Social and cultural anthropology- Week 4

What is language 

• A symbolic system of communication expressing meaning through voice, gestures, and writing 

• Speech (and gestures) are biological, cultural, social and political 

• Language and culture deeply influence one another; language is an essential part of culture 

• The capacity for language in our brains enables us to learn and pass down stored knowledge 

• Writing allowed advanced culture to develop 

• Cant really have culture without language because while there are non language aspects of culture, its so deeply embedded in culture as a whole they’re inseparable 

The importance of human language to human culture 

• Language can be considered a culture's most important feature 

• Language and culture are inseparable 

• Relies on symbols language is a symbolic system) 

  • All human languages are symbolic systems that make use of symbols to convey meaning 

  • A symbol is anything that serves to refer to something else, but has a meaning that cannot be guess because there is no obvious connection between the symbol and its referent 

  • This feature of human language is called arbitrariness 

  • Without connection between symbol and arbitrary meanings, wouldn’t have language- technically no direct connection between symbol and what it represents 

Arbitrary symbols

• Associations between words/ sounds and the things they represent are arbitrary; there is no inherent or logical relation between words and sound/ form 

• Meaning provided by tradition and consensus 

• Becausee symbols are arbitrary they have to be learned 

• Key in english is pronounced exactly as qui in french, meaning who and ki in japanese, meaning tree

Language and communication: signs and symbols 

• Humans use symbols freely 

• Humans use words to deceive 

• Human language is infinitely creative 

Biological basis of language 

• The human anatomy that allowed the development of language emerged six to seven million years ago when the first human ancestors became bipedal - changed a number of different anatomical structures, amd allowed us to use our arms for other things, the enlargement of the brain 

• Larynx (voice box or adam's apple) is lower in humans than in great apes 

• Pharynx (throat cavity) is longer 

• Tongue and palate (roof of mouth) are rounded (apes have a very flat, long roof of the mouth)

• Brain structures for language are unique to humans 

• Human brain development crucial to language ability 

• Two areas in the left brain are specifically dedicated to the processing of language; no other species has them. They are the Broca’s area in the left frontal lobe near the temple, and Wernicke's area, in the temporal lobe just behind the left ear 

  • Dedicated to language 

  • Able to store a lot more language and aspects of language with these- vocab and other aspects takes a lot of processing, lots of brain power 

• Universal grammar- innate ability for developing children to acquire language Proposed by Noam Chomsky,

Universal grammar

• innate ability for developing children to acquire language. Proposed by Noam Chomsky, suggested that universal grammar is a universal template embedded in all our genes which gives us the ability to learn language. Sometimes pretty controversial, especially in terms of infants. Generally accepted thought that we have some ability to pick up language from a young age 

• KIds will mimic grammar used by people around them without using hte right words- gibberish but it sounds like having an argument, or a discussion. 

• Critical age hypothesis- child will gradually lose ability to acquire language naturally 

  • The case of genie 

    • Found at about 14, malnourished, mistreated, had minimal human interaction and couldn't speak at all when social services found her. Linguist worked with eh for abo0ut five years, but she never really was able to pick up language- ha the language ability of about a two year ol 

    • Further evidence for critical age hypothesis/ idea that it gets much much harder to learn language as we age 

  • Based on idea that kids have the innate ability to pick up language, but will lose it if it isn't used in the early years 

Biological basis of language: Open vs closed systems 

• All animals communicate and many animals make meaningful sounds, or use visual signs like facial expressions, color changes, body postures and movements, light (fireflies), or electricity (some eels). Many use the sense of smell and the sense of touch 

• Most animals use a combination of two or more of these systems 

• But their systems are closed systems in that they cannot create new meanings or messages 

• Human communication is an open system that can easily create new meanings 

Biological basis of language 

• Apes use gesture call system, are a little different 

• Great apes and other primates have relatively complex systems of communication that use varying combinations of sound, body language, scent, facial expression, and touch 

• Their systems have therefore bee referred to as gesture-call system 

• Humans share a number of forms of these gesture call systems, or non verbal system with the great apes 

• Theorized that spoken language evolved out of a system like this 

Communication

• Human language goes far beyond just the words we speak 

• Paralanguage (background features of speech or sounds that convey meaning 

• Non verbal communication 

  • Kinesics (body language/ movements) 

  • Proxemics (use of space) 

  • Haptics (touch) 

Paralanguage

• The characteristics of speech beyond the actual words spoken 

• These include features that are inherent to all speech: pitch, loudness, and tempo or duration of the sounds = voice qualities 

