Languages and Worldview Textbook PART 1 Language and Culture Concepts and Definitions

Language and Culture Concepts and Definitions Learning Objectives After completing this module , students will be able to . language and identify common misconceptions regarding language . communication and differentiate it from language . Understand and culture , by . Designing your own Iceberg of Culture metaphor with your own examples , after . Hall metaphor of culture as an iceberg Differentiate a sociological approach to language and culture from an ethnographic one Understand and explain the notion that language and thought mutually each other ( linguistic relativity ) Culture Defined A common anthropological of culture is that of pioneer English anthropologist Edward ( Primitive Culture , 1871 ) Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge , art , law , morals , custom , and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of Book on ( Tyler , 1871 ) What Does It Entail ?

Culture encompasses objects and symbols , the meaning given to those objects and symbols , and the norms , values , and beliefs that pervade social life . Values an individuals or society sense of right and wrong or what ought to be . Humans also have biological , thirst , need for can result in death . Because of our biology and genetics , we have a particular form and we have certain abilities . These set essential limits on the variety of activities that humans can express culture , but there is still enormous diversity in this expression .

Culture refers to the way we understand ourselves as individuals and as members of society , including stories , religion , media , rituals , and even language itself . Social was the belief that the closer a cultural group was to the normative Western European standards of behavior and appearance , the more evolved they were . Culture is the or social aspects of human life . Culture refers to the way we understand ourselves as individuals and as members of society , including stories , religion , media , rituals , and even language itself . Social hinged on the belief that the closer cultural groups were to the normative Western European standards of behavior and appearance , the more evolved they were . Language is a aspect of culture . Our beliefs about in , the language we speak , not language in and our beliefs about our identity as part of a group . The way we speak and reinforces our cultural beliefs , and our identity as members of a social group . To make this a little bit less abstract , lets look into three new terms linguistic community , speech community , and language ideologies . Adapted from Cultural ( 2019 ) Fundamental Properties of Language First , watch this brief introduction to language and the of linguistics . Watch the video Fundamental Properties of Language ( Catherine Anderson , 2018 ) This video is supplemental to Catherine Anderson work , Essentials of Linguistics . Video transcript Because everybody speaks a language , just about everybody has opinions about language . But there are lots of things that are commonly believed about language that just true . You might have heard someone say that a given language has no grammar , ve heard people try to argue that Chinese has no grammar , that English has no grammar , that the languages spoken by Canada indigenous peoples have no grammar , or that Swiss German has no grammar . When people say this they might mean a few different things . Sometimes theyjust mean that there not much variation in the forms of words and that true of Chinese but then the grammar of Chinese has lots of complexity in its sound system , Sometimes people who argue that a language has no grammar are actually trying to claim that that language is inferior in some way , The truth is that all languages have grammar . All

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS languages have a sound system . A system for forming words , a way of organizing words into sentences , a systematic way of assigning meanings . Even languages that don have writing systems or dictionaries or published books of rules still have speakers who understand each other . That means they have a shared shared mental grammar . When we investigating mental grammar , it doesn matter whether a language has a prestigious literature , or is spoken by powerful people , Using linguists techniques for making scientific observations about language , we can study the phonetics , phonology , morphology , syntax , and semantics of any language , Another opinion that you might have heard about language is that some languages are better than others , Maybe you ve heard someone say , I do speak real Italian , just a that their dialect is not as good as so called real Or maybe heard someone say that French is just not as good as the French they speak in France . Or maybe you heard someone say that nobody in can speak proper English or nobody in Texas speaks proper English or maybe even nobody in North America speaks proper English , and the only good English is the Queen English that they speak in England . The truth is that all languages are equally valid . Just as we said that all languages have grammar , it also the case that there no way to say that one grammar is better or worse than another grammar . Remember that linguistics takes a scientific approach to language and scientists don rate or rank the things they study . don rank fish to say which species is more correct at being a fish , astronomers don argue over which galaxy is more posh . In the same way , linguists don assign value to any language or variety or dialect . It is the case though that plenty of people do attribute value to particular dialects or varieties and research tells us that there can be negative or positive social consequences for people who speak certain varieties . When people say that British English is better than American English , for example , they re making a social judgment based on politics , history , economics , or snobbery , but there no linguistic basis for making that value judgment . One of the common misconceptions about language arose when scholars first started doing linguistics . At first they focused on the languages that they knew , which were mostly the languages that were spoken in Europe . The of those languages had a lot in common because they all evolved from a common ancestor , which we now call European , When linguists started learning about the languages spoken in other parts of the world , they thought at first that these languages were so unfamiliar , so unusual , so weird that the scholars speculated that those languages had nothing at all in common with the languages of Europe . Linguists have now studied enough languages to know that , in spite of the many differences between languages , there are some universal properties that are common to all human languages .

