1. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Cultural Anthropology Chapter Four: Language and Communication

2. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Chapter Preview  What Is Language?  How Is Language Related to Culture?  How Did Language Begin?

3. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. The Nature of Language  Language  Means of transmitting information and sharing experiences  Spoken language  Sounds and the rules governing the way they are combined in meaningful ways  Linguistics  The modern scientific study of all aspects of language

4. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd.  Descriptive Linguistics  Historical Linguistics  Ethnolinguistics Three Different Approaches

5. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Descriptive Linguistics: The Sound and Shape of Language  Phonetics  Study of the production, transmission, and reception of speech sounds  About 6000 languages presently exist

6. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Language…a human universal  The human capacity to learn language is a universal phenomenon for humans (baring a context of an individual with a form of damage to the brain). Language appears to occur without much effort for young people and is easily learned as a youth.

7. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Universal Grammar is a theory in linguistics, usually credited to Noam Chomsky, proposing that the ability to learn grammar is hard-wired into the brain. It is sometimes known as 'mental grammar', and as opposed to other 'grammars', e.g. prescriptive, descriptive and pedagogical. The theory suggests that linguistic ability manifests itself without being taught, and that there are properties that all natural human languages share. It is a matter of observation and experimentation to determine precisely what abilities are innate and what properties are shared by all languages.linguisticsNoam Chomskygrammarhard-wired into the brainhuman languages

8. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Phonology  Sounds  Capability to make the sounds in any language  Each individual is unique  Phonemes  Smallest classes of sound that change meaning  Minimal-pair test

9. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Morphology  Morpheme  Smallest unit of sounds that carry a meaning. Morphemes function as the foundation of language and syntax, the arrangement of words and sentences to create meaning.  Words  Giraffes (two morphemes)  Giraffe (free morpheme)  -s (bound morpheme, “plural”)  Cats and dogs (each with two morphemes) cat + plural (-s) dog + plural (-z)

10. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Syntax and Grammar  Frame substitution  Method used to identify syntactic units of language  Syntax  Rules or principles of phrase and sentence making  Grammar  Morphology + Syntax

11. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. The Gesture-call System  Body language and extralinguistic noises At least 90% of emotional information in English is transmitted by “body language” and tone of voice

12. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Kinesics System of notating and analyzing postures, facial expressions, and body motions that convey messages

13. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Paralanguage  Voice qualities  Pitch  Lip control  Glottis control  Articulation control  Rhythm control  Resonance  Tempo  Vocalizations  Vocal characterizers  Vocal qualifiers  Vocal segregates

14. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Historical Linguistics: Linguistic Change  Linguistic divergence  Development of different languages from a single ancestral language  Language family  Group of languages ultimately descended from a single ancestral language English Germanic Proto-Indo-European Frisian German

15. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Glottochronology  Method of dating divergence in branches of language families  Core vocabulary 2000 years ago 1000 years ago today

16. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Ethnolinguistics: Language in its Cultural Setting Does language influence the perception of reality and cultural behaviour? Does language reflect reality in a culture? Or, is it both?

17. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Language and Thought  Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Benjamin Lee Whorf, Edward Sapir  Language predisposes people to see the world in a certain way which predisposes the speakers of the language to certain assumptions about the world.  Language reflects reality  “The Limits of my Language are the Limits of my World.” - Wittgenstein  Basically you are limited in what you can perceive by the structure of your language.

18. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Language and Gender North American society Men and Women use English differently Language reflects traditional gender inequality

19. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Social Dialects  Forms of a language  Reflecting regions or social classes  Sociolinguistics  Study of the structure and use of language as it relates to its social setting  Code switching  Process of changing from one level of language to another

20. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. Pidgin and Creole Languages Pidgin  A language that combines and simplifies elements (vocabulary, syntax, and grammar) Creole  A more complex pidgin language that has become the mother tongue of a significant population. French Creole, spoken in several regions of the Caribbean

21. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. The Origins of Language  Ape communication  Use gestures not speech  2 - 3 year old human ability  Human language  May have began as a gestural system  All present human languages are complex

22. Copyright © 2009 by Nelson Education Ltd. The Amazon Code: The Grammar of Happiness Daniel Everett Noam Chomsky