• Ex; a word or syllable that is held for an undue amount of time can intensify the impact of that word, compare “its beautiful” versus “its beauuuuuuuuuutiful!” Making the impact louder, or higher pitched can serve to make part of that utterance more important 

• Other paralinguistic features that often accompany speech might be chuckle, a sigh or sob, deliberate throat clearing, and many other non verbal sounds like “hm”, “oh,” “ah, “um” = vocalization 

• Most nonverbal behaviors are unconsciously performed and not noticed unless someone violates the cultural standards for them 

Kinesics

• The terms used to designate all forms of human body language, including gestures, body position and movement, facial expressions, and eye contact 

• Diff cultures have diff rules on how to use them ex; japan vs western stuff in interviews 

• Facial expressions can convey a hist of messages, usually related to the person's attitude or emotional state 

• Hand gestures may convey unconscious messages, or constitute deliberate messages that can replace or emphasize verbal ones 

Proxemics 

• The study of the social use of space, specifically the distance an individual tries to maintain around bumself in interactions with others 

• The size of the “space bubble” depends on a number of social factors, including the relationship between two people, their relative status, their gender and age their current attitude toward each other, and above all their culture 

Haptics

• The cultural use of touch in communication 

• The most personal and intimate form of nonverbal communication; can include back-patting, slapping, nuzzling, kissing, hand holding, shoulder rubbing, shaking hands, etc. 

• Touch is codifies, so culturally-based misunderstandings can easily arise 

Language universals 

1. All humans have a human language and use it to communicate 

2. All human languages change over time, a reflection of the fact that all cultures are also constantly changing 

3. All languages are systematic, rule driven, and equally complex overall, and equally capable of expressing any idea that the speaker wishes to convey. There are no primitive languages. 

4. All languages are symbolic systems 

5. All languages have a basic word order of elements, like subject, verb, and object, with variations 

6. All languages have similar basic grammatical categories such as nouns and verbs 

7. Every spoken language is made up of discrete sounds that can be categorized as vowels or consonants 

Descriptive linguistics 

• The study of the structures of language is called descriptive linguistics 

• Descriptive linguistics discover and describe the phonemes of a language, study called phonology 

• They study the lexicon (the vocabulary) of a language and how the morphemes are used to create new words or morphology 

• They analyze the rules by which speakers create phrases and sentences, or the study of syntax 

• And they look at how these features all combine to convey meaning in certain social contexts, fields of study called semantics and pragmatics 

Syntax 

• Rules of syntax tell the speaker how to put morphemes together grammatically and meaningfully 

• There are two main types of syntactic rules: rules that govern word order, and rules that direct the use of certain morphemes that perform a grammatical function 

• Ex; order of word in English sentence “ the cat chased the dog” cannot be changed around or its meaning would change: “the dog chased the cat” (something entirely different)  or “Dog cat chased the” (something meaningless) 

• English relies on word order much more than many other languages do because it has so few morphemes that can do the same type of work

Semantics 

• The field of semantics focuses on the stud of the meanings of words and other morphemes as well as how the meanings of phrases and sentences derive from them  

• For example, linguists have been especially interested in examining the multitude of meanings and uses of the word “like” among american youth, made famous through the film “valley girl” (1983), and its spread across the north america 

Pragmatics 

• The study of pragmatics looks at the social and cultural aspects of meanings and how the context of an interaction affects it 

• Ex; if you're at the dinner table and say “can you pass the salt?” you are probably not asking if the other person is capable of passing the salt. Often the more polite the utterance, the less direct it will be 

• Why we choose certain words over others when we do, 

• Other ex’ 

• “What time is it?” 

• “ the milkman just arrived” 

• No sense out of context, but if the milkman comes at seven everyday, you know what it means 

Food foragers and food producers 

• Food foragers (those who find food) seek their food among available resources in their environment 

  • Also called hunter gatherers 

• Food producers (those who grow food) transform the environment by farming and raising animals, include 

  • Horticulturalists 

  • Pastoralists 

  • Intensive agriculturalists 

  • Industrialists 

• Food getting strategies are flexible and several strategies may be used at one time, with one generally being dominant 

• A culture's foodways are fundamental to the structure and functioning of society. 

