Ways Of Thinking & Communicating L Ways Of Thinking & Communicating   L.O To examine the origins of human language To examine the relationship between language and culture F.O: I can extract information from complex sources for a purpose.

Speech as far as we can tell, only humans can communicate complex ideas by using language. Would have had a powerful impact on the spread of ideas and the development of skills

The left side of human brains are involved in speech: The Broca’s area organises sound into meaningful sequences. The Wernicke’s area interprets the sounds we hear

Apes have less folded and less developed BA and WA.

How does language distinguish us from other animals?

Stanley Coren - Animal Communication: How to Speak Dog www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqGMCyoG4iA

What do we know about the origins of language What do we know about the origins of language? (see ‘Origins of Language’ handout)

The CULTURAL nature of language Language is NOT just about ‘carrying meaning’, ITS USE often also has social and cultural dimensions based on who is speaking and who is being spoken to, & under what context. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sc4SwamU7c ‘Gendered language use’ is on such example as found in a number of languages including Japanese. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ukSUmpA5KI

Honorific forms of language are used to express differences in social levels among speakers and are common in societies that maintain social inequality and hierarchy. Honorific forms can apply to the interaction between males and females, kin and non-kin, and higher -or lower-status individuals. For example, in many of the Pacific island societies such as Hawaii, a completely separate honorific vocabulary was used when addressing a person who was part of the royal family. People of lower rank were not allowed to use these forms of language among themselves.

In the Thai language, a number of different types of honorific pronouns are used in various social contexts. Factors such as age, social rank, gender, education, officialdom, and royal title influence which pronouns are used. For example, the first-person pronoun I for a male is phom, a polite form of address between equals. The pronoun for I shifts to kraphom if a male is addressing a higher-ranking government official or a Buddhist monk. It shifts to klaawkramom when a male is addressing a prince of the royal family. All together, there are thirteen different forms of the pronoun I.

Ways Of Thinking & Communicating L Ways Of Thinking & Communicating   L.O To critically examine the linguistic relativism of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis F.O: I can extract information from resources to construct an argument.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis So THINKING (in the above cases about social roles / status) shapes LANGUAGE, but can language shape how we think?? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df25r8pcuI8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAy-qkRP-vo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Si1LiJKts

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis The debate starts here: Since humans are all the same (i.e. we have the same biology  i.e. same DNA, organs, brain, etc), then it is safe to assume that our MINDS think in the same way (i.e. we PROCESS information from the world around us in the same way). That is to say, if we all have the same ‘hardware’, then it would all ‘work’ (i.e. process information) in the same way.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis HOWEVER, the Sapir Whorf hypothesis suggests otherwise; it argues that LANGUAGE (the mind’s ‘software’) is the primary force in how we think. This is LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM, the idea that how the mind thinks varies with language. Read the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis as applied to the case study of the ‘Hopi’ of North America; how does it seem to support this theory?

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis As you’re reading the Hopi case study , clearly identify & outline: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (in your own words!) The critiques of the theory. What ‘weak relativism’ means?

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis In its ‘strong’ form, argues that certain thoughts of an individual in one language cannot be understood by those who live in another language. The hypothesis states that the way people think is strongly affected by their native languages.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Linguistic relativity: Structural differences between languages are reflected in non-linguistic cognitive differences (i.e. the structure of the language itself effects how we think when using that language) E.g. the number and the type of the basic colour words of a language determine how we perceive a rainbow

Testing the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Distinctions in colour terminology – English: distinction between ‘blue’ and ‘green’ – Tarahumara: siy?name is blue and/or green Subjective distance between colours

Experiment - Stimuli and method Eight colour chips – in different shades of green and blue (at two different levels of brightness) Triad technique – Three chips at a time are shown; which of the 3 chips is most different from the other 2? – 56 possible triads

Experiment - Results B, C, D: The distance between B and C was exaggerated by the English speakers, but not (so much) by the Tarahumara speakers Chip B is the odd one according to the English speakers; Chip D is the odd one according to the Tarahumara speakers

Hopi language & time Do the Hopi have a concept of time? Whorf argued that Hopi has "no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions that refer directly to what we call 'time'", and concluded that the Hopi had "no general notion or intuition of time as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at equal rate, out of a future, through the present, into a past" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2aikgtskX0

Hopi language & time English: I am coming home; I came home, I will come home = moving through time, from past to present and ahead to future Hopi: I am home, I am not home = an occurrence of ‘everything that has ever been done’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2aikgtskX0

Hopi language & time According to Whorf, as a result, the Hopi have no emphasis on history, calendars and clocks; Can you think of any deeper philosophical implications about reality that this linguistic property might suggest? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2aikgtskX0

Weak linguistic relativism The ‘hard’ linguistic relativism of Sapir-Whorf is now seen as outdated and inaccurate; the Hopi language may not have features of language that clearly speak of doing things through time as we do, but later examination of the Hopi people shows that they DO have a clear cognitive concept of time that they have other ways of expressing Linguistic structure doesn’t constrain what people are capable of thinking, but only influences what they routinely think

Weak linguistic relativism Language does not limit ‘how we can think’, but the cultural context creates languages that reflect the conceptual priorities of that culture (i.e. what the natives ‘pay more attention to’) For a child growing up with that language, it can creates a matrix of social values / perceptions (e.g. ‘man’ in police/fireman may indicate to a child these as ‘male domains’)