Transcript Document

Mirror for Humanity
Conrad Phillip Kottak
Fifth Edition
Chapter 5
Language and Communication
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
Overview
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Nonverbal communication
Structure of language
Language, thought, and culture
Sociolinguistics
Historical linguistics
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Language
– Humans’ primary means of communication
– Transmitted through learning – part of
enculturation
– Based on arbitrary, learned associations between
words and the things they stand for (symbols)
– Only humans have the linguistic capacity to
discuss the past and future, and to share their
experiences with—and benefit from the
experiences of—others
– Anthropologists study language in its
social/cultural context
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Nonverbal communication
– Kinesics – study of communication through body
movements, stances, gestures, and facial
expressions
– Gestures, facial expressions, and body stances
are shaped by culture
– Prevalence and meaning of body movements,
facial expressions, and gestures vary crossculturally
– Body movements communicate social differences
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Structure of language
– Descriptive linguistics – scientific study of a
spoken language
• Phonology – study of speech sounds; considers which
sounds are present and significant in a given language
• Morphology – study of the forms in which sounds
combine to form morphemes (words and their
meaningful parts)
• Lexicon – a dictionary containing all of a language’s
morphemes and their meanings
• Syntax – arrangement and order of words in phrases
and sentences
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Structure of language
– Speech Sounds
• Phoneme – a sound contrast that makes a difference,
that differentiates meaning
• Number of phonemes varies from language to
language, as well as between dialects of a given
language
• Phonetics – study of speech sounds in general, what
people actually say in various languages
• Phonemics – studies only the significant sound
contrasts (phonemes) of a given language
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Language, thought, and culture
– Noam Chomsky:
• Human brain contains a limited set of rules for
organizing language – universal grammar
• All languages have a common structural basis
• All humans have similar linguistic abilities and thought
processes
• Supporting evidence for Chomsky’s arguments:
– People can learn foreign languages
– Words and ideas translate from one language to another
– All creole languages share certain features, suggesting
such languages are based on universal grammar
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Language, thought, and culture
– Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
• Grammatical categories of particular
languages lead their speakers to think in
different ways
• Language shapes—but does not restrict—
thought
• However, cultural changes can produce
changes in thought and language (contrary to
Sapir-Whorf)
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Language, thought, and culture
– Focal vocabulary
• Lexicon (vocabulary) influences perception
• Focal vocabulary – specialized sets of terms
and distinctions that are particularly important
to certain groups
• Vocabulary is the area of language that
changes most readily
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Language, thought, and culture
– Language, culture, and thought are interrelated
– Changes in culture produce changes in language
and thought
– Cultural contrasts and changes affect lexical
distinctions (e.g., peach vs. salmon) within
semantic domains (e.g., color terminology)
– Semantics – a language’s meaning system
– Lexical contrasts that people perceive as
meaningful or significant reflect their experiences
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Sociolinguistics
– Sociolinguistics – relationships between
social and linguistic variation
– Linguistic diversity within nation-states
• Ethnic diversity is mirrored by linguistic
diversity
• All people style shift – vary their speech in
different social contexts
• Diglossia – regular shifting between dialects
(e.g., “high” and “low” variants of a language)
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Sociolinguistics
– Linguistic diversity within nation-states
• Different dialects are equally effective as
systems of communication
– Particular dialects are not linguistically superior or
inferior to others
– Speech patterns are considered “better” or “worse”
because they are associated with socially ranked
groups
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Sociolinguistics
– Gender speech contrasts
• Differences between men and women – phonology,
grammar, vocabulary, body stances and movements
• American women’s use of certain types of words and
expressions reflects lesser power in society
• Tannen’s studies:
– Women typically use language and associated body
movements to build rapport, social connections
– Men tend to recite information that serves to establish a
place for themselves in a hierarchy
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Sociolinguistics
– Stratification and symbolic domination
• People use and evaluate speech in the
context of social, political, and economic
forces
• Speech of low-status groups may be
evaluated negatively because it has come to
symbolize low status
• “Proper language” is a strategic resource –
increased access to wealth, prestige, and
power
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Sociolinguistics
– Stratification and symbolic domination
• Bourdieu:
– Linguistic practices as “symbolic capital”
– “Symbolic domination” – acceptance of the
authority and correctness of a prestigious dialect,
even by people who do not use it
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Sociolinguistics
– Black English Vernacular (BEV), a.k.a. Ebonics
• Stigmatized speech may be linked to region, class,
educational background, gender, ethnicity, or “race”
• Most linguists view BEV as a dialect of American
English
• Complex linguistic system with its own phonology and
syntax
• May stem from an early creole (fusion of English and
African languages)
• Clear phonological and grammatical differences
between ebonics and Standard English (SE)
• SE is the prestige dialect, but is not superior to BEV
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Historical linguistics
– Study of long-term linguistic change
• Features of past languages are reconstructed
by studying contemporary daughter languages
(those that descend from the same parent
language, or protolanguage)
• Languages are classified according to their
degree of relationship
• Subgroups – languages within a taxonomy of
related languages that are most closely
related
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 5
Language and Communication
• Historical linguistics
– Close relationship between languages
does not necessarily mean that their
speakers are closely related biologically
or culturally
– Anthropologists are interested in historical
linguistics because cultural features
sometimes correlate with the distribution
of language families
© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.