ANTH Chapter 6 + Language and Communication

helps Indigenous people upload audio, documents, and image files. Helps with keeping their languages alive

a symbolic system of arbitrary sounds that, when put together according to a certain set of rules, convey meaning to its speakers (from the Latin word lingua which means tongue)

soft on the outside, open and friendly, and more than willing to discuss personal issues with complete transfers, but hard on the inside and will not discuss much deeper personal questions (e.g., United States, Brazil, etc.)

vs.

hard on the outside and soft on the inside. Hard to get to know, but over time they open up (e.g., Russia, Germany, etc.)

interested in sound and meaning structure of languages

concerned with how languages have changed over time

study the relationship between language and society

concerned with the relationships between language and culture

people who share a set of norms about how to speak and expectations about how language is used (the longer these communities are isolated, the more their communities are unique)

languages borrow from one another for need and prestige

auditory qualities of language such as intonation, stress, loudness, and rhythm, that help interpret the meaning of words

• The way people perceive and use space (Edward T. Hall)

• Four types of distance:

  • Intimate, personal, social, and public (from smallest to largest)

• communication is indirect, relying heavily on the context to convey meaning

  • Collectivist, emphasize personal relationships, and strive for harmony and consensus

  • See silence as useful as it gains a better understanding of communication partners

• cultures in which communication is direct and unambiguous, meaning is conveyed by the words themselves

  • Individualist, task-focused, and less likely to make decisions for emotional or social reasons

  • Avoids silence at all costs

express encoded values and attitudes about appropriate behaviour (e.g., “ask and you shall be heard”)

words or phrases that show respect and thus encode social status (e.g., Mr., Miss., and Mrs.)

friendly, informal relationship between equals

formal relationship (roughly the same status)

people of unequal social status

varieties of speech associated with particular genders

• the use of a rising, questioning intonation when making statements

  • Men are least likely to do it the more successful they are

  • Women are more likely to do it the more successful they are

minimal responses to a speaker that serves to continue the conversation or to show agreement

seeks to establish connections, negotiate relationships, and reach agreement (used more by women)

more competitive, less social, more individualistic, and aimed at controlling the flow of talk

when speakers can readily understand each other, they speak the same language

a chain of speech variants that are mutually intelligible between adjacent geographic areas, but the ends are mutually unintelligible

a common language that people use to communicate when they do not share the same native or first language (English is the most common)

a simplified language used as a means of communication

a pidgin that has become a mother tongue or native language

a language that results from the fusion of two languages, in which the grammatical elements comes from one and much of the vocabulary from the other

a regional or class variation of a language

the variety of language spoken in public that receives the most institutional support

manner of pronunciation of words

the accent of the standard language (is the most prestigious)

the situation in which two languages or forms of the same language are spoken by people in the same language community at different times and places

speakers of two or more languages or varieties of one language switch between the two, depending on the social construct

a group of people within a large society who interact regularly around specialized interests

Since language influences thoughts and perception, it also influences behaviour

linguistic determinism and linguistic relativism

• the language you speak determines the way you perceive the world around you

  • Strong determinism: language actually determines fault

  • Weak determinism: language simply influences thought

each language classifies the world in its own unique or culturally relative way

the differences between those who have access to information technologies and the skills use them and those who do not

phonetics

phonology

morphology

syntax

semantics

pragmatics

sounds (etic)

the meaning of sounds (phonemes → emic) (e.g., the s at the end of a word means plural)

the rules by which sounds are put together to create the meaning of words (words)

the rules by which words are combined to create sentences

the literal meaning of sentences

the meaning of the sentences in context. The context of other sentences and the social context in which they are spoken.

It is not what you say but how you say it (e.g., voices cracking, nervous ticks, speech modulation, rapid eye movement, etc.)

How people interact through touch

• items that mark features of the speakers or hearers identity

  • Includes pronouns, kinship terms, forms of address, and speech levels

  • How we refer to people or address them is a sensitive indicator of how we evaluate people

• Determines which form of address / pronoun will be used on the basis of the difference in social status (or power) between the speaker and addressee

• The T of intimacy and the V of formality (From French Tu or Vous)