Linguistic Anthropology: Relating Language and Culture

CHAPTER 12

Linguistics

Is the study of all aspects of language ◦ Origins—primatologists

◦ Development—Philologists

◦ How language works– linguists and linguistic anthropologists

◦ Language consists of sounds organized into words according to some sort of grammar.

◦ Language is used to communicate.

◦ Language is systematic.

◦ Language can be a symbol, something that stands for something else (either verbal or physical)

◦ Language can also be a signal, an instinctive sound or gesture with a self- evident meaning

Language is a system of communication that consists of sounds that are put together to form words, which are then arranged according

to grammatical rules

Where Does Language Come From?

We can address this question in two ways: 1. The evolutionary origins of language (our biological capacity for language as a whole)

2. The historical development of specific languages (how languages are related to one another and have changed through time)

Animal Languages?

Parrots can mimic human speech as a trained response

One impediment to animal language is the anatomy of the vocal tract. ◦ Even chimpanzees cannot produce the vast range of sounds required for

human speech

Nonhuman animals communicate using sounds, gestures, and movements

◦ Classified as call systems: patterned forms of communication that express meaning. Calls are distinct and separate, never combined

◦ Respond to stimuli, visible triggers in the immediate environment

◦ All individuals of a species use the same call whereas humans speak between 5-6,000 different languages.

Is Language Uniquely Human?

CALL SYSTEMS

• Limited in what and how much they can communicate

• Communicate emotions or occur in response to stimuli

• Calls are distinct and not combined/modified to produce a different meaning

• Are instinctual and generally shared across an entire species

LANGUAGE

◦ Is effectively limitless

◦ Allows people to talk about the past, future, and the imagined

◦ Sounds can be combined in limitless ways to produce meaningful new utterances

Historical Linguistics

Linguistics began in the eighteenth century as philology

Jakob Grimm (1822): similarities between European languages were a result of shared ancestry

Languages evolved from proto-languages: hypothetical common ancestral languages of two or more living languages

Reconstructing “Dead” Languages

Historical linguists search for clues in cognate words: ◦ Words in two languages that show the same systematic sound

shifts as other words in the two languages, usually interpreted by linguists as evidence for a common linguistic ancestry

Nongenetic Language Change

When people are multilingual, their use of each language subtly influences the other languages’ sounds, words, syntax, and grammar

◦ The pronunciation of “r” (trilled or flapped) in southern Europe varies depending on location.

◦ Pronunciations move across language boundaries from community to community like a wave

How Does Language Actually Work?

Languages are complex and highly structured, even those languages that are unwritten or spoken by very few people

Most people have little understanding of the formal structure of their language but an intuitive sense of pronunciation, syntactical, and grammatical rules.

◦ Mistakes are easily noticed by any native speaker

Ferdinand de Saussure suggested a distinction between the structure of language (langue) and how people actually speak it (parole)

Descriptive Linguistics

Descriptive Linguistics is the systematic analysis of a language’s sound system and grammar

Linguists divide language structure into three levels ◦ Phonology–the study of language sounds

◦ Morphology–the structure of words and word formation

◦ Syntax–patterns of word order in sentence formation

All languages have predictable phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures.

Sounds of Language

An intricate combination of moving parts is necessary for us to produce the sounds of language:

◦ Glottis, tongue, teeth, lips, and many other parts moving in concert are required to utter the simplest words and sentences.

Phonology

Linguists studying phonology catalog a language’s meaningful sounds by identifying minimal pairs

◦ Since there is a difference in meaning between the words “pat” and “bat,” we can label [p] and [b] as distinct sounds within the English language.

Linguists use characteristics of sounds to classify every sound in a given language.

◦ [p] and [b] are called stops because there must be some stoppage of air flow to produce these sounds

Regional Dialects

Pre-1970s: linguists assumed that mass media would cause American English to become increasingly homogeneous

Instead, regional dialects and sound changes between generations within communities are greater than ever.

Peer groups play a much stronger role in the transmission of linguistic forms.

Grammar Norms

Grammatical elements learned in one cultural context can feel natural to a native speaker but illogical to others:

◦ The concept of gender markings is relatively foreign to English speakers.

