Anthro 4 Key Terms

Print capitalism

Mass printing of books and newspapers in vernacular languages for profit; helped create national consciousness.

Imagined community

Community whose members feel connected despite never meeting most other members.

Benedict Anderson

Scholar who posited that nations are socially constructed through shared language, print media, and collective imagination.

Nation

An imagined political community that is limited, sovereign, and communal.

Vernacularization

Shift from sacred or elite languages to everyday spoken languages.

Liturgical language

Sacred religious language such as Latin used across large religious communities.

Role of Latin in Anderson

Latin unified Europe religiously; its decline helped create separate national identities.

Martin Luther

Used print and German translations to spread ideas and weaken Church authority.

Writing is a technology

Writing is not language itself but a visual system used to represent language.

Conditions for early writing

Cities, hierarchy, labor specialization, and centralized administration.

Script vs orthography

Script is the writing system; orthography is the spelling conventions within it.

Graphic pluralism

One language written using multiple writing systems.

Javanese graphic pluralism

Javanese can be written using Roman, Javanese, and Arabic scripts.

Abjad

Writing system representing mainly consonants (Arabic, Hebrew).

Abugida

Writing system where consonants include vowel information (Javanese, Amharic).

Syllabary

Writing system with one symbol per syllable (Cherokee).

Alphabet

Writing system with symbols representing individual sounds (English).

Logogram

Symbol representing a word or concept (Chinese).

Graeber and Wengrow

Scholars who discussed how Indigenous critiques of Europe influenced Enlightenment thought.

Kondiaronk

Wendat intellectual who criticized European greed, inequality, and punishment.

Jesuit Relations

Published accounts that spread Indigenous ideas throughout Europe.

Noble savage

Stereotype portraying Indigenous peoples as naturally pure and simple.

Myth of the myth of the noble savage

Indigenous critiques were real and influential, not simply European inventions.

Schismogenesis

Groups define themselves in opposition to one another.

Counterpublic

Alternative discourse community existing outside dominant society.

Media ideologies

Beliefs about which forms of communication are appropriate or authentic.

Cryptolect

Secret or semi-secret language variety used by a group.

Bahasa Gay

Queer speech variety used in Indonesia.

Polari

Historic coded language used by queer communities in Britain.

Emic

Insider perspective.

Etic

Outsider analytical perspective.

Winter Count

Pictorial Indigenous historical record demonstrating that history can be recorded without alphabetic writing.

Print culture in Anderson

Print creates nations.

Print culture in Graeber & Wengrow

Print spreads Indigenous critiques and influences Enlightenment thought.