PART The field of Linguistic Typology studies the properties that languages have in common even across languages that they are related to . Some of these universal properties are at the level of phonology . For example , all languages have consonants and vowels . Some of these are at the level of morphology and syntax . All languages make a distinction between nouns and verbs , and in nearly all languages the subject of a sentence comes before the verb and before the object of the sentence . We discover more of these as we proceed through the chapters . A very common belief that people have about language is something you might have heard from your grandparents or your teachers . Have you heard them say , Kids these days are ruining English they should learn to speak properly ?

Or , if you grew up speaking Mandarin maybe you heard the same thing , Those teenagers are ruining Mandarin they should learn to speak For as long as there has been language there have been people complaining that young people are ruining it and trying to force them to speak in a more way . Some countries , like France and Germany , even have official institutes that make prescriptive rules about what words and sentence structures are allowed in the language and which ones are allowed . The truth is that every language changes over time . Languages are spoken by humans , and as humans grow and change and as our society changes , our language changes along with it . Some language change is as simple as in the vocabulary of a language . We need to introduce new words to talk about new concepts and new inventions . For example , the verb Google didn exist when I was an undergraduate student , and now googling is something I do every day . Language also changes in the way we pronounce things and in the way we use words and form sentences . In a later chapter , we talk about some of the things that are changing in Canadian English . Another common belief about language is the idea that you ca learn a language unless someone teaches you the in a language class or with a textbook or a software package . This might be partially true for learning a language as an adult . It might be hard to do it on your own without a teacher , but think about yourself as a kid . Whatever language you grew up speaking , whether its English , or French , or Mandarin , or Arabic , or Tamil , or Serbian , you did have to wait until kindergarten to start speaking , you learned the language from infancy by interacting with the people around you who spoke that language . Some of those people around you might have taught you particular words for things , but they probably weren teaching you , make the sound by putting your top teeth on your bottom or make sure you put the subject of the sentence before the verb , and by the time you started school you were perfectly fluent in your language . In some parts of the world people never go to school and never have any formal instruction , but they still speak their languages fluently .

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS That because almost everything we know about our mental unconscious knowledge that acquired implicitly as children . Much of your knowledge of your mental grammar is not accessible to your conscious awareness . This is kind of a strange idea how can you know something if you re not conscious of knowing it ?

Many things that we know are indeed conscious knowledge . For example , ifl asked you , you could explain to me how to get to your house , or what the capital of Canada is , or what the difference is between a cow and a horse . But our mind also has lots of knowledge that not fully conscious . You probably can explain very clearly how to control your muscles to climb stairs , or how to recognize the face of someone you know , or how to form complex sentences in your native language , and yet you can do all of these things easily and fluently and unconsciously . A lot of ourjob when we study linguistics is to make explicit the things that you already know implicitly . This is exactly what makes linguistics challenging at first , but it also what makes it fun , Next , watch this video about grammar from . Watch the Video Does Grammar Matter ?

2016 ) Video transcript You re telling a friend an amazing story , and you just get to the best part when suddenly he interrupts . The alien and I , not Me and the alien . Most of us would probably be annoyed , but aside from the rude interruption , does your friend have a point ?

Was your sentence actually grammatically incorrect ?

And if he still understood it , why does it even matter ?

