LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION

Anthropology Culture Cultural Holism NormsCultural Model Enculturation Cultural relativism Ethnocentrism Ethnography Ethnology Participant Observation Emic etic Ethnolinguistics

Basic Concepts

Characteristics of language

a system of symbols - visual, auditory, or tactile put together according to certain rules symbols used are arbitrary – meaning based on consensusLearned unconscious Dynamic (living) A form of communication (interaction) shared - communicators know the rules and meanings

A form of communication that is a systematic set of arbitrary symbols shared among a group and passed on from generation to generation

What is language?

System system of sounds that when put together according to certain rules results in meanings

Systematic nature of language is usually unconscious

associations between words/sounds and the things they represent are arbitrary

not natural or self-evident meaning.

meaning provided by tradition and consensus

Because symbols are arbitrary they have to be learned.

arbitrary symbolsRabbitConejoUsagiKanninchenCuniglio

“look at this”

lobster“grab hold

of this”

Descriptive symbols

EngSpJpGrIt

A form of CommunicationOther forms?

What is communicated? thoughts, knowledge, meaning, feelings, intentions and desires Information about ourselves and others

Study of language(s) in relation to society - Social Uses and function of languageBasic assumption is that there is an intimate connection between language and social factors The differences in language use reflect and maintain social distinctions.The social differences are reflected in language useThree things influence the meanings and language we use.

1. Social Relationships

2. Situational Context

3. Cultural Meanings

Sociolingusitics

• Class • Gender• Status• Age• education• occupation• ethnicity• regional identity

Speakers choose between alternatives of vocabulary, pronunciation, sentence construction, etc.

Social variables influence a person's choices

Social meanings are signalled by linguistic alternatives chosen by different groups of people

A child learning a language also acquires social competence i.e. the ability to recognize and interpret the social activity taking place.

Social Relationships

we use language to send social messages about who we are where we come from who we associate with

we may judge a person's background, character, and intentions based upon the person's language, dialect, or, in some instances, even the choice of a single word.

Language and Identity

Gangland to God Newfie translation

Different situational contexts influence the forms of language that occur.

The forms of language that occur or are excluded reflect the meaning of various contexts

Situational Context

Cultural meanings are expressed by the symbolic meanings of words

Speakers evaluate the communicative behaviour of each other based on shared understandings of the world, i.e. On cultural models.

Cultural Meanings

cultural model - eels

Speech is constantly, although unconsciously evaluated

Analysis of speech reveals social and cultural beliefs about how society is structured and the ways that people are expected to behave and interact

Studying language use in context helps us to Understand social organization Social institutions - religion, law, etc. Patterns of behavior Cultural meanings, values, attitudes

Why is understanding communication (language) important for anthropology?

“In order for social scientists to understand how people organize their lives, carry out work, practice religions, and the like, they need to be aware of how people talk to each other” (Bonvillain 2008: 2)

The act of speaking is action which creates particular meanings and expectations in given contexts

STUDYING LANGUAGE CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION

Language needs to be understood within the contexts - social, situational, cultural – in which communicative interaction occurs

Therefore we have to understand and analyze

Speech – how sounds are produced and meaning is created, grammatical constructions, vocabulary Situational and social contexts in which speech acts take place The cultural norms used in evaluating speech.

How Do we do that?

Ethnographically

gathering data from observations of people’s daily lives – how they make requests, express opinions, the norms of appropriate behaviour, use of language in various contexts

ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION

attempting to understand behaviour from the participants point of view - emically

Interviews with individual native speakers - to collect material dealing with specific categories of vocabulary or types of grammatical construction

extracting communicative rules by observing the reactions of members of a community to each other’s actions - etically

“Analyses of these facts of communicative behaviour reveal underlying cultural models and demonstrate the cognitive and conceptual bonds that unify people within their culture.”

Concerned with discovering patterns of linguistic variation recording and analyzing actual speech behaviour of members of distinct groups within of the population.

What elements of context such as setting, participants topics and goals influence speech What social factors (e.g. Gender of class, ethnicity) influence the sensitivity to context

Sociolinguistic Approach

What specific attributes of a person (e.g. Age, gender, ethnicity etc.) influence a speakers selection, in any given situation, of the linguistic choices they make?

“because sociolinguistic patterns are discoverable on the basis of frequencies of usage, research methodologies emphasize interviews, experimental and situational observations and quantitative analysis”

sociolinguistics ideally collects large samples

Discourse analysis

analysis of the connected stretches of speech that occur in informal as well as formal contexts looks at what speakers say, what they intend to mean, what they intend to do, and how their speech is interpreted by participants the meanings Includes analysis of the cultural contexts in which speech occurs, the norms of production and interpretation that give it meaning

emphasis on the socio-political relations of power that inform both the production and interpretation of discourse

people who speak the same language but are also united other ways: norms and shared rules, the proper and improper uses of language. Canadians, Australians, Indians, all speak English but differ in what is the proper way to speak - e.g. what situations requiring a greeting, what topics are forbidden etc.

Speech community

society exerts pressure for conformity through the transmission of cultural models on both conscious and unconscious levels

Speech network

people who have regular contact with each dense networks • have frequent contact - e.g. related, work together, same neighbourhood and know one another• exert pressure on members to conform since values are shared and individuals behaviour is readily known.• tend to maintain speech norms with little variation

weak networks•less contact• do not share values as constantly• do not have mechanisms that can apply social sanction against non- conformists on an individual basis.

Analysis of speech networks focuses on actual speakers and the mechanisms of control that lead to establishing and maintaining group norms in small scale, daily interactions.

gangland sign langauge