Anthro 4 Midterm

Gloria Anzaldúa:

Author of How To Tame a Wild Tongue. Introduction to how something like language isn’t quite that simple.

Chicano Spanish:

A border language birthed by the Chicanos’ need to identify as a distinct people.

Pachuco:

 A secret language of rebellion. The language of the Zoot Suiters. (AKA Caló)

Words of American Indian Origin in English:

Skunk, Chocolate, Hammock, Coyote

Algic Language Family:

Racoon, Cocaine, Toboggan

Yurok:

California’s largest Native American tribe.

Quechua Language:

Indigenous language and people from the Andes (Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador) descending from the Inca Empire.

Nahuatl Language:

Indigenous language spoken in Tenochtitlan (Aztec Empire).

Plains Indian Sign Language (Hand Talk):

• Used all throughout the states and throughout tribes

• Foundation of ASL

• Genocided by the government

Uto-Aztecan Languages:

One of the largest indigenous language families in the Americas (Nahuatl, Tonga, Hopi, etc.)

Tonga Language:

Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Tongva people.

Southern California Tongva Toponyms (Place Names):

Topanga, Koruuvagna, Yaanga

Chumash Language:

Indigenous language spoken by the Chumash people

Southern California Chumash Toponyms (Place Names):

Malibu, Ojai, Simi

Prestige Variety:

Language forms held in social high regard, often considered “correct” or “superior” within society.

Linguistic Variety:

Any distinctive form of language encompassing dialects, accents, registers, and social subcategories

Standard Language:

A specific variety of a language that has undergone formal codification and is accepted as the prestigious, official norm for education, government, media, and literature.

Language and Dialect:

A structured, conventional system of vocal, written, or signed symbols used by human beings to communicate thoughts, emotions, and experiences.

A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by unique vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

Zora Neale Hurston:

An anthropologist that was responsible for being one of the first in documenting Southern African American’s ethnographic film in the 20th century.

Gullah:

An English-based Creole in the coastal plain and Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida. (Due to slavery)

Pidgin and Creole Languages:

A pidgin emerges from the need to communicate and have no “native speakers”. A creole is when a Pidgin gains first language speakers and becomes a community language.

African American English:

A distinct variety of American English spoken by Black Americans.

Ann Arbor 1979 and Oakland 1996:

Ann Arbor: AAVE made educating the black children almost impossible. Oakland: Ebonics recognized as a language.

Shibboleth:

A word, manner pronunciation, or linguistic practice that sorts out insiders from outsiders

Speech Community:

A group of speakers defined by size, location, shared communicative repertoire and a shared set of social norms.

Charles Sanders Peirce:

Introduced semiotics.

Semiotics:

A general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals with their interpretation.

Icon:

Something that resembles or shares qualities with the thing it represents in similarity of form, imitation, structural relation.

Index:

Something that points to what it represents; Regular co-occurence, casual relation. (smoke is an index of fire) (index finger points)

Symbol:

Something that has become learned/associated with their meanings by their usage; Conventional connection, conventional relation. (Why is the peace sign, the peace sign?)

Sign:

A sign is “something which stands to something or somebody”.

Interpretant:

Is the effect, meaning, or understanding a sign produces in an interpreter's mind.

Common Ground:

The assumptions we make and understandings that we have. Ostension-Inference (Cartmill).

Elephant Communication:

They communicate vocally, especially with their low frequency pitches that travel for miles under the ground.

Seismic Communication:

The exchange of information through substrate-borne vibrations (soil, water, plant material) rather than air or water waves.

Honey Bee Communication:

They use a figure 8 movement pattern to communicate location, distance, and quality of food sources using positions relative to the sun.

Vervet Calls:

Monkeys that had distinct cries to warn others about specific predators. (Indexical Danger)

Deixis:

Expressions that change their meaning from context to context in a particular way.

Referential Function:

What is traditionally taught as meaning. (Denotation, Cognitive Function)

Phatic Function:

Speech used for social interaction rather than conveying information.

Metalinguistic Function:

Language as a system is able to point back at itself. Language about language. (Are you using hard to mean difficult or firm?)

Poetic Function:

Where form, sound, and aesthetic structure take precedence over information transfer.

Conative Function:

Language oriented toward the addressee (receiver) to influence their behavior, thoughts, or actions.

Emotive Function:

Language that focuses on the speaker's (addresser's) internal state, feelings, and emotions rather than just conveying information.

Language Ideology:

Language Ideology: Sets of beliefs and attitudes about language use, structure, and speakers that reflect broader social, moral, and political values.

