Ch 11 Varieties of Human Communication

Overview of Human Communication

• Humans communicate through multiple, mutually reinforcing channels:
  • Spoken and signed words, gestures, body language (posture, eye–gaze, clothing, hairstyle, tattoos, accessories).
  • Technological media: cell-phones, radio, television, film, Internet, social media, gaming worlds, print.
• Communication = process of sending & receiving meaningful messages; always symbol-based.
• Interaction partners extend beyond humans to include pets and supernatural beings in many cultures.

Language and Verbal Communication

• Language = systematic set of symbols/signs with learned & shared meanings; may be spoken, signed, written, or embodied.
• Humans are in near-constant communication—face-to-face, by mail, or via new media.

Two Defining Features of Human Language

• Productivity
  • Capacity to create infinite, novel, understandable utterances from finite rules.
  • Contrasts with non-human primate call systems (limited, stimulus-bound sounds).
  • Example: Kanzi the bonobo combines printed symbols, understands spoken English, even plays Ms. Pac-Man.
• Displacement
  • Ability to refer to past, future, hypothetical or imaginary events/people.
  • Enables storytelling, planning, science fiction, etc.

Case Study: Pirahã (Brazil)

• ~350 rainforest foragers; language challenges assumed universals:
  • Only three pronouns; virtually no past tense, color terms, or numbers (only “about one”).
  • Simple grammar (no subordinate clauses) yet complex verb system and rich prosody (stress, intonation).
  • No myths, stories, or visual art beyond simple ornaments.
  • Remain monolingual despite 200+ years of outside contact.
  • Demonstrates that languages can down-play productivity & displacement while fully serving cultural needs.

Research Approaches to Language Use

• Traditional linguistic anthropology: qualitative fieldwork & participant observation.
• Emerging “big-data” methods:
  • Example: 1.95\text{ billion} cell calls & 500\text{ million} texts in 7-month European study → age/gender patterns (e.g., older women shift calls from male peers to parents & children).
  • Macro-patterns invite fine-grained ethnographic follow-up.

Formal Properties of Verbal Language

• Phonology
  • Phoneme = sound that differentiates meaning.
  • Hindi has four distinct “d” sounds (dental, aspirated dental, retroflex, aspirated retroflex) → mis-aspiration may swap “letter” for “breast.”
• Vocabulary/Lexicon
  • Semantics = meaning study; ethnosemantics = meaning in cultural context.
  • Focal vocabularies reflect cultural salience (many snow words in circumpolar languages, many rock terms in Afghanistan).
• Syntax/Grammar
  • Pattern rules for intelligible sentences; vary cross-culturally (e.g., German verb final).
• Cultural variation in “talky” versus silence-valuing societies; narrative sharing often linked to healing in talk-oriented settings.

Non-Verbal Communication

Sign Language

• Fully competent linguistic systems (ASL, BSL, JSL, Auslan, many Indigenous Australian signs).
• In some Australian groups, hearing people switch to sign during hunting, sacred rites, or mourning.

Gestures

• Hand/body movements w/ culturally specific meanings.
• South African Black urban youth (Pretoria/Johannesburg) use a large, age/gender-graded gestural repertoire.
• Greetings universally mix verbal & non-verbal cues; shaped by formality, gender, ethnicity, class, age.

Silence

• Communicative resource tied to status or power.
  • Rural Siberia: low-status daughters-in-law speak little.
  • U.S. courts: powerful but silent judge & jury.
  • Western Apache employ silence when: meeting strangers, early courtship, post-boarding-school reunions, being cursed-out; common thread = relational uncertainty.

Body Language, Dress & Inscription

• Encodes identity, status, emotion, availability.
• Eye contact: valued in Euro-America, rude or sexual in parts of Asia.
• Color coding: U.S. newborns (blue/pink); Middle East public dress (black women / white men).
• Veiling contrasts: Kuwait = wealth/leisure/status; Egypt = piety + right to work.
• Japanese kimono sleeve length indicates gender + life-cycle status (unmarried women → floor-length sleeves; men → short only).

Media & Information Technology Communication

Media Anthropology

• Studies production, content, audience, and social effects of electronic/print media.
• Critical media anthropology interrogates power, liberation vs. control.

Arab Media Landscape

• State-controlled radio, dominant TV, expanding Internet; journalism & film also central.
• Arab Spring (2010) leveraged cell phones & social media for mobilization.

U.S. Latino Advertising

• Agencies depict a monolithic “family-centered” culture (e.g., milk ads with abuela).
• Use “standard” accent-neutral Spanish.
• Risks oversimplifying heterogeneous Latino identities yet reshaping self-image.