• Foodways= the methods, knowledge, and practices, norms and attitudes regarding food in a particular society 

Food foragers 

• Humans have foraged for 99% of our existence, essentially “ becoming human” through characteristics of foraging groups 

• Foragers seek food among available resources, they do not plant 

• Foodways: wild plants, animals, fish, insects, depending on area ecology/ ecosystem e.g. Land based plant foods include a wide variety of wild fruit and veggies, roots, seeds, tree sap, and nuts; or in marine environments, foragers daily meals may consist of fish, marine mammals, seaweek, and shellfish in addition to land based items 

• Hadza hinter gatherers top left- wild honey and top right- guinea fowl 

Food foragers- Hadza

• While men specialize in procuring meat, honey and baobab fruit, women specialize in tubers, berries and greens 

• Women forage in larger groups, while men do so alone or in pairs. Also forage cooperatively (men and women) for honey and fruit 

• Highly skills, selective and opportunistic foragers (know where, when and how to get what they need, knowledge had been passed down) \Use bows treated with poison 

• The greater honeyguide and the hadza share a symbiotic relationship where the bird helps locate bees nests for honey,and Hadza men use smoke and tools to extract honey, with the honeyguide consuming leftover wax. 

• This partnership is integral to the hadza diet and has historical significance in human evolution by enhancing det energy density. Honeyguide also appears in Hadza mythology  

Food foragers: Social organization

• Social organization: live in small bands (Hadza bands ~ 30 people) 

• Low social density (the frequency and intensity of interactions among group members in a society) 

• Smaller number of people - fewer chances of conflicts in harsh environment; when conflict occurs person(s) have to leave and join another permanently or temporarily 

• Egalitarian: A society in which every member has the same access to resources and status; non hierarchical 

• Cooperative; bands are cooperative societies, om which sharing is a key strategy for survival 

• Bands share knowledge about food, healing, land etc. Resulting in a lack of specialization 

• Environment: foragers are nomadic (meaning they move frequently within a territory) like the hadza or nomadic with base camps like some inuit communities 

• Today, less available land/ areas for foraging due to development and climate change; most foraging peoples today have mixed diets, with food coming from many different sources, including local commodity stores 

Food producers: Horticulturalists 

• Horticulture= practice of maintaining gardens that produce food and other resources for . family use. Because tending crops requires daily maintenance, groups who plan must settle in one area 

• Use simple hand tools; rely on rainfall or water; most food is produced but may also hunt and gather 

• Grow roots, tubers and grains, legumes, fruits and veg 

• Foodways: lant regionally appropriate crops with supplemental forgains 

• Foragers may become horticulturalists when the carrying capacity of the land is no longer enough to sustain the group 

• Carrying capacity: the number of people that can be sustained with the existing resources of a given area is called the carrying capacity of the land 

• Social organization: food getting tasks are divided between sexes, with rolled different depending on the region 

• For e.g among Yanomami, men clear + prepare fields, plant and harvest crops, also hunt and fish, thus controlling groups’ food resources while women of domestic work (process food, spin cotton, weave baskets) 

• In contrast, among Jivaro, women are responsible for planting, tending, and harvesting crops while en supplement food resources with game and fish 

• Environment: small land plots; may use swidden cultivation which involved clearing land, burning the debris on land, creating nutrient rich ash on soil for planting 

• After harvest, move on to another area for planting. Old plots remain unseeded for a season or more (fallow) and eventually wild plants regrow 

Sapir Whorf hypothesis

'Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as

ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become

the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality

essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving

specific problems of communication and reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to

a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.' 1929

• two different cultures with different languages will have different perceptual experiences. How languages shape the way we think.

• The extent to which the language we use determines the way in which we view and think about the world.

• Linguistic Determinism (Strong Hypothesis): language actually determines thought, that language and thought are identical.

• Linguistic Reality (Weak Hypothesis): Thought is merely affected by or influenced by our language.

Linguistic Determinism - Strong Hypothesis

Suggests that language determines or limits the way people think and perceive the world.

• Argues that the structure and vocabulary of a language can entirely shape and restrict an individual's cognitive processes and worldview.

• Implies a strong and direct causation between language and thought, suggesting that speakers of different languages have fundamentally different cognitive experiences

Linguistic Relativity –Weak Hypothesis

Suggests that language influences thought and perception but does not entirely determine them.

• Argues that language can shape the way people think and the categories they use to classify the world.

• Recognizes that while language can influence thought, it is not the sole factor; other cognitive and cultural factors also play a role.

• Implies that different languages may lead speakers to focus on certain aspects of their environment or categorize things differently but does not suggest radical cognitive differences

Linguistic relativity (weak hypothesis) is generally more supported by empirical research and is considered a plausible concept in the field of linguistics and cognitive science.

