Comprehensive Notes – Language & Culture (Anthropology)

Learning Objectives

  • Explain reciprocal relationship between language and culture.
  • Identify universal design features of human language.
  • Describe linguistic structures: phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics, pragmatics.
  • Assess links between language variation and ethnic/cultural identity.
  • Examine effects of class, ethnicity, gender, and other identities on language.
  • Evaluate causes of language change and strategies for preserving endangered tongues.

Culture & Language: Foundational Concepts

  • Culture = integrated system of mental elements, behaviours, and material products; 100 % learned.
  • Language is the primary symbolic system through which culture is encoded, shared, transmitted.
  • Culture ↔ Language are inseparable; complex human society impossible without both.
  • Arbitrariness: no intrinsic link between symbol & referent (e.g., colour symbolism; English key vs. French qui vs. Japanese ki).
  • Anthropologists must master linguistics to access cultural world-views of studied groups.

Biological Foundations of Human Language

  • Bipedalism (≈ 6−76-7 mya) freed hands → cranial base shifted → lower larynx → longer pharynx → greater resonance.
  • Human articulators (tongue, palate, lips, jaw) allow wider phonetic inventory than apes.
  • Brain enlargement & specialization:
    • Broca’s area (left frontal) = production.
    • Wernicke’s area (left temporal) = comprehension.
  • Speech mechanics: lungs → laryngeal vocal folds (pitch via slit width) → pharynx → oral/nasal cavities.

Language Acquisition & Universal Grammar

  • Noam Chomsky: Universal Grammar (UG) = genetically embedded template.
  • All typical infants acquire surrounding language(s) without explicit instruction; achieve core competence by age 3−43-4.
  • Critical Age Range Hypothesis: natural acquisition declines after puberty; evidenced by cases like “Genie.”
  • Similar constraints apply to second-language learning (late starters rarely attain native accent).

Human vs. Non-Human Communication Systems

  • Animal systems largely closed; limited innate messages (e.g., honeybee dance, bird song).
  • Human language = open system; infinite creativity, displacement, dual patterning.
  • Hockett’s Design Features (abridged):
    1. Mode of communication
    2. Semanticity
    3. Pragmatic function
    4. Interchangeability
    5. Cultural transmission
    6. Arbitrariness
    7. Discreteness
    8. Duality of patterning
    9. Displacement
    10. Productivity/creativity
  • Great apes taught sign languages show partial mastery; limited by cognition.

Human Non-Verbal Communication Systems

  • Gesture-call heritage shared with primates; language evolved within it.
  • Kinesics: gestures, posture, facial expression, eye contact; culturally specific (e.g., U.S. eye-contact = respect vs. Japanese avoidance).
  • Proxemics: culturally regulated personal-space “bubble” (e.g., Brazilian close vs. Japanese distant).
  • Paralanguage: pitch, loudness, tempo, vocal fillers ("um", laughs, sighs) shape meaning and politeness.
  • Cultural rule violations (e.g., stand too near) instantly noticed → conveys meta-messages.

Language Universals & Design Features

  • All cultures possess language; all tongues change through time.
  • No “primitive” languages; every system equally complex & expressive.
  • Shared properties: symbolic, dual patterning, vowel/consonant inventories, basic grammatical categories, word-order templates.

Structures of Language (Descriptive Linguistics)

  • Phonology: inventory & rules for sounds; IPA provides one-to-one symbol-sound mapping.
    • English ≈ 36−3736-37 phonemes; Hawaiian ≈ 1313.
  • Morphology: study of morphemes.
    • Unbound (root) vs. bound (affixes: un-, ‑ly, ‑s). Some languages (Chinese) few affixes; others (Swahili) many.
  • Syntax: rules for combining morphemes into phrases/sentences.
    • English relies on word order (SVO); Russian uses case endings, freer order.
  • Semantics: meanings of morphemes/lexicon (e.g., polyfunctional like in U.S. youth speech).
  • Pragmatics: context-dependent meaning; speech acts, politeness strategies ("Can you pass the salt?" = request).

Language Variation & Sociolinguistics

  • Language vs. Dialect distinctions are political; continuum of varieties (“dialects is all there is”).
    • Chinese “dialects” mutually unintelligible; Scandinavian “languages” largely intelligible.
  • Causes of dialect diversification:
    • Settlement patterns & migration routes
    • Geographic barriers (Appalachia, coastal islands)
    • Language contact (Spanglish, Franglais)
    • Social class, occupation, rural/urban split
    • Group identity (ethnicity, age, gender)
    • Internal linguistic processes (simplification, analogy).
  • Regional lexical examples: pop/soda/coke, pail/bucket, vayse/vahze.

