Anthropology

1. Language & communication

2. What is this class about?
How is language distinctly human?
How diverse are human languages?
How do humans use language?
How are language and culture related?
What does language do for us socially?
How does culture shape language?
How are language and social difference
interrelated?

3. The Point(s) of the Class
Language is a really really important part of being
human.
Therefore: Studying language can give us greater
insight into human cultures.
Human language and human culture are very
difficult to separate.

4. Linguistic anthropology
 Linguistic anthropology studies the nature of human
languages in the context of those cultures that developed
them.
 Scholars in the field seek to understand the social and
cultural foundations of language itself, while exploring
how social and cultural formations are grounded in
linguistic practices.
 Linguistic anthropologists study the ways in which
people negotiate, contest, and reproduce cultural forms
and social relations through language. They examine the
ways in which language provides insights into the nature
and evolution of culture and human society.

5. What is Linguistic Anthropology?
 Sociolinguistics: study of language and society,
how language helps to divide people into social
groups, and how these linguistically-based power
divisions change or are maintained.
 Linguistic anthropology: study of human
language as part of human culture. Study of the
ways that human beings use language to create a
cultural model of the world and how that model
influences the way they live their lives.

6. Examples: Linguistic Anthropology
 In many cultures, directness is considered
impolite, so people may never say “no” or make a
request directly, but communicate refusal and
requests in other indirect, but culturally
recognized, ways

7. Why is Linguistic Anth interesting?
 Related to other fields of anthropology
 It gets at “what makes us human”
 Allows us to see how culture and society
work in ways that we never noticed before.
 Language “works best” when we aren’t
thinking about it – so we often don’t fully
understand how powerful it is in shaping
our lives.

8. Examples:
 How close do you stand to someone when you’re
talking to them?
 How is the way you talk to your professors different
from the way you talk to your friends?

9. Language vs. a particular language
Language is a human universal.
All languages serve their speakers equally well, from
the point of view of achieving communication.
Language involves, but is not limited to, the range of
animal communication methods.

10. Language is always changing
Every language is dynamic, in other words, it keeps
changing, either in response to the needs of its
speakers, or just as the natural effect of many people
using it every day.

11. What is language good for?

12. Features of language
Often we think of language as following “correct”
formulas and functioning primarily to
communicate referential information about the
world. In fact, language is also:
 Complex
 Creative
 Social

13. (Linguistic) Anthropology
 Holistic – focused on language in the larger context
of culture/human life
 Comparative – based on comparisons between
linguistic/cultural (“languagculture”) systems,
again seen in a holistic way
 Fieldwork-based – relies on data from real,
naturally-occurring speech in cultural context

14. Theoretical linguistics
 Focuses on underlying structures and features to
understand the nature of human language
 Not interested in cultural or social contexts;
focused on “ideal” language use
 Often collect data out of context – e.g. asking
native speakers to judge whether a particular
sentence structure “feels” right

15. Traditional areas of linguistics:
 Phonetics: study of sounds of human language
 Phonology (phonemics): study of sound
systems in particular languages
 Morphology: study of word formation and the
“parts” of words
 Syntax: study of how words relate to each other
in a language (“grammar”)

16. More areas of linguistics:
 Semantics: study of word meanings; not just
“dictionary definitions,” but also the underlying
meaning of words
 Pragmatics: study of words-as-actions, the
effects of utterances

17. Why do we care?
Early linguistic anthropologists (like Boas) studied
unwritten languages with linguistic structures
dramatically different from Indo-European
languages like English, French, Spanish, Russian and
Greek.
These languages included different Native American,
Polynesian languages and African languages.

18. Why is language human?
 Language makes us human – allows us to
participate in the life of our social group
 We can not live social lives, raise our
young, or survive as a group without
language
 We utilize language in an extremely
complex way for both communication and
social action.

19. Human language has fixed parameters that
are in part determined by:
- biological structures: structures associated
with the apparatus of language production and
perception: what sounds humans are capable of
producing, hearing, and differentiating between
- cognitive (brain) structures: there appears
to be a limited range of structures that all
languages use in different ways, and this may be
related to the way the human brain works

20. Language and Culture
As Agar points out, we tend to think of “culture” as
some thing that we have. Then we can imagine all of
those different “cultures” lined up like distinct items.
Culture, like language, is not something you have, it’s a
set of things that you do, and more importantly a set
of frames of reference you use in everyday life.

21. What is “culture”
Culture is a set of things we do (“practices”) that allow
us to make sense of the day to day world
Culture is a set of rules that allows us to understand
and interpret what is going on around us; since these
rules are shared (more or less) people in the same
culture often have similar interpretations.

22. Features of human language
 Complex
 Creative
 Social (learned, interactional)
 Dynamic (changes over time)

23. The Cultural Origins of Language
 Human communication is far more structured
and complex than the gestures and sounds of other
animals.
 Scientists have, however, failed to find distinctive
physiological, neurological or genetic traits that could
explain the uniqueness of human language.
 Language appears instead to arise from a platform
of abilities, some of which are shared with other animals.
 human language may arise from culture: the repeated
transmission of speech through many generations.

24. Language and its Relationship to Living in
Society
 The relationship between language, communication,
and culture is complex. While language is a
powerful and necessary tool to unite
individuals in particular cultures, it may act
as a barrier or be used to exclude or separate
people in a society and within cultures.

25. How Do Language and Culture Influence
Our Personal Identity?

26. Culture Influence Our Personal Identity
 Both language and culture play a significant role in
shaping your personality. Culture tells you how to
interact with others and helps to shape values and ethics.
Besides, it keeps you close to like-minded people and
thus, the sense of belonging strengthens your bond with
society.
 On the other hand, language is like a tool using which
you express your culture. In fact, cultural ideas and
beliefs are transmitted ahead via language.
 Furthermore, both the culture and language allow us to
peek into the past and shape our ideas. How We think,
speak and interact with others around us is determined
by our cultural values. Likewise, language also impacts
human thoughts.