From the point of view of linguistics , grammar is a set of patterns for how words are put together to form phrases or clauses , whether spoken or in writing . Different languages have different patterns . In English , the subject normally comes first , followed by the verb , and then the object , while in Japanese and many other languages , the order is subject , object , verb . Some scholars have tried to identify patterns common to all languages , but apart from some basic features , like having nouns or verbs , few of these linguistic have been found . And while any language needs consistent patterns to function , the study of these patterns opens up an ongoing debate between two positions known as and . Grossly simplified , think a given language should follow consistent rules , while see variation and adaptation as a natural and necessary part of language , For much of history , the vast majority of language was spoken . But as people became more interconnected and writing gained importance , written language was standardized to allow

PART broader communication and ensure that people in different parts of a realm could understand each other . In many languages , this standard form came to be considered the only proper one , despite being derived from just one of many spoken varieties , usually that of the people in power . Language purists worked to establish and propagate this standard by detailing a set of rules that reflected the established grammar of their times , And rules for written grammar were applied to spoken language , as well . Speech patterns that deviated from the written rules were considered corruptions , or signs of low social status , and many people who had grown up speaking in these ways were forced to adopt the standardized form . More recently , however , linguists have understood that speech is a separate phenomenon from writing with its own and patterns . Most of us learn to speak at such an early age that we don even remember it , We form our spoken repertoire through unconscious habits , not memorized rules . And because speech also uses mood and intonation for meaning , its structure is often more flexible , adapting to the needs of speakers and listeners , This could mean avoiding complex clauses that are hard to parse in real time , making changes to avoid awkward pronunciation , or removing sounds to make speech faster . The linguistic approach that tries to understand and map such differences without dictating correct ones is known as . Rather than deciding how language should be used , it describes how people actually use it , and tracks the innovations they come up with in the process . But while the debate between and continues , the two are not mutually exclusive . At its best , is useful for informing people about the most common established patterns at a given point in time . This is important , not only for formal , but it also makes communication easier between speakers from different backgrounds . on the other hand , gives us insight into how our minds work and the instinctive ways in which we structure our view of the world . Ultimately , grammar is best thought of as a set of linguistic habits that are constantly being negotiated and reinvented by the entire group of language users . Like language itself , a wonderful and complex fabric woven through the contributions of speakers and listeners , writers and readers , and , from both near and far , Linguistic Community a group of people who share a single language variety and the rules for using it in everyday communication , and who focus their identity around that language ( and Pine , The Anthropology , 2018 ) A linguistic community is therefore united by more than just a language there is also a sense of that of a national identity , but not only . For example , Spanish speakers do not

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS constitute a linguistic community . Rather , Spanish speakers from Spain , as opposed to Mexican Spanish speakers , are distinct linguistic communities . Speech Communities A speech community is a group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations regarding the use of language . It is a concept mostly associated with and anthropological linguistics . Exactly how to speech community is debated in the literature . of speech community tend to involve varying degrees of emphasis on the following Shared community membership Shared linguistic communication A typical speech community can be a small town , but such as William claim that a large metropolitan area , for example New York City , can also be considered one single speech community . Early have tended to see speech communities as bounded and localized groups of people who live together and come to share the same linguistic norms because they belong to the same local community . It has also been assumed that within a community a homogeneous set of norms should exist . These assumptions have been challenged by later scholarship that has demonstrated that individuals generally participate in various speech communities simultaneously and at different times in their lives . Each speech community has different norms that they tend to share only partially . Communities may be and unbounded rather than local , and they often comprise different with differing speech norms . With the recognition of the fact that speakers actively use language to construct and manipulate social identities by signaling membership in particular speech communities , the idea of the bounded speech community with homogeneous speech norms has become largely abandoned for a model based on the speech community as a community of practice . A speech community comes to share a set of norms for language use through living and interacting together , and speech communities may therefore emerge among all groups that interact frequently and share certain norms and ideologies . Such groups can be villages , countries , political or professional communities , communities with shared interests , hobbies , or lifestyles , or even just groups of friends . Speech communities may share both particular sets of vocabulary and grammatical conventions , as well as speech styles and genres , and also norms for how and when to speak in particular Adapted from Speech Community ( Wikipedia contributors , 2019 )

