Important Concepts from Unit 4 Notes

Question 1

as Dell Hymes argued, the socially effective use of language also requires what he termed “____________”

Answer 1

communicative competence, the mastery of rules for socially/culturally appropriate speech given a specific context

Question 2

why should cultural anthropologists care about language?

Answer 2

they must frequently learn new languages for fieldwork, language contains grammatical and conceptual ideas that serve as inspiration for research, and can provide important insight to culture/traditions

Question 3

language is a ______ phenomenon

Answer 3

biocultural

Question 4

why is language a biocultural phenomenon?

Answer 4

language and speech requires basic human anatomy to function, we must use our mouth, tongue, teeth, vocal cords, throat etc. to make sound…. it’s biologically possible for all humans but also is inherently cultural!

Question 5

all _____ are equal in their ability to communicate experience

Answer 5

languages, this is an important conclusion maintained by many linguistic/cultural anthropologists

Question 6

cultural/linguistic anthropologists take a firm stance against _______, which is the idea that some languages are superior to others

Answer 6

linguistic ethnocentrism

Question 7

what are the six design features of language, created by Charles Hockett?

Answer 7

1. Openness (we have open call systems, something can have many meanings)
2. Displacement (good memory, being able to talk about things from the past/non-existent objects)
3. Prevarication (“to lie” and form grammatically correct but nonsensical sentences)
4. Arbitrariness (not every word needs to have meaning, a tree can just be called a tree)
5. Duality of Patterning (sound/meaning, phonemes/morphemes)
6. Semanticity (language means things!)

Question 8

phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics are all components of _______

Answer 8

language

Question 9

what is phonology?

Answer 9

the study of the sounds of language

Question 10

what is morphology?

Answer 10

the study of the minimal units of meaning (morphemes) in a language

Question 11

what is syntax?

Answer 11

the study of sentence structure

Question 12

what is the definition of semantics?

Answer 12

the study of meaning… what a word in a sentence means, what a sentence as a whole means, what someone else may mean when they speak the sentence, etc.

Question 13

In the 1960s, the famous linguist Noam Chomsky sparked interest in the formal study of ___________ when he argued that grammars represented all of a speaker’s linguistic knowledge as sets of abstract rules.

Answer 13

semantics

Question 14

formal semantics defined words in terms of ________, or “the formal meaning(s) of a word, as given in a dictionary”

Answer 14

denotation

Question 15

what does connotation mean?

Answer 15

additional meanings of a word that derive from the typical contexts in which they are used and rely on personal and cultural associations

Question 16

what is a metaphor?

Answer 16

a form of thought and language that asserts a meaningful link between two expressions from different semantic domains

Question 17

what is the definition of pragmatics?

Answer 17

the study of language in the context of its use

Question 18

Michael Silverstein is widely recognized as one of the first scholars to…

Answer 18

identify and insist on the idea of pragmatics

Question 19

The ____________ can be understood as a theory that language, and, more specifically, linguistic forms such as grammar and vocabulary, shape the way in which a specific language’s users see the world.

Answer 19

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Question 20

how did the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis come to be? what’s the story behind it?

Answer 20

there was no word between “empty” and “full” regarding oil canisters that still had oil fumes in them, but no oil left

Question 21

linguistic determinism is the “strong” version of what hypothesis?

Answer 21

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Question 22

linguistic determination:

Answer 22

theres a link between the words we use to the culture we experience, if our language assigns gender as a grammatical rule; we are forced to think of females and males as vastly different beings (some languages are gender-neutral!)

Question 23

what are the objections to linguistic determination? that have led to a “weak version” of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Answer 23

1. gender inequality still exists within societies using gender-neutral language)
2. we can translate between different languages
3. there is always diversity within any given cultural group
4. the existence of bilingual children (these kids don’t struggle to define the world in different languages, in fact it makes them more equipped intellectually and societally!)

Question 24

“Some researchers argue that while the grammar and vocabulary of a language don’t determine thought and behaviour it may influence them. In this view, the existence of a binary gender pronoun system wouldn’t entirely determine values and ideas about gender, but it might contribute to making such a binary system seem natural”- what theory is this sentence explaining?

Answer 24

the “weak” version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Question 25

______: the study of language use in a specific culture, grounded in an ethnographic approach, with close attention to the relationships among language, communication, and social interaction

Answer 25

ethnopragmatics

Question 26

____________ takes into account both the formal dimensions of language (phonemes, morphemes, syntax) and the influence of context on how language produces meaning and shapes social interactions

Answer 26

ethnopragmatics

Question 27

_____: the historically specific conventions and ideals according to which authors compose discourse and audiences receive it

Answer 27

genres, a genre can be a classification like science fiction, or the difference between different communicative patterns and expectations in different scenarios (ex: talking to your boss, talking to your siblings/friends)

Question 28

_______ refers to the co-existence of different genres and styles of speech.

Answer 28

Heteroglossia

Question 29

_________: in which one language is taken as the standard against which all others are measured and often deemed inadequate

Answer 29

linguistic ethnocentrism, ex: residential schools i Canada when kids couldn’t speak their native languages because English is more “proper”

Question 30

When speakers pass a ____ language on to a next generation, linguists usually refer to the language of the new generations as _____

Answer 30

1. pidgin
2. creole