts of a language show variation besides just the vocabulary/lexicon?

Answer 19

No, aside from vocabulary/lexicon, word order (syntax), way sounds are produced (phonetics), and phonology (how the mind groups the sounds in the language)

Question 20

Who was Franz Boas and how was his idea of culture different from the concept of civilization?

Answer 20

Franz Boas was a German-American anthropologist and the father of modern American anthropology, his idea was that culture is something to be understood and appreciate as a means unto itself, as opposed to in respect to an arbitrary metric of Civilization

Question 21

What theory of language did Benjamin Lee Whorf become known for? How is it related to the concept of culture?

Answer 21

The theory of Linguistic Relativity/The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is related to culture because since it states that language shapes thought, it must also have a hand in shaping culture.

Question 22

Does your language determine the way you think? Does your language affect the way you think?

Answer 22

While language isn’t the determiner of the way we think, it does have a profound effect on the way we think.

Question 23

What organizes sound-change-in-progress for Labov?

Answer 23

For Labov, organizes sound-change-in-progress is socioeconomic class

Question 24

Why do lower middle-class people engage in what Labov calls hyper-correction?

Answer 24

Because lower middle class people tend to have a higher degree of linguistic insecurity since they are aware of a “higher class” above them

Question 25

What is the difference between Labov’s and Eckert’s models of how sound change is organized? How is affiliation different from class?

Answer 25

Labov: you are always expressing your class position as a speaker
Eckert: class position is not always the determiner. Especially for adolescents who are experimenting with or negotiating different identities and futures, affiliation and aspiration - who you want to associate with and who you want to become - can be the key to understand how people speak and how sound changes move through different parts of society
Basically Labov focuses only on class while Eckert focuses on affiliation and class

Question 26

What is the difference between being ordinary and doing being ordinary? Why does Sack’s idea of doing being ordinary make everyday conversation an interesting thing to study?

Answer 26

Being ordinary is a state of being while doing being ordinary is a performative state.
This makes everyday conversation an interesting thing to study because we are able to engage with other people who we don’t know on an everyday basis because we are in a constant process of actively presenting recognizable kinds of personas in recognizable kinds of interactions.

Question 27

How do adjacency pairs provide structure to interactions?

Answer 27

Adjacency pairs demarcate conversations into “speaker” and “hearer” sections. This allows conversations to generally be able to be structured into a series of potentially nested adjacency pairs.

Question 28

Why is studying adjacency pairs not enough to understand the structure of interactions?

Answer 28

The nature of the response, especially if the response is dispreferred, can be very complex and unpredictable.
When engaging in conversation, we usually do not attempt to structure them as adjacency pairs. Instead, we look at creating connections to what was previously said and forming context for future speech.

Question 29

Marriages, baptisms, promises – why are these examples of performatives?

Answer 29

These are examples of performatives because they “change the world” unlike a constative which is a T/F statement, performatives enact something such as “I declare you wife and husband” but they must meet felicitous conditions.

Question 30

‘Dude’ – charts – why don’t the self-reports and observations about use match up?

Answer 30

People often do not pay that close attention to their use of words, they often are not aware of how or why they use dude

Question 31

Color terms in a language – why is this a good example of the structuralist theory of language?

Answer 31

Structuralist theory says that language is a system of signs governed by rules and conventions that shape how we communicate and shape the world around us. Color terms is a good example of this because they illustrate how language is structured systematically and how the meanings of words are determined by their relationship to other words within a system

Question 32

Navajo “great chain of being” – how are cultural categories encoded in language?

Answer 32

Human > bear,bull > cat,turkey > gopher > ants
This shows how order is important because different languages associate different things with their culture, like how in the Great Chain of Being, order plays a big role by association. ??????

Question 33

Cartoon diagrams of different sentences: “How to push lumpy stuff into the fire in ..1..in different ways?

Answer 33

Because there’s different categories of words → there’s only one word in the example for lumpy (which has different words in English) → caq is their one word which can represent a frog, lumpy object, or lumpy cow drop

Question 34

“Fourth floor”/Labov’s department store experiment – why did he design his experiment the way he did? Why couldn’t he just tell people he was trying to find out about sound change?

Answer 34

He designed his experiment the way he did because it would affect how the people responded and would impact linguistic insecurity. EX: if he asked a stocker what floor xxx was but specified what the reasoning was, they may respond differently to prevent them looking lower class

Question 35

Fourth floor – charts – how is class reflected in department store worker speech?

Answer 35

Class is reflected by asking the different employees (hierarchy of mall workers via income) to see how they would respond
Floorwalkers, sales, stockboys
Typically stock boys did not have an R but floorwalkers had an R

Question 36

Stopped (th) v. use of /r/ - why is hyper-correction only seen in one of these charts?

Answer 36

The use of /r/ is a prestige marker and the stopped (th) is not, so when people are hypercorrection , they are using /r/

Question 37

Jocks v. Burnouts – how does this example challenge Labov’s theory of sound change?

Answer 37

Because group affiliation also plays a role alongside class
Burnouts would affiliate with people working already instead of being in school → leading them to drop out and go work
Jocks would affiliate with people who are academically driven and desire to go to college → go to college, then enter workforce

Question 38

The many responses to “do you have the time?” – why does the endless possible list of responses show that adjacency pairs may not be enough to understand the structure of interactions?

Answer 38

Because there are so many different types of responses, you can answer a question with a question ; therefore adjacency pairs may not be enough
Q - Q - Q/A - A - A/Q

Question 39

Yemeni greeting rituals (Caton) – how do the two different rituals of greeting help to create two different kinds of Yemeni persons (pious and honorable)?

Answer 39

Pious: evoke religious intent on wishing greeting
Honorable: the response formula does not intensify the illocutionary force of the initiating greeting