LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION

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What Is Language?

How Is Language Related to Culture?

How Did Language Begin?

The Nature of Language

Language

Means of transmitting information and sharing experiences

Spoken language

Sounds and the rules governing the way they are combined in meaningful ways

Linguistics

The modern scientific study of all aspects of language

Descriptive Linguistics

Historical Linguistics

Ethnolinguistics

Descriptive Linguistics:
The Sound and Shape of Language

Phonetics

Study of the production, transmission, and reception of speech sounds

About 6000 languages presently exist

Phonology

Sounds

Capability to make the sounds in any language

Each individual is unique

Phonemes

Smallest classes of sound that change meaning

Minimal-pair test

Morphology

Morpheme

Smallest unit of sounds that carry a meaning

Words

Giraffes (two morphemes)

Giraffe (free morpheme)

-s (bound morpheme, “plural”)

Cats and dogs(each with two morphemes)

Syntax and Grammar

Frame substitution

Method used to identify syntactic units of language

Syntax

Rules or principles of phrase and sentence making

Grammar

Morphology + Syntax

The Gesture-call System

Body language and extralinguistic noises

At least 90% of emotional information in English is transmitted by “body language” and tone of voice

Kinesics

System of notating and analyzing postures, facial expressions, and body motions that convey messages

Paralanguage

Voice qualities

Pitch

Lip control

Glottis control

Articulation control

Rhythm control

Resonance

Tempo

Vocalizations

Vocal characterizers

Vocal qualifiers

Vocal segregates

Historical Linguistics: Linguistic Change

Linguistic divergence

Development of different languages from a single ancestral language

Language family

Group of languages ultimately descended from a single ancestral language

Glottochronology

Method of dating divergence in branches of language families

Core vocabulary

Linguistic
Nationalism

Language politics

Purging vocabularies
of “foreign terms”

Language revival

Hebrew, Ute

Anthropology Applied

Language Renewal Among the Northern Ute

Anthropologist’s involvement in the Northern Ute Tribe affirming use of its ancestral language

Set up Ute language renewal program

Established in-school program of Ute and English

Prepared preliminary text of policy statement and handbook of Ute language

Helped train language teachers

Carried out research and published results

Ethnolinguistics:
Language in its Cultural Setting

Does language influence the perception of reality and cultural behavior?

Does language reflect reality in a culture?

Or, is it both?

Language and Thought

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Language predisposes people to see the world in a certain way guiding behavior

Language reflects reality

Rich vocabulary reflects a cultural focus

Language and Gender

North American society

Men and Women use English differently

Language reflects traditional gender inequality

Social Dialects

Forms of a language

Reflecting regions or social classes

Sociolinguistics

Study of the structure and use of language as it relates to its social setting

Code switching

Process of changing from one level of language to another

Original Study

The Great Ebonics Controversy

Ebonics is an English dialect

Oakland, CA school board adopts resolution to improve teaching of SE (Standard English) through using Ebonics

Strong emotional reaction ensued based on misunderstanding and outrage

The real issue is whether SE can be best taught in certain school districts by using Ebonics

The Origins of Language

Ape communication

Use gestures not speech

2 - 3 year old human ability

Human language

Probably began as a gestural system

All present human languages are complex

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