Chapter Eight - Language and Culture

Biocultural

An approach that focuses on the interaction of biology and culture

Code Switching

Changing speech behavior when moving from one speech context to another

Constructivist Approach to Culture

Contemporary approach that sees culture as webs of symbolic and material relationships within and between cultural groups; culture is something humans use, something we “do.” Culture is the lens through which we interpret our worlds, something that both makes things evident and hides things from us 

Core Vocabularies 

The most basic and long-lasting words in any language. Pronouns, lower numerals, and names for body parts and natural objects 

Creole

A pidgin language that has become the first language of a group of people, learned by the children of that group as their native language

Descriptive Linguistics

Studying the internal structure of language

Dialects 

Varying forms of a language that remain mutually intelligible 

Displacement

In language, to be able to refer to things and events removed in time and space 

Ethnolinguistics

A facet of linguistics and anthropology studying the relationships between language and culture and the performance of language in social and cultural contexts 

Form classes

The parts of speech or categories of words that function the same way in a sentence

Gestures

Expressions and postures that encode intended and unintended meanings

Glottochronology

A method for identifying the approximate time that languages branched off from a common ancestor

Golden Barriers 

Referring to the way that people often mark themselves as humans and different in kind from other animals, and thereby special 

Heteroglossia

A coexisting multiplicity of speech contexts

Historical Linguistics

Studying how language changes over time

Kinesics

The branch of linguistics devoted to studying the nonverbal components of language

Language 

Sounds and gestures arranged in culturally-sanctioned ways to symbolically communicate 

Langue

Referring to an ideal structure underlying spoken language consisting of rules of phonology, morphology, and syntax

Linguistic Relativity

The premise that language and culture are inextricably intertwined, each one influencing the other 

Linguistic Sign

A component of language meaning consisting of a signifier (like a word), and the thing that is signified or referred to

Linguistics

The systematic study of language

Message

The literal meaning of words spoken, what the words mean

Meta message

The undeclared, implied, context-based meaning of what is said; often involving the way something is said

Minimal pair

Two words that differ in only one sound, the difference (contrast) indicating different meanings of the two words and the presence of two different meaningful sounds in a language; the basic unit of structure in a language 

Morpheme

The smallest unit of sounds that in a language conveys meaning

Morphology

The rules through which sounds in a language are made into meaningful groups (words)

Multivocal

The way symbols (including language and cultural phenomena more generally) contain multiple meanings, some of them contradictory that are not always resolved 

Open(ness)

The characteristic of human communication that speaks to its almost infinite potential to understand and create new things 

Paralanguage

Vocal effects like groaning, sighing, pitch, tempo, and volume that convey meaning

Parole

Term for the use of language, speaking in context; based on a language’s underlying structure (its langue), but is always an imperfect embodiment of that underlying structure

Phoneme

The smallest unit of sound that makes a difference in meaning in a language; alter meaning but have no meaning themselves 

Phonetics

The systematic identification and description of distinctive speech sounds in a language 

Phonology 

The study of the sounds that are used in a language 

Pidgin

A “trade” language formed by simplifying the lexical items and syntax of two or more languages and combining them together

Prevaricate

To make a statement that violates convention; to lie or state falsehoods

Proxemics

The cross-cultural study of people’s perception and use of space

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis 

Language provides “grooves” of expression that predispose speakers of language to perceive the world in a certain way 

Signified

A component of a linguistic sign, a thing, process, phenomenon, etc. that is marked by a signifier  

Signifier

A component of a linguistic sign, a kind of symbol, that represents a specific thing, phenomenon, process, or concept 

Speech Context

The immediate social environment in which communication occurs

Syntax

The rules by which morphemes are arranged into meaningful groups (sentences)