Language and Communication

Chapter Outline

NONHUMAN PRIMATE

COMMUNICATIONCall systems

Sign LanguageOrigin of Language

NONVERBALCOMMUNICATION

STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGESpeech Sounds

LANGUAGE, THOUGHT, AND CULTURE

The Sapir-Whorf HypothesisFocal Vocabulary

Meaning SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Linguistic DiversityGender Speech Contrasts

Language and Status Position

Stratification Black English Vernacular

(BEV)

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICSLanguage 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

What is Language?

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.

Nonhuman Primate Communication

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

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.

Nonverbal Communication

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)

The Structure of language

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.

Language, Thought, & Culture

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

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

Multiple negation (I don’t want none) according to gender and class (in percentages)

Language and Status PositionHonorifics – terms of respect; used to honor people

Certain terms can imply a status deference between speaker and to whom is being referred.

Sociolinguistics

UMC LMC UWC LWC

Male 6.3 32.4 40.0 90.1

Female 0.0 1.4 35.6 58.9

Sociolinguistics

Stratification 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 languageProtolanguage – 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.