Language Ideology Language ideology is a marker of struggles between social groups with different interests , revealed in what people say and how they say it . It is primarily studied in the of linguistic anthropology . The study of language ideology allows evidence that the way we talk will always be embedded in a social world of power differences . They mark the struggles between social groups that do not contain the same interests or beliefs . This is revealed in what people say and how they say it . Language ideologies are very active and effective . We can tell this by the way people monitor their speech to make sure it is appropriate with a particular language ideology . Language ideologies are very important to many of study some examples are anthropology , sociology , and linguistics . Language ideology has become a very good way for us to understand how human groups are organized , despite differences in beliefs and ways of life . For example , many different languages are spoken within one society , proving that the theory of linguistics regarding human societies as monolingual would be of very limited help . Instead of using language ideology we see speakers of different languages or dialects may possibly share certain beliefs or practice , or even a involving a language . An ethnographic example of this is the language of African Americans . After studying the language ideology , research revealed that perhaps the key element of their language is the importance of indirectness . The reason that indirectness was vital for the African Americans was because they were living under the conditions of slavery and legal segregation for a majority of Americas history . Living under the conditions of this extreme inequality , African Americans had to follow a set of unwritten political rules , telling them how they were supposed to communicate with whites . For example , only speaking when you are given permission to speak , or without contradicting or arguing over what whites said to them . Having to follow these rules publicly the status of African Americans in the racial hierarchy . African Americans spoke differently to each other and when not in the presence of whites than they did while they were in the presence of whites . This shows how they change their language based on the audience around them they are monitoring their speech to make it appropriate to whoever they are talking to . The most highly valued instances of this were ambiguous speech performances that were usually puzzling or unintelligible to outsiders but easily understood by the African Americans who were Adapted from Cultural Anthropology ( contributors , 2018 )

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS Icebergs of Culture Military Culture Iceberg Watch the video Military Culture Iceberg ( Center For Deployment Psychology , 2014 ) Video transcript Above the waterline are aspects of a culture that are explicit , visible , and easily taught , The surface culture is where behaviors , customs and courtesies , and traditions are more easily seen , For the military culture this area includes things such as the uniform and rank , the salute , the playing of the national anthem before commanders calls and movies , the POWs ceremony , the honoring of heroes , and the ceremony . At the water line is a transition zone where the observer has to be more alert in the area where implicit understanding becomes talked about and where ethos is codified and decreed . At this level of military culture are found the service creed , the core values , and the oath of office . Some of what identifies service members and veterans as belonging to the military culture are not readily apparent and exist below the waterline . Below the surface is the hidden more enduring and powerful characteristics of military culture the beliefs , habits , values , assumptions , understandings , and judgments that affect the cultures worldview . These intangible values and guiding ideals that are mostly acquired while in uniform and are often kept for life are referred to as the Military or Warrior Ethos . These are often things a member knows but can not easily articulate . The hidden aspects of a culture are not taught directly , Iceberg Assignment Using the example of the iceberg of military culture , design your own iceberg for a culture of your choice . Be aware that it doesn have to be an international culture you can pick a subculture or a minority culture within the or within the you are most familiar with . This may not be that easy to do . You will have to take a step back and think critically about things you never think about , because you are living them everyday they re your second nature . Culture often feels like nature ( to borrow the words of Guy ) it feels like common sense , and we usually only become aware of it when we experience a culture shock , when we encounter people who don act , or think , or believe , the same way that we do . Usually , our response to such encounters ( especially when they happen within our own culture ) is that of irritation or

10 PART surprise . We get frustrated with people . Who on earth takes off their shoes before walking inside my home ?

Socks and bare feet are disgusting ! Who says over yonder ?

What does that even mean ?

Why is this guy avoiding my gaze ?

That kind of ) The root of such irritation or is often to be found below the waterline , in the invisible culture . You need to be very familiar with the culture you design an iceberg for , so pick a culture you are part of or intimately familiar with for this assignment . Linguistic Relativity One of the most important ideas in the course , and that will orient all of our inquiries , is that language and mutually each other . We will get more into the larger academic context that made the birth of such a notion possible in Module . For now , lets get familiar with the theory itself In this context , we will assume that worldview refers to the perspective on the world of an individual in a given culture . You can think of a worldview as the lens ( as in the glasses ) that the way individuals in a given culture see the world , colored by the culture those individuals belong to ( the lens metaphor is not mine , but that of Israeli linguist Guy ) Culture , Human Language , and Three Ways to Approach Language Study At the beginning of the chapter , of culture was shared . Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge , belief , art , law , morals , custom , and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of ( from Primitive Culture , 1871 Book on ( Tyler , 1871 ) However , over time , anthropologists have taken to of culture , viewed as problematic for different reasons . First , it approaches culture as a list of characteristics , which might end up being too and exclusive , because potentially not applicable to all cultures . The more , the more exclusive , when what anthropologists are interested in is a working of culture to be used as a universal framework to analyze and interpret all cultures . In other words , that needs to ( inductively ) include the of cultures ( what structures do all individual cultures have in common ?