Vocabulary differences have behavioral effects

distinctions encoded in one language are unique to that language alone

 Languages vary in the number of basic colors words they have. Many anthropologists argued that this was strong evidence for linguistic relativity: color distinctions seemed to be created by language.

 e.g. The colour spectrum, is a continuum, each colour gradually blending into the next; there are no sharp boundaries. But we impose boundaries; we talk of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

 These discriminations are arbitrary and in other languages the boundaries are different

Colour Terms

Dani (New Guinea) have only two colour categories

• mili which means dark, cold colours such as black

• mola which means warm, bright colours such as white

  • The Pirahã of Brazil have no words for colours

• languages with three colour terms add red

• those with four add yellow or green

• English has 11

• (red, orange, yellow, green, black, white, blue, purple, pink, brown, grey)

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – Strong or Weak?

Sapir Whorf says habitual thought might be influenced, if not determined, by linguistic structures.

+ We perceive the world through language -the colors we see are predetermined by what our culture prepares us to see

+ Do we see blue and green colours because our language has two different names for these two neighbouring parts of the colour spectrum?

+ Can the Tiv perceive or distinguish between Red and yellow?

Linguistic Relativity: Vocabulary differences have behavioral effects

Rosch (1972) disagreed, arguing from research among Dani people (New Guinea; two basic color terms) that speakers of all language have the same physiological ability to perceive distinctions among the 11 ‘landmark’ colors.

+Berlin and Kay (1969) showed that these landmark colors are the basis of color systems in all world languages.

+However, color vocabulary still provides support for linguistic relativity: the number of basic words in a person’s color vocabulary influence how easy it is for that person to recognize those distinctions.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis- Colour perception

In other words: The physiology of our eyes is essentially the same.

• Humans share similar sense perceptions of color despite differences in color terminology from one language to another.

• People can see subtle gradations of color and can comprehend other ways of dividing up the spectrum of visible light.

However, as a society's economy and technology increase in complexity, the number of color terms usually also increases.

• i.e., the spectrum of visible light gets subdivided into more categories.

• As the environment changes, culture and language typically respond by creating new terminology to describe it.

Grammatical structure has behavioral effects

• Navajo verb forms encode shape, flatness and flexibility of objects acted upon

• Carroll and Casagrande looked at the Navajo people - they place great stress on form and shape, rigidity and material from which an object is constructed. They looked at three groups of children:

  • only Navajo speaking

  • only English speaking

  • bilingual

• showed them a green stick, a green rope and a blue rope and a blue stick and asked them which objects went together

• Navajo speakers said objects with the same form i.e. ropes went together

• English speakers categorize by colour rather than form put green stick and green rope together

• Bilingual = a mix - confirms the relativity of language hypothesis

Language and Time

• Western languages (and cultures) view time as a flowing river in which we are being carried continuously away from a past, through the present, and into a future.

• Our verb systems reflect that concept with specific tenses for past, present, and future. We think of this concept of time as universal, that all humans see it the same way.

• A Hopi speaker has very different ideas and the structure of their language both reflects and shapes the way they think about time.

Language and time- The hopi

The Hopi language has no present, past, or future tense (contested by Malotki 1983 who says it’s different sense of tense ). Instead, it divides the world into what Whorf called the manifested and unmanifest domains.

• Manifested = physical universe, the present, the immediate past and future; The unmanifest domain = remote past and the future + world of desires, thought, and life forces.

• Also, there are no words for hours, minutes, or days of the week.

• Native Hopi speakers often had great difficulty adapting to life in the English speaking world when it came to being “on time” for work or other events.

• Not how they were conditioned to behave with respect to time and language

The Pirahã of the Amazon

• No exact counting words only tones in words to indicate large quantity and small quantity (few, more)

• Unable to learn counting arithmetic (may not need it?)

• One word for mother, father, do not keep track of distant relationships

Cultural Models

Cultural Model: implicit, non-conscious construction of what is ‘real’ and ‘natural’, shared by a group, and unconsciously embedded in language

• Examples:

(1) Illness = war: resistance to sickness, fighting a cold etc.

• (2) Virtue = up / Bad = down. He’s an upstanding citizen. I wouldn’t stoop so low. It doesn’t measure up to my standards etc

Metaphors

A metaphor is an expression in which one kind of thing is understood and experienced in terms of another entirely unrelated thing;

+George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) suggested that our everyday language is much richer in metaphors than we might suspect

+Metaphors are means of viewing one kind of experience in terms of another, and metaphors imply certain theories (or “folk theories”) about the world or our experience of it.