◦ The Ningerum language of Papua New Guinea features five tenses, and Indonesian has no regular tense markings.

◦ The English pronoun “you” may refer to one person or many people. The Awin language of Papua New Guinea includes equivalents of you (“one person”), you (“two people”), and you (“more than two people”).

Sociolinguistics Studies how social context and cultural norms shape language use among a linguistic community.

◦ Language isn’t just about structure, the meaning of language comes from conversations and social interactions

Describes how language is used by people rather than prescribing how language should be used.

Focuses on signs, symbols, and metaphors.

Do People Speaking Different Languages Experience Reality Differently?

Sapir (1929): a language inclines its speakers to think about the world in certain ways because of its specific grammatical categories

Linguistic relativity: people speaking different languages perceive/interpret the world differently because of differences in their languages

Edward Sapir (Photo: Ruth Benedict Papers,

Archives & Special Collections Library, Vassar College)

Linguistic Determinism

Whorf expanded on Sapir’s work ◦ Concluded that the Hopi language lacked past,

present, future tenses

◦ Suggested that translating Hopi into English fundamentally altered its meaning

Language establishes mental categories that predispose people to see the world in particular

ways

(Photo: © Stapleton Collection/Corbis)

Ethnoscience

Ethnoscience: the study of how people classify things in the world

Berlin and Kay (1969) analyzed color terms and found that basic color terms are consistent across more than 100 languages

◦ Speakers of vastly different languages did not appear to perceive colors differently; they just classified them differently

Does not necessarily disprove Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or linguistic relativity, but does argue against linguistic determinism

How Can Language Be So Dynamic and Stable at the Same Time? Language constantly changes (like culture), yet most people experience their own language as stable.

◦ New words adopted/coined, words dropped, and words change meaning

Societies blended by colonialism developed dynamic new languages, such as creoles and pidgins.

◦ Pidgin languages – a mixed language borrowing grammar from one and vocabulary from another, contact vernaculars, can last for one meeting

◦ Creole languages – language of mixed origin that develops from a blending of two parent languages, becomes nativized

National Language Policies

Countries have tried to control language change through the creation of national language policies

◦ Have found it nearly impossible to dictate what language or what form of the national language the public will speak

Examples from the Netherlands and Quebec– demonstrate different approaches to controlling processes of language change

Language Death

Indigenous groups around the world are facing language death

As many as half of the world’s languages may face extinction within the next century

In light of linguistic relativity, language is a primary way that people experience the richness of their culture

◦ Loss of language represents the loss of a culture’s fullness.

How Does Language Relate to Social Power and Inequality?

Language ideology: the beliefs people have about the superiority of one language/dialect

There is no universally correct way to speak any language. ◦ From an anthropological perspective, there are only more and less privileged versions of language use.

Sociolinguistics and Gender

Gendered language—expected language use by different genders

Lakoff (1975): female speech patterns were expected to express hesitation, repetition, and uncertainty more than male speech

◦ “talking like a lady” = uncertainty and submissiveness

◦ including tag questions (which effectively seek agreement by someone when you make a statement – “It’s time to go, isn’t it?”), intensifiers (very lovely), hedges (“I’m pretty sure” – expected to not be too forward), hesitation and repetition of expressions

◦ these all communicate uncertainty; were not seen in men’s speech

The appearance of uncertainty can be detrimental in many professional settings.

Language Ideologies

Closely tied to the creation and maintenance of social status ◦ On Java, individuals are extremely conscious of status.

◦ Words are spoken in three different registers: informal, intermediary, and polite

◦ Javanese words used by each speaker and listener will be different and mark their relative social positions in society.

Colonialism and the Power of Language

19th century European colonial powers often introduced their own language as the official language

◦ Sought to replace indigenous languages

◦ Colonial languages persist in many former colonies

Conclusion

The capacity for language is one of the central features that distinguishes humans from other animals.

◦ Whatever the language they are universally structured and rule bound, and they change in fairly uniform ways

◦ But sociocultural context and norms shape language use and the use of language has important impacts on everyday social relationships

Language has the great power to shape not just our meanings and comprehension of the world but our experiences as social beings as well.

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