Language and Communication

LANGUAGE, THOUGHT, AND CULTURE HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS Chapter Outline LANGUAGE, THOUGHT, AND CULTURE The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Focal Vocabulary Meaning WHAT IS LANGUAGE? NONHUMAN PRIMATE COMMUNICATION Call systems Sign Language Origin of Language SOCIOLINGUISTICS Linguistic Diversity Gender Speech Contrasts Language and Status Position Stratification Black English Vernacular (BEV) NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE Speech Sounds HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS Language Loss

What is Language? Maybe spoken or written Primary means of communication Transmitted through learning (enculturation) Always changing Linguistic anthropologist explore the role of language in colonization and the expansion of world economy

Nonhuman Primate Communication Call systems - communication systems of nonhuman primates Call systems are only produced by environmental stimuli Sign Language: Apes have been taught to communicate with human through sign language Washoe was the first chimp to learn ASL, at age two she began to construct rudimentary sentences

Nonhuman Primate Communication Cultural transmission – transmission through learning, basic to language Washoe and other chimps have tried to teach ASL to other animals including their own offspring Penny Patterson began to work with Gorillas at Stanford University. Patterson raised and trained Koko, a female gorilla, whom can regularly employ 400 ASL signs.

Nonhuman Primate Communication The Origin of Language: A mutation of gene FOXP2, explains why humans can speak and chimps do not. When comparing human and chimp genomes, the mutation of FOXP2 appeared around in man around 150,000 years ago. HUMAN LANGUAGE PRIMATE CALL SYSTEMS Capacity to speak of past events Are stimuli-dependent Can combine expressions Calls can not be combines Language can be culturally transmitted Little variation among groups of the same species

Nonverbal Communication Facial expressions, bodily stances, gestures and movements can convey information and are an important part of human communication Kinesics - study of communication through body movement and facial expressions Linguists pay attention not only to what is said but how it is said, and to features besides language itself that convey meaning.

The Structure of language Speech sounds Phoneme – smallest sound contrast that distinguishes meaning Phonemes are found by comparing minimal pairs - words that resemble each other in all but one sound. (EX: pit/bit)

Language, Thought, & Culture The Sapir-Whorft Hypothesis Edward Sarpir and student Benjamin Lee Whorft: Argued that grammatical categories of different languages lead their speakers to think about things in particular ways Focal Vocabulary – set words describing particular domains (foci) of experience Lexicon – is a language’s dictionary, its set of names for things, events, and ideas. Lexicon influences perception. Language, culture and thought are interrelated. In opposition to Sapir-Whorft Hypothesis, it is more reasonable to say changes in culture produce change in language and thought than the reverse.

Language, Thought, & Culture Ethnosemantics – study of lexical categories and contrasts. Semantics – a language’s meaning system. Meaning Speakers of particular language use sets of terms to organized, or categorize, their experiences and perceptions. Linguistics terms and contrasts encode differences in meaning that people perceive.

Sociolinguistics Linguistic Diversity No language is a uniform system in which everyone talks just like everyone else. The field sociolinguistics investigates relationships between social and linguistics variation. Linguistic Diversity Everyone's speech varies in different contexts Style shifts – varying one’s speech in different social contexts Diglossia – Language with “high” (formal) and low (informal, familial) dialects

Sociolinguistics Gender Speech Contrasts Just as social situations influence our speech, so do geographic, cultural, and socioeconomic differences. Our tendency to think of particular dialects as cruder or more sophisticated than others is a social judgment. Gender Speech Contrasts Comparing men and women, there are differences in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary as well in the body stances and movements that accompany speech

Sociolinguistics Language and Status Position Multiple negation (I don’t want none) according to gender and class (in percentages) Language and Status Position Honorifics – terms of respect; used to honor people Certain terms can imply a status deference between speaker and to whom is being referred. UMC LMC UWC LWC Male 6.3 32.4 40.0 90.1 Female 0.0 1.4 35.6 58.9

Sociolinguistics Stratification Black English Vernacular (BEV) Speech in study in context of extralinguistic forces: social, political, and economic. The speech of low status groups are view negatively not because the speech itself is wrong but because they symbolize low status Black English Vernacular (BEV) Dialect spoken by majority of black youth in most parts of US Phonology and syntax are similar to southern dialects SE SE Contraction BEV You are tired You’re tired You tired He is tired He’s tired He tired We are tired We’re tired We tired They are tired They’re tired They tired

Historical Linguistics Daughter Languages – languages sharing a common parent language Protolanguage – Language ancestral to several daughter languages Languages evolves, varies and divides into subgroups. Dialects of a language become distinct daughter languages. Evolving speech within ancestral homeland should be considered a daughter language. Close relationships between languages does not necessarily mean that their speakers closely related biologically or culturally. Language Loss One aspect of linguistic history is language loss. When languages disappear, cultural diversity is reduced as well.