Language

Learning Objectives

- the differences between human language and primate communication

- different hypotheses for the origin of human language

- the steps a linguistic anthropologist would take to understand the components of a language

- how people make meaning beyond the use of words

- the language components that an ethnolinguist might study

- about signed languages

- how language is changing in the digital age

- how language loss occurs

Review Questions

1. Do other primates use the same kind of symbolic language that humans do?

2. What are the different hypotheses for the origin of human language?

3. How would a linguistic anthropologist record a language for the first time?

4. Why do anthropologists argue that language is much more than speech?

5. To what degree do anthropologists believe in the validity of the linguistic relativity principle today?

6. Why do languages suffer severe losses of speakers

Discussion Questions

1. What special vocabulary (or “lingo”) do you know by virtue of your membership in a subculture or specialized social group?

2. Do you think that texting is ruining the language? In your experience, how has texting changed the way you talk or write?

3. Have you had experiences while traveling in which others had different zones of kinesics, proxemics, or touch?

4. Although people sometimes use the term “language extinction” or “language death” to refer to the loss of a spoken language, how accurate is it to use a comparison to the extinction of species? In what ways is it the same or different?

Chapter Outline and Key Points

Introduction: Language and Culture

Language is one of the most essential aspects of human culture.

Definition of Language

Language is a symbolic system expressing meaning through sound, gestures, and writing. It is intimately linked and essential to human culture, with each influencing the other.

Language Origins

Although there are many hypotheses regarding language origins, trust between individuals was likely one of the most important aspects of shifting from gestural to verbal language. Non-human primates communicate in a variety of ways, but they do not have the anatomy or highly developed brain structures to produce complex and symbolic speech.

Language and Communication: Signs and Symbols

Communication is based on signs, which stand for something else. Symbolic signs have no apparent connection to the meaning. Human symbolic language has three main characteristics. We (1) use symbols freely, (2) use words to deceive, and (3) can create new utterances in infinite ways.

What Does a Linguistic Anthropologist Do?

Language can be broken down into parts: phonetics, phonemics, morphemes, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics (or context).

Communication Beyond Words

Paralanguage (voice qualities and vocalizations) provides additional meaning during speech. Various forms of non-verbal language also express meaning, including proxemics, kinesics, and touch. Because non-verbal communication is often different cross-culturally, it is easy to misunderstand the intent of an utterance in a different language than one’s own.

Ethnolinguistics

Ethnolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and culture. Whorf’s “linguistic relativity principle” explored how much our language shapes our perception of culture. Many aspects of one’s culture and subculture determine our speech patterns. These include our cultural models and the ability to code switch between languages or registers.

Signed Languages

Deaf communities all over the world have different signed languages, based on the verbal language spoken in the region. There are over 200 signed languages, such as American Sign Language, Chinese Sign Language, and South African Sign Language.

Language Use in the Digital Age

Electronically mediated communication (EMC) fosters creative ways to talk and write.

Language Loss

Languages merge in a variety of ways when cultures meet, often to the detriment of the long-term preservation of the subordinate culture’s language.

Language Revitalization

Some communities are implementing ways to support language revitalization, especially online.

Glossary

code switching: moving easily between speech styles or languages in a conversation or single utterance

communication: a process of transmitting a message from a sender to a receiver

cultural model: widely shared understandings about the world that help us organize our experience in it; determines the metaphors used in communication

ethnolinguistics: the study of the relationship between language and culture; a subset of linguistic anthropology

haptics: the study of touch

hominin: a member of the biological family that includes humans, early humans, our upright walking ancestors, chimpanzees, and bonobos

honorific: a title or grammatical form (i.e., a form of a word or words) used to indicate respect or superior status of the person addressed over the speaker

index sign (pl. indices): an emotional expression that carries meaning directly related to the response

kinesics: the cultural use of body movements, including gestures

language: a symbolic system expressing meaning through sounds or gestures

language of prestige: the language used by people in power in the social, political, and economic spheres

language registers: different styles of speaking within a single language

linguist: a person who studies language

linguistic determinism: the idea that the language one speaks locks a person into seeing the world a certain way

linguistic relativity principle: the idea, studied by Benjamin Whorf, that the language one speaks shapes the way one sees the world

logogram: a sign that represents a word or phrase

morpheme: the smallest part of a word that conveys meaning

paralanguage: the ways we express meaning through sounds beyond words alone; a subset of semantics

phoneme: the smallest unit of sound in communication that conveys meaning

phonemics: the study of how sounds convey meaning

phonetics: the study of the sounds in human speech

pragmatics: the context within which language occurs

proxemics: the cultural use of space, including how close people stand to one another

semantics: the study of how words and phrases are put together in meaningful ways

sign: in communication, something that stands for something else

silent language: non-verbal communication; gestures, body movements, and facial expressions that carry meaning

speech: verbal communication using sounds

speech community: a group that shares language patterns

symbol: something that stands for something else with little or no natural relationship to its referent; a type of sign

syntax: the study of how units of speech are put together to create sentences

utterance: an uninterrupted sequence of spoken or written language

vocalizations: intentional sounds humans make to express themselves, but not actually words

voice qualities: the background characteristics of a person’s voice, including pitch, rhythm, and articulation

Weblinks

Primate Communication and Human Language Origins

de Waal, F.B. (1992). Intentional deception in primates. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 1(3), 86–92.

King, B.J. (1999). Viewed from up close: Monkeys, apes, and language-origins theories. In Barbara J. King (Ed.), The origins of language: What nonhuman primates can tell us (pp. 21–54). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Linguistics

Ahearn, L.M. (2021) Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology (3e). Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.

Atkins, B.T., & Rundell, M. (2008). The Oxford guide to practical lexicography. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bonvillain, N. (2003). Language, culture, and communication: The meaning of messages (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

Silent Language/Non-verbal Communication

Hall, E.T. (1973). The silent language. New York: Anchor Books.

Knapp, M.L., & Hall, J.A. (2002). Nonverbal communication in human interaction (5^th ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth.

Ethnolinguistics/Sociolinguistics

Berlin, B., & Kay, P. (1991). Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hasty, J., Lewis, D. & Snipes, M. (2022) “Language and Power.” Introduction to Anthropology. Open Stax. https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-anthropology

Hill, Jane (1998). “Language, race, and white public space.” American Anthropologist, 100(3), 680–89.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Livia, A., & Hall, K. (Eds.) (1997). Queerly phrased: Language, gender and sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tannen, D. (2004). Rapport-talk and report-talk. In G. Ferraro (Ed.), Classic readings in cultural anthropology (pp. 13–17). Belmont: Thompson Wadsworth.

Tsunoda, T. (2006). Language endangerment and language revitalization: An introduction. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Language-Centered Ethnographies

Basso, K. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Meek, B.A. (2011). We are our language: An ethnography of language revitalization in a northern Athabaskan community. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Woolard, K.A. (1989). Double talk: Bilingualism and the politics of ethnicity in Catalonia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Chapter 4