Linguistic Anthropology

John Fischer

demonstrated that small differences in pronunciation like /in/ and /ing/ connect to gender and social class. 

William Labov

showed that pronunciation of /r/ is different across social class.

Register

style of language used in social situations. Goodbye, bye, see ya. what you are doing and where you are.

Style

distinctive form of language connected to some social category. who you are.

Markedness 

difference in social roles are marked by differences in vocabulary and grammars. 

Names and Naming

study of onomastics

name transforms a human being into a person, providing him or her with an identity, a link to kinship unit, and a passage rite into a specific society.

Claude Levi Strauss

myths as original source of development of language semantics. built form binary oppositions. (create meaning, ways humans think, group the world, build language)

Vico

original mythic stories led the foundation of first institutions and revealed that the first type of langauge used by humans was poetic and metaphorical 

• each age has their own language, social institutions, and narrative 

Freud

myth psychoanalysis find traces of motivation and psychic forces hidden deeply in individuals

Jung

evidence for a collective unconscious in the human species constituted by primordial images (archetypes) that continue to seek expression through symbolism and forms of expression.

Dialects 

Georg Wenker 

• variant version of language 

Diglossia

Charles Ferguson

• study of how language variations correlates with social perceptions, identities, and distinction 

• two distinct variations of the same language, each serving different social functions

Slang

socially based variants of language used by specific groups

Jargon

slang of specialized groups (lawyers, doctors, etc..)

Tagging 

frequent use of tags to secure consensus 

Vocalism

use of highly charged expressions

Hesitancy

marked by the use of fillers and hedges

Profanity 

use of vulgarism and swear words of various kinds 

Social Markers

signs of gender roles, identity, or some other socially significant phenomenon 

minimal pairs

pairs like pill vs bill which differ by only one sound in same position

functor words

word such as the or and that have grammatical function

Marked Words

a word that cannot be used to described a man

Unmarked Words

a word that is used as the generic to describe both women and men 

Markedness Theory

identifies certain forms in a language as more common or neutral and others as more distinctive or marked

Teutonic

names consisting of two elements joined together

Aptonym

word with the opposite meaning of another word 

Mutual Intelligibility

the ability of speakers to understand each other

Dialect Atlas

atlas of maps showing language forms in specific groups

pidgins

simplified language made up of elements of two or more languages 

creole

language that has developed from the mixture of two or more languages becoming the first language of a group

argot

slang of specialized groups, especially criminal

Sketching

the fact that many slang words are colorful or graphic