Standard vs. Non-Standard Varieties

  • Standard emerges via power, wealth, printing-press codification (favoring elite dialect).
  • Prescriptive rules sometimes arbitrary (e.g., ban on double negatives from mathematical analogy; ain’t stigmatized).
  • William Labov’s NYC department-store study: /r/ pronunciation correlates with class and style-shifting; demonstrates code-switching and covert prestige.
  • Everyone possesses multiple registers adapted to context (family, clergy, professor, etc.).

Language, Thought & Culture (Linguistic Relativity)

  • Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: language influences perception & behaviour.
    • Whorf’s gasoline-drum fire: word empty implied safety.
    • Hopi tense system: manifested vs. unmanifest domains; shapes temporal cognition.
    • Abenaki temporal terms: sleep, winter, lunar-based calendar.
  • Lakoff & Johnson: conceptual metaphors underlie thinking (ARGUMENT IS WAR vs. hypothetical ARGUMENT IS DANCE).

Language & Social Identity

  • Social Class: proximity to standard indexes status; regional educated variants differ (Boston vs. Texas).
  • Ethnicity & AAVE:
    • African American Vernacular English = rule-governed dialect rooted in plantation creole origins; shares features with Southern white speech; stigmatization targets speakers.
    • Pidgin → Creole cycle; creole gains full grammatical complexity.
  • Gender:
    • U.S.: men expected low monotone; women broader pitch, more minimal responses.
    • Tannen: women’s cooperative vs. men’s competitive conversational styles.
    • Cross-cultural contrasts: Madagascar (men indirect/flowery, women blunt); Japan (women balancing femininity & authority).
  • Deaf Culture & Sign Languages:
    • Deaf (capital D) = cultural identity; competence in local sign language essential.
    • > 200200 distinct sign languages; ASL not “English on hands.”
    • Oralist education & cochlear implants controversial—perceived threats to Deaf identity.

Language Change & Historical Linguistics

  • Languages classified into families via cognates (e.g., Indo-European → Latin → Romance).
  • English evolution:
    • Old English (Germanic + Norse, up to 10661066).
    • Norman Conquest adds ≈ 10,00010{,}000 French/Latin words → Middle English.
    • Printing press + Great Vowel Shift (15th-16th c.) → Modern English.
  • Sample progression: Lord’s Prayer 995 AD vs. 1389 vs. 1526 vs. 1611.
  • Change drivers: contact, technological innovation (e.g., computer, google, texting), internal phonological processes.

Globalization, Language Shift & Revitalization

  • Colonial expansion spread European/Arabic/Russian languages; often suppressed local tongues.
  • Today ext≈6,000ext{≈}6{,}000 languages; top 1010 languages spoken by >50%50\% of 7+7+ billion people.
  • Predicted that up to 90%90\% of current languages may vanish by 21002100 → language death.
  • Language shift influenced by minority attitudes & majority pressures; Spanish in U.S. thriving; Korean-American attrition example (James Kim’s story).
  • Native American loss: boarding-school assimilation; now <140140 languages survive, many with handful of elders.
  • Revitalization: Wampanoag (Jessie Little Doe Baird) reconstructed via 17th-century texts; immersion schools producing new native speakers.

Digital Age & Future of Communication

  • “Digital natives” vs. “digital immigrants”; tech access mirrors socio-economic divides.
  • Social media facilitate activism (Arab Spring) & language preservation (e.g., Anishinaabemowin Facebook/Twitter interfaces, 70+70+ FB languages).
  • Technology both spreads dominant languages and provides tools for minority resilience.

Key Terms (selected)

  • Phoneme / Morpheme / Syntax / Semantics / Pragmatics
  • Bound vs. Unbound Morpheme
  • Pidgin → Creole
  • Duality of Patterning
  • Displacement / Productivity
  • Proxemics / Kinesics / Paralanguage
  • Code-switching / Register
  • Critical Age Range Hypothesis
  • Universal Grammar
  • Language Shift / Maintenance / Death

Ethical & Practical Implications

  • Language attitudes perpetuate inequality; stigmatizing dialects = proxy for discrimination.
  • Policies on bilingual education, Deaf oralism, or revitalization carry moral weight regarding cultural survival.
  • Anthropologists/linguists have responsibility to document and support endangered languages.