Week 2: Linguistic Anthropology

Question 1

Linguistic Anthropology

Answer 1

• The study of patterns of language use in social and cultural contexts
• Explains why we can learn new languages and translate from one language to another
• Highlights variety within and between languages

Question 2

Language and Adaption

Answer 2

• Culture, Language, and adaptation

Question 3

Adaptation

Answer 3

Refers to a natural process organisms undergo to achieve a beneficial adjustment to an available environment AND the results of that process

Question 4

Anthropological Linguistics

Answer 4

• Descriptive or Structural - - Linguistics
• Historical linguistics
• Relationship between - language and culture
• Socio-Linguistics
• Gender
• Discourse

Question 5

Openness

Answer 5

• Create new languages
• Create new words within a language
• Create new concepts
• Utter messages never heard before and be understood
• Words such as meme, woke, selfie, screenshot, party
• New words or words that have changed meaning

Question 6

Displacement

Answer 6

• Can talk about absent or non-existent objects
• Can talk about past or future events
• Non-human primates do not appear to be able to do this

Question 7

Arbitrariness

Answer 7

• The is no necessary link between a particular sound in a language and a particular meaning
  Ex: “Table” is no more necessary a string of sounds to describe what we mean by table than is “mesa”

Question 8

Duality of Patterning

Answer 8

• Phonology (Sounds)
• Morphology (units of meaning)
• Syntax (sentence)
• Semantics
• Pragmatics (use)

Question 9

Semanticity

Answer 9

• Linguistic signals are associated with aspects of the physical, cultural, and social world of speakers
• Some words have comitations

Question 10

Prevarication

Answer 10

• We can tell lies, write poetry, form scientific hypotheses
• Example: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”
• Using language to manipulate

Question 11

Structural or Descriptive Linguistics

Answer 11

• Phonetics
• Phonemics
• Morphemes
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Pragmatics

Question 12

Ethnolinguistics

Answer 12

• Linguistic relativity principle (Sapir and Whorf)
• Cultural models
• Code switching

Question 13

Linguistic relativity principle (Sapir and Whorf)

Answer 13

Explored the relationship between language and culture

Question 14

Cultural models

Answer 14

Shape the metaphors we use to think about the world

Question 15

Code switching

Answer 15

Moving between speech communities or language registers

Question 16

Non-verbal Communication

Answer 16

• Paralanguage - Voice qualities and vocalization
• Non-verbal communication - Space, movements, touch
• Marcel Mauss - habitus
• Etiquette, bowing, how you eat, sit, walk etc

Question 17

Signed Languages

Answer 17

• Deaf communities are distinct culture
• More than 200 signed languages in the world plus dialects

Question 18

Language Use in the Digital Age

Answer 18

• Electronically mediated communication
• Fingered speech
• Change in vocab and rules

Question 19

Whorf-Sapir hypothesis

Answer 19

Language shapes the way we see the world
Ex: Study of colour, gender specific vs. gender neutral language, basically says that the lingerie we speak shapes the worlds

Question 20

Language Loss

Answer 20

Genocide, Colonialism, Merging languages, Deliberate language suppression

Question 21

Language Revitalization

Answer 21

• Reject English loanwords
• Revitalizing at-risk languages through school
• Online and visibility

Question 22

Body ritual among the nacirema

Answer 22

Note the use of language