Semiotic Callousing:

A concept by Janet McIntosh about the way harsh and dehumanizing language in military training hardens recruits' psyches, reducing their sensitivity and empathy to prepare them for the emotional, violent, and high-stress realities of combat.

Honorifics:

Grammatical forms such as titles, specialized pronouns, or verb endings, that encode the relative social status, politeness, or intimacy between speakers, listeners, and subjects.

T-V Pronouns:

Where languages use different second-person pronouns to convey formality, social distance, or intimacy.

You vs Thou:

The English example of its former T-V pronoun.

Positive and Negative Politeness:

A gradient of emotional closeness and distance between speakers. (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet). (Negative: Distance) (Positive: Connection)

1. Linguistic anthropologists Paja Faudree and Daniel Suslak wrote in their chapter on

language in the Americas that, “Contact between Iberia and the Americas transformed

the linguistic character of both. Spanish became what it is today largely through

engagement with Latin America.” (Faudree and Suslak, 101) 1) Explain what they mean

by this, with specific examples. And, 2) what can we say about the influence of American

Indian languages on American English?

• Latin America itself was named because those countries spoke a language derived from Latin

• New vocabulary came from Indigenous languages to describe unfamiliar plants, foods, and objects:

• chocolate (from Nahuatl), tomate, coyote, aguacate (avocado), canoa (canoe, from Taíno)

• Regional dialects formed across Latin America, with differences in pronunciation, grammar, and slang (e.g., Caribbean vs. Mexican vs. Andean Spanish).

• Pronunciation shifts were influenced by Indigenous language patterns (e.g., simplification of certain consonants in some regions).

• Grammar and usage adapted in contact zones—some areas show Indigenous-influenced sentence structures or patterns of politeness.

• Result: Modern Spanish is not identical to European Spanish; it’s a product of ongoing exchange with Latin America.

• Arawak languages gave us barbecue and hurricane

• Algonquian gave us raccoon and toboggan

• Language as a repository of history, movement of peoples and social dynamics 

• 24/50 states have Native names, along with place names from Chumach languages like Ojai and Simi

2. There are approximately 10 million American Indian citizens of the United States, but

American Indian languages only have thousands of speakers, not millions. Name

historical factors that interrupted the transmission of these languages from one

generation to the next.

• The transmission of American Indian languages was systematically interrupted by state-sponsored and religious efforts to erase cultural identity. 

• A primary factor was the establishment of mandatory government boarding schools, such as the Carlisle Industrial School, which operated from 1879 to 1918. Approximately 10 million American Indians were sent to these schools, where "English-only" programs aimed to "convert" students

• The idea of these schools was an alternative to genocide, which made them really brutal 

  • nearly exterminated shared systems like Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL).

  • Violent disruptions like the Indian Removal Act, the Trail of Tears, and the California Goldrush Genocide caused massive displacement and the literal death of speech communities.

3. What is the bias that Erica Cartmill refers to in the title of her piece on animal

communication research and how does she propose that researchers overcome it?

• The "Human" Bias: Humans primarily communicate using Symbols. These are sounds or marks that have meaning only because we all agreed on them (for example, the word "apple" doesn't look or smell like a fruit; we just assigned it that name).

• The "Animal" Difference: Animals often use Icons (signs that look like what they mean, such as a cat arching its back to look big) or Indices (signs physically connected to the meaning, such as an alarm call that is triggered by the actual sight of a predator).

• The "Bridging" Problem: Because we are so focused on symbols, researchers often look for "human-like" traits (like grammar or specific words) in animals. When they don't find them, they often wrongly assume the animal isn't communicating intelligently.

• The Solution (Ostension): Cartmill suggests we stop looking for "animal words" and start looking at Context.

• Focus on Intent: Instead of just analyzing the signal (the noise or gesture), researchers should look at how animals use "common ground"—shared knowledge between two individuals—to make sure their message gets across.

4. How do pronouns figure into Emile Benveniste’s theory of personhood?

• Language is not an instrument

  • Language is a condition of humanity, not something that was invented

• Language alone constitutes the reality of being 

• Consciousness of self only exists by contrast

  • I only exists if a YOU does

  • I/you posits another person

• I&YOU are shifters/deixis

  • Ability to shift perspectives, referential indexicality 

• The person who says I becomes the dietetic center at that moment

• Third person (“he/she/they”) is different:

  • Benveniste argues the third person is actually a “non-person” because it refers to someone outside the speech interaction.

5. What is the relationship between the terms language and dialect? What challenges are

there in making this distinction?

• Every dialect is a language, but not every language is a dialect 

• Political vs. Linguistic: Linguistically, there is no real difference between a "language" and a "dialect." Both are rule-governed systems of communication. The distinction is usually political. As noted in class, "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy."

