Chapter 4 - Divided World: Culture, Place, Politics Flashcards
(43 cards)
While culture gives some people a sense of belonging, it has also created visible ________ between people around the world
divisions
Our greatest human achievement, culture, has both created ________ and sparked _______ between peoples
“barriers” “conflict”
Culture is deep rooted and very difficult to change, since we would have to _______ the way we think about certain things and experiences
The only way to change culture is to ______________
re-engineer
“create a new set of overarching values”
Culture shock, where is it felt?
Can be felt by people entering new countries, new schools, and new places
Can even be felt by people seeing how others live across the province (rural vs. urban Alberta)
Define culture
Way of life of a society’s members, including belief systems, norms, and material practices; forms of social practices that differentiate one group from another
Define culture as a practice
Ways of communicating, expressing, making meaning
Ways of representing the world to ourselves
Describe the idea behind culture “as a thing” and how cultural food is an example
In India they just eat food, but when it is imported to Canada it is considered “Indian Food,” and the same goes for Chinese food
Define culture as superorganic
Superorganic means culture is viewed as an entity above man, not reducible to the actions of individuals, mysteriously responding to laws of its own
Describe how Language distribution works around the world
Languages are NOT spread randomly across the world
Far more language varieties are found in the tropical regions of the world than in the temperate zones
T/F: Language is the principal means by which a culture continues its existence; the death of a language typically means the death of a culture
True
why are languages declining around the world (2 reasons)
Globalization encourages language consolidation
Langauges with fewer speakers are associated with less economic opportunity (and aren’t passed on)
Why has English become so widespread?
Migration, economic advantage, and prestige
what is the significance of language loss
language loss evokes the same feeling of death;
language loss feels like losing another lens of the world because many words are untranslatable into common languages
Language families
a group of similar languages derived from a common but distant ancestor
what contributes to linguistic diversity (3 main factors)
environmental: climate affects common words
spatial heterogeneity: higher topographic complexity is often correlated with greater diversity
socio-cultural variables: as groups in society become larger, they break off and form new ones
what are the 2 most common language families
Indo-European (English, Spanish) and
Sino-Tibetan (Chinese, Japanese)
what propelled Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan languages to the forefront
Indo-European language grew from colonial expansion
Sino-Tibetan language grew from numerical population expansion within China
Language & Place: how does place influence language specifically using Indigenous languages
Indigenous communities have different terms for places than the English language has, which reflects the physical environment they occupied
There are more words for snow in Inuit language than there are words for desert and sea
place names can be related to the culture of that. place (Wayne Gretzky Drive)
Spatial distribution of languages: are there more languages in temperate or tropical areas? and why
temperate areas have less languages than tropical areas because:
the ability for agriculture to expand through temperate climates, which led to forming large societies that replaced smaller ones
tropical regions are fraught with dense rivers and mountainous ranges that create physical barriers between people, causing separation and language division
Most spoken native and non-native languages
native: Mandarin, Spanish, English
non: English, Mandarin, Spanish
Nationalism
the expression of belonging to a nation, and the belief that the nation has the right to determine its own affairs; the nation and state are congruent
Lingua Franca
an existing language that two different language groups use to communicate
Pidgins
language that combines vocab from more than one language and is common in areas for trading/commerce, though the vocab is usually limited
What do place names tell us about the land?
provides insight into the original settlers on that land, such as the French names in Quebec and Louisiana, or the Spanish named places in Southwest US and California