Digital Divide – Rural Hungary

• Telecottage model (community Internet rooms) promoted by Hungarian Telecottage Association.
• Benefits: funding info, connectivity for <5000-person villages.
• Challenges: information hoarding, unequal access among managers.

Language, Diversity & Social Inequality

Theories of Language–Culture Relationship

• Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis
  • Language influences thought; strong form = linguistic determinism.
  • Example: Saami snow lexicon → nuanced snow cognition.
• Sociolinguistics
  • Language shaped by social context; people are cultural constructionists.
• Most anthropologists integrate both perspectives.

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

• Examines how power & inequality are encoded/reproduced in speech.

Class & Accent (NYC)

• Labov’s department-store study: pronunciation of post-vocalic “r” correlates with class.
  • “R” twice-pronounced in “fourth” by 44\% of Saks clerks, 16\% Macy’s, 6\% S. Klein.

Gendered Communication

• Early Euro-American findings for women’s speech: politeness, rising intonation, tag questions; men more interruptions.
• Tannen: women seek connection, men negotiate status (e.g., time-for-concert dialogue).
• Japanese honorific “o-” marks female politeness (ohashi vs. hasi).
• Kogals (Tokyo teens) invert norms: masculine forms, sexual slang, inventive emoticons & mixed-script texting (e.g., maku-ru = “go to McDonald’s”).
• “Fat talk” among 253 SW U.S. 8th–9th-graders: ritual “I’m so fat” → peer reassurance; functions: group bonding, guilt relief before meals.

Sexuality & Language

• Bahasa gay (Indonesia): standardized gay vernacular; punning vocabulary offers political commentary & claims social space despite state heteronormativity.

Ethnic/Indigenous Pragmatics

• Akwesasne Mohawk English uses cues (“maybe,” “you know”) signaling uncertainty, respect, sacred domain; misread by Anglo doctors as indecision.
• African American English (AAE/AAVE)
  • Distinct grammar (zero copula: “She married”).
  • Speakers experience simultaneous pride & stigma.
  • Oakland 1996 Bridge Program treated AAE as home language to teach SAE via translation → rapid literacy gains but political backlash.

Language Change Through Time

Origins

• Likely emerged 100{,}000–50{,}000 BP alongside symbolic cognition.
• Early communication included rich gesture & expression.

Historical Linguistics

• Sir William Jones linked Sanskrit with Greek & Latin → Indo-European language family concept.
• Comparative method reconstructs proto-languages (Proto-Indo-European north/south of Black Sea; Proto-Bantu in Cameroon/Nigeria, spreading \approx5000 BP).

Writing Systems

• Oldest: Mesopotamia \sim4000\text{ BCE} (logographs).
• Functions debated:
  • Ceremonial (tombs, temples) vs. secular (accounting on perishable media).
• Inca khipu: complex knotted-string accounting / possible language without script.

Colonialism, Nationalism & Globalization

• European empires imposed languages, suppressed indigenous tongues → widespread bilingualism.
• Contact languages:
  • Pidgin = rudimentary blend for limited domains; Creole = pidgin with native speakers & expanded grammar.
  • Examples: Tok Pisin (PNG), Seselwa (Seychelles), Papiamentu (Curaçao).
• Nationalist assimilation: standard language policies, missionary bans, hiring discrimination.
• Global languages: 96\% of people speak 4\% of languages. Top 8: Mandarin, Spanish, English, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese.
  • English: most globalized; many “New Englishes” (Spanglish, Japlish, Tex-Mex).
  • Textese: character-limited cell messaging → vowel deletion, numeronyms, acronyms (LOL, etc.).

Endangered Languages & Revitalization

• Decline stages:
  1. Shift/decay – limited lexicon, preference for dominant tongue.
  2. Endangerment – <10{,}000 speakers.
  3. Near-extinction – only a few elders.
  4. Extinction – no competent speakers.
• World totals: 5{,}000–7{,}000 living languages; >1{,}000 on New Guinea; >50\% have <10{,}000 speakers.
• Australia-Pacific: 99.5\% of indigenous tongues have <100{,}000 speakers.
• Revitalization strategies:
  • Formal classes.
  • Master–apprentice (one-on-one with elder).
  • Web-based learning platforms.
• Success depends on community engagement & political support (example: Québec French maintenance).

Ethical, Philosophical & Practical Implications

• Language diversity embodies cultural knowledge; loss = erosion of worldview plurality.
• Power asymmetries manifest in accent prejudice, gendered politeness norms, media stereotypes.
• Technology offers both democratization (telecottages, social media activism) & new inequities (digital divide).
• Language revitalization raises identity politics (which dialect?), resource allocation, and rights to cultural heritage.