+Metaphors are not just linguistic expressions but may also reflect and shape our cultural and conceptual understanding of the world & attitudes on a variety of human experiences

Examples: The mind as machine (he broke down), Ideas as plants (idea came to fruition, fertile imagination), and ideas as food (half baked, warmed over, raw)

• the metaphors in a language can reveal aspects of the culture of its speakers.

• Example: Argument - the conceptual metaphor in American culture can be stated as ARGUMENT IS WAR (I won the argument. He shot down every point I made. They attacked every argument we made. Your point is right on target. I had a fight with my boyfriend last night.

• Lakoff: what if ARGUMENT IS DANCE (not something to be won or lost, with no strategies for attacking or defending, but rather as a dance where the dancers’ goal is to perform in an artful, pleasing way)

Language Variation: Dialects

Number of languages spoken around the world is difficult to pin down, but is

~6,000 and 7,000.

+ Why is it difficult? The term language is commonly used to refer to the idealized

“standard” of a variety of speech with a name, such as English, Turkish, Swedish, Swahili, or Urdu.

+ The word dialect is often applied to a subordinate variety of a language and the common assumption is that we can understand someone who speaks another dialect of our own language

Difference between distinct Chinese dialects vs. similarity of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian languages

+Linguist John McWhorter: “dialects is all there is”: a continuum of language variation is geographically distributed across populations in much the same way that human physical variation is

How does variation develop?

+Language contact: Interactions with other language groups along paths of migration and settlement can result in mutual borrowing of vocabulary, pronunciation, and some syntax. E.g. “Spanglish”

+ Social class: Social status differences cut across all regional variations of English. These differences reflect the education and income level of speakers.

Language is Shared

profoundly social

+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. Eh!

Language in its Social Settings: Language and Identity

Language expresses, symbolizes and maintains the social order

+Social variables like age, gender, class etc. influence a person's use of language

+The way we speak can be seen as a marker of who we are and with whom we identify

+We talk like the other people around us, where we live, our social class, our region of the country, our ethnicity, and even our gender influence how we talk.

“Standard” Variety of a Language

The standard of any language is simply one of many variants that has been given special prestige in the community because it is spoken by the people who have the greatest amount of prestige, power, and (usually) wealth.

+English:

+ invention of the printing press in the sixteenth-century

+ More than a hundred years of deliberate efforts by grammarians to standardize spelling and grammatical rules.

+ favored the dialect spoken by the aristocracy.

+Standard of any language is usually artificial, idealized form of language, the language of education.

+Must learn its rules in school because it is not anyone’s true first language

Standard Language & Social Class

Most prestigious form will be that of the most powerful group in society because this group controls education and the media.

+ Prestige form often forms the standard language

+ A national language permits internal cohesion and fosters external distinction

+ Forms a powerful base for national identity

+ Least prestigious form associated with low status, low education.

+ the social prestige or stigma attached to linguistic varieties often supports and expresses the value attached to social identities.

+ Eg. the Queen’s English vs Cockney English (a dialect of the English language, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners since the 19th century.)

Vernaculars

Non-standard varieties known as vernaculars - usually distinguished from the standard by their inclusion of such stigmatized forms as multiple negatives (the use of the verb form ain’t (which was originally the normal contraction of am not, as in “I ain’t,” comparable to “you aren’t,” or “she isn’t”);

+pronunciation of words like this and that as dis and dat

+pronunciation of final “–ing” as “–in;” and any other feature that grammarians have decreed as “improper” English.

Code Switching

Everyone has access to a number of different language variations and registers.

+Participants in two or more speech communities can move easily between them when the context calls for it. This move is called code switching because it shifts between speech styles (“codes”) known to each group.

+Code switching also occurs between different languages when multilingual speakers talk together

Language and Ethnicity

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect of American English with a distinctive history.

+ Emerged from pidgin used by West African traders. Pidgin = a simplified language form, constructed impromptu, or by convention, between individuals or groups of people.

+ Developed into Black English plantation creole = a language that develops from a pidgin when it becomes so widely used that children acquire it as one of their first languages.

+ All African-Americans do not speak AAVE, and people other than African-Americans also speak it (e.g. Eminem, who grew up in a predominantly black neighbourhood in Detroit)

Language and Gender

Children are taught from birth how to behave appropriately as a male or a female in their culture, and different cultures have different standards of behavior.

