Chapter 11: Language and Culture

Linguistic anthropology- the study of the relationship between language and culture or the study of how language interacts with and shapes social structure and culture
Kinship terms- In English, organizes relationships by blood and marriage, as well as gender * English: daughter, mother, son, father, step-sibling, etc. * Studying kinship terms in a specific language can help us ascertain what characteristics the speakers value or consider relevant to social organization
Communicative competence- the ability to interact and communicate according to cultural norms
Politeness: different politeness strategies are used in different languages and cultures, ranging from lexical, pragmatic, and morphological levels
Speaker roles: different roles have different expectations
Turn-taking rules: alternation of turns and pausing before responding * Tag questions- utterances beginning with statements that end with a question to another speaker * Adjacency pairs- pairs of adjacent utterances produced by two different speakers in which the first utterance provokes the hearer to respond with the second utterance
Greetings: different greetings are appropriate for different receivers of the greeting

Linguistic relativity- a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition * Linguistic determinism- hypothesizes that speakers of a language can think of things only in the way that their language expresses them * Language is used to classify out experiences in the world * Whorf hypothesis- essentially states that the language someone speaks affects how they perceive the world * Linguistic relativity has been investigated through color and spatial relationships * Language and thought are NOT completely separate

Language can act as indicators of power relations and to exert power over entire communities or societies * A speaker can make $direct statements$ to indicate power * “Do this/ do that” commands * $Prosody and volume$ can also indicate power * Raised voice and enunciation * $Word choice$ can impact the power relations in communities and societies * $Laws$ can be written or spoken to assign power * Government figures, monarchs, etc

Politeness- normative or expected linguistic and extralinguistic strategies culturally agreed to be interactionally appropriate for a given situation
Strategies: * Indirect speech acts * Honorifics- grammatical markers of respect and deference * T/V distinction- distinguishing second-person pronouns in terms of social distance or intimacy
Face theory * Face: positive self-image (to lose face) * Face-threatening acts (FTA): speech acts that may threaten one’s positive or negative face * Bald on-record FTA: no politeness strategy is used * Positive politeness: oriented toward positive face wants * Negative politeness: oriented towards the hearer’s desire to be left alone * Off-record FTA: indirect speech acts that avoid making any explicit or unequivocal imposition on the hearer

Fieldwork- going to specific communities where a language variety is spoken in order to gather information about the speech community and language itself
Ethnography- a description of everyday life in the community * Researchers spend @@months or years in a community@@ before considering their descriptions complete * How do speakers greet one another or end their interactions? * What registers/genres are used by different social groups? * What politeness strategies are generally used, and do they differ based on context and/or speaker roles? * How do speakers classify animals, colors, kin, and other objects in the physical world?
Participant observation- systemically observing within a community in order to understand how and why people do the things they do on a daily basis * Passive participation- passively watching how everyday life unfolds without partaking in any local activities in order to cause the least disturbance possible to the daily routine of the community being studied * Complete participation- the researcher actively participates in the community, attempting to see first hand how the community functions from the point of view of a local
Etic description- an objective, outsider’s point of view
Emic description- an insider’s description

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