  • Power Dynamics: Varieties of speech spoken by those in power are labeled "languages," while varieties spoken by marginalized or smaller groups are often labeled "dialects."

  • Weinreich said the army and navy thing

  • A Language is a dialect that has the state with it

    • Literal ruling class

    • Like Yiddish did not have a state

  • Like the Scots dialect

    • Some recognize it as an English dialect and some recognize it as its own language

      • The difference usually lies in if you recognize Scotland

• Mutual Intelligibility: One common challenge in making the distinction is "mutual intelligibility"—the idea that if two people can understand each other, they speak the same language. However, this is inconsistent; for example, Danes and Norwegians can understand each other but claim to speak different languages, while speakers of different "dialects" of Chinese often cannot understand each other at all.

• The Dialect Continuum: In many parts of the world, language changes gradually from village to village. There is no clear line where one "language" ends and another begins, making any boundary drawn between them feel arbitrary.

• National Identity: Labels are often used to create a sense of national unity. Calling a specific variety the "National Language" helps a country build a shared identity, even if many other "dialects" are spoken within its borders.

6. What are the three perspectives on African American English (AAE) that Marcyliena

Morgan identifies? Explain her concept of AAE as a counterlanguage and relate it to

these perspectives.

Marcyliena Morgan identifies three primary perspectives on African American English (AAE): the deficit view, which incorrectly dismisses the variety as "broken" English; the difference view, which acknowledges it as a rule-governed linguistic system; and the social-political view, which emphasizes its role in identity and resistance. Central to these perspectives is the concept of counterlanguage, a sophisticated communication system developed by enslaved people to share information and maintain community through "coded" meanings and indirection. This counterlanguage allowed speakers to communicate with "insiders" while remaining opaque to "outsiders" or overseers. By framing AAE as a counterlanguage, Morgan refutes the deficit perspective by showing that linguistic deviations are actually strategic choices, while simultaneously expanding the difference perspective to include the historical agency and resilience of the African American speech community.

7. In the final paragraphs of Borges’ short story “Funes, the memorious,” the narrator

doubts that Funes was capable of thought, because, “To think is to forget a difference, to

generalize, to abstract.” Explain this passage with respect to the story and our

discussions in class.

• In Borges' story, Funes possesses an infinite memory, leading him to invent a language where every individual object has a unique name. 

• The narrator argues this makes thought impossible because human language relies on generic terms, prototypes, and stereotypes to function. 

  • Most words are "abstract generalizations"; 

    • for example, the word "leaf" allows us to group millions of distinct objects under one concept. 

Funes' inability to forget the minute differences between a leaf at 3:01 p.m. and the same leaf at 3:02 p.m. means he cannot "think," as thinking requires the ability to ignore individual differences in favor of general categories

Explain Referential Function with 2 examples

1. Giving directions to a store.

2. The water is 100 degrees. The earth is round. The sky is blue.

This is the most common function. It is used to convey objective information about the world. It focuses on the "truth" of the message and describes a situation or object that exists outside the speaker and listener. 

Explain Poetic Function with 2 examples

1. Rhyming slogans like "Ama sya, ama ghella".

2. The parallel structure in a speech: "I came, I saw, I conquered."

This focuses on the form of the message itself—how it sounds or how it is structured. It uses techniques like rhythm, rhyme, or parallelism to make the message "palpable" and memorable, rather than just informative.

Explain Phatic Function with 2 examples

1. Saying "Hello, can you hear me?" on a phone.

2. Small talk about the weather.

Aimed at opening or maintaining the channel of communication (the "contact").

Explain Emotive Function with 2 examples

1. Yelling "Ouch!" after a stubbed toe.

2. Shouting "Wow!" when seeing a beautiful sunset.

Expresses the speaker's internal state or feelings directly. It expresses an immediate emotion, attitude, or physical feeling. It doesn't describe the world (referential); it describes how the speaker feels about the world at that moment.

Explain Conative Function with 2 examples

1. Commanding "Call me!".

1. A mother telling her child, "Eat your vegetables!"

Foregrounded through imperatives or vocatives meant to influence the hearer. This is meant to produce an action in the listener. It is focused on the "you" in the conversation. It often uses the imperative mood (commands) or vocatives (calling someone's name) to influence their behavior.

Explain Metalingual Function with 2 examples

1. Asking "What does 'shibboleth' mean?".

2. Pointing out: "That word is a noun, not a verb."

Occurs whenever language is used to discuss or clarify the language (the "code") itself. Talk about talk.