+ Not all men and women in a society meet these standards, but when they do not they may pay a social price. Some societies are fairly tolerant of violations of their standards of gendered behavior, but others are less so

For example, in Canada/US, men are generally expected to speak in a low, rather monotone pitch; it is seen as masculine. If they do not sound sufficiently masculine, North American men are likely to be negatively labeled as effeminate.

Women, on the other hand, are freer to use their entire pitch range, which they often do when expressing emotion, especially excitement (but may likewise be considered unfeminine at lower registers

language and gender- women

+Women tend to use minimal responses in a conversation more than men. These are the vocal indications that one is listening to a speaker, such as m- hm, yeah, I see, wow, and so forth. They tend to face their conversation partners more and use more eye contact than men.

+Tannen (1996, 2010): women tend to use styles that are relatively cooperative, to emphasize an equal relationship, while men seem to talk in a more competitive way to establish their positions in a hierarchy. She emphasizes that both men and women may be cooperative and competitive in different ways.

+Robin Lakoff (1973, 1985) – women’s speech can be distinguished from that of men’s in a number of ways including:

+Hedges: Phrases like "sort of", "kind of", "it seems like“

+Super-polite forms: "Would you mind..." "...if it's not too much to ask" "Is it okay if...?"

+Apologize more: "I'm sorry, but I think that...“

+Upspeak (pitch increases steadily as you approach the end of a sentence)

+Are these disempowering or meaningful and functional?

language and gender- other societies

Gendered speech styles differ in other societies: In rural Madagascar, men tend to use a very flowery style of talk, using proverbs, metaphors and riddles to indirectly make a point and to avoid direct confrontation. Women on the other hand tend to speak bluntly and say directly what is on their minds (Keenan 1996)

+ Both admire men’s speech and think of women’s speech as inferior.

+ Thus, women take on social tasks that require direct or aggressive speech

+ Bargaining in the market

+ Cases where direct criticism is desired

+ And women control the marketplaces where tourists bargain for prices. It is hypothesized that this may be why Malagasy women are relatively independent economically.

Language and gender- japan

+ In Japan, women were traditionally expected to be subservient to men and speak using a “feminine” style, appropriate for their position as wife and mother

+ But changes in Japanese society in recent decades = more women joining the work force

+ They must find ways of speaking to maintain their feminine identities and at the same time express their authority in interactions with men, a challenging balancing act.

+ ‘”Womenomics” act took effect in 2016 in an effort by the Japanese government to promote a “society in which all women shine.”

+ But by 2020 only 15% of women in management roles, below the global average and far from the 30 percent target set by Japanese government.

Signed Languages

+Deaf communities are distinct cultures with shared characteristics

+Languages used by Deaf or hard of hearing people are referred to as signed languages, which differ in countries all over the world.

+More than 200 signed languages in the world plus dialects

Language Use in the Digital Age

Electronically mediated communication (EMC) includes texting, email, direct messaging, and gaming

+ Users text as if they were having a verbal conversation, as if it were “Fingered speech” (McWhorter 2013)

+ Text abbreviations also find their way into spoken language (“oh em gee”; “lol”

+ Emojis allow for more expressing more complex levels of meaning in the absence of verbal/facial expression (eg. “going to dinner with cousins ”and “going to dinner with cousins ”

+ Rapid change in vocabulary and rules for language use

Language Change: Historical Linguistics and Globalization

Globalization, migration, and urbanization often leads to suppression of local languages

+ Of 7,000 world languages, 2,000 languages currently “in danger” (Lewis 2013)

+ Language loss/extinction/death:

+ Genocide – e.g. Tasmania – due to colonization (disease, violence) no speakers of native Tasmanian languages remain.

+ Merging languages – e.g. Avestan (ancient Zoroastrian religious texts) evolved into several other languages.

+ Deliberate language suppression – e.g. use of Ainu language prohibited by non-Ainu Japanese society leading to language loss

Language Revitalization

+Revitalizing at-risk languages through schools – in New Zealand, school programs known as “language nests” established to provide early language learning in Maori to children

+Online use and visibility – a number of indigenous communities, & organizations, universities etc. are working diligently to ensure the survival of indigenous languages in Canada.

Using language (+traditional concepts, values, and metaphors) to adapt to contemporary realities and technologies –e.g. the word for “Internet” in Inuktitut, ikiaqqivik (“traveling through layers”), captures experience of using internet in cultural terms