in order to culture ( in the singular ) LANGUAGE AND CULTURE CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS 11 Second , an understanding of culture and civilization as characteristics that a group of people acquire as they become more civilized . This understanding is in keeping with the beliefs of the time . The acquired in the ( capabilities and habits acquired ) hints at both the fact that culture is not , well , it is not also that it is something that one has , like a type of capital ( there are the haves and the ) The process of acquiring culture is part of progress towards civilization , according to that view . This view of culture is linear , with less and more advanced stages of culture and civilization . echoing the French idea of civilization progressing from a barbaric state to science , secularism , and rational thought ( 2010 ) believed that all human culture passed through stages of development with the pinnacle being that of century England . He believed , as many others of this time period did , that all other cultures were inherently inferior . Franz Boas , a German American anthropologist , challenged approach . He drew on the German concept of , local and personal behaviors and traditions , to develop his ideas about culture . Boas thought that cultures did not follow a linear progression as espoused by cultural evolutionists like , but developed in different directions based on historical events . Boas took years to develop a working of culture , but it is one that anthropologists to this day culture is an integrated system of symbols , ideas and values that should be studied as a working system , an organic whole ( 199956 ) A general of culture that can be applied to all cultures is patterns of behavior that are common within a particular population of people . One way to think about culture is to break down the concept into two distinct categories the Big and the little The Big is an overarching general concept that can be applied to all culture groups it is the anthropological perspective . The little is the particulars of a culture group . It is easiest to think of the Big as elements that comprise culture ( not a group ) Big Culture is An integrated system of mental elements ( beliefs , values , worldview , attitudes , norms ) the behaviors motivated by those mental elements , and the material items created by those behaviors A system shared by the members of the society 100 percent learned , not innate Based on symbolic systems , the most important of which is language Humankind most important adaptive mechanism and Dynamic , constantly changing .

12 PART Little , as mentioned above , is the particulars of any given culture group , for instance , the marriage or subsistence pattern of a group of people . Traditions , a concept many people associate with culture , would fall into the little In this course , while we need to understand the current working of Culture , we will look into the little of culture , to see how it intersects and is shaped by language . Adapted from Cultural Anthropology ( contributors , 2018 ) Adapted from Perspectives , Linda Light , 2017 ) Human Language Compared with the Communication Systems of Other Species Human language is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the communication systems of all other species of animals . Linguists have long tried to create a working that distinguishes it from communication systems . Linguist Charles solution was to create a hierarchical list of what he called design features , or descriptive characteristics , of the communication systems of all species , including that of humans . Those features of human language not shared with any other species illustrate exactly how it differs from all other species . Design Features The communication systems of all species share the following features . A mode of communication by which messages are transmitted through a system of signs , using one or more sensory systems to transmit and interpret , such as auditory , visual , tactile , or kinesic . the signs carry meaning for the users , and . Pragmatic function all signs serve a useful purpose in the life of the users , from survival functions to others behavior . We will to ! Only true human language also has the following characteristics . Discreteness every human language is made up of a small number of meaningless discrete sounds . That is , the sounds can be isolated from each other , for purposes of study by linguists , or to be represented in a writing system . Duality of patterning ( two levels of combination ) at the level of patterning , these meaningless discrete sounds , called , are combined to form words and

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS 13 parts of words that carry meaning , or . In the second level of patterning , are recombined to form an possible number of longer messages such as phrases and sentences according to a set of rules called syntax . It is this level of combination that is entirely lacking in the communication abilities of all other animals and makes human language an open system while all other animal systems are closed . Displacement the ability to communicate about things that are outside of the here and now made possible by the features of discreteness and duality of patterning . other species are limited to communicating about their immediate time and place , we can talk about any time in the future or past , about any place in the universe , or even places . the ability to produce and understand messages that have never been expressed before or to express new ideas . People do not speak according to prepared scripts , as if they were in a movie or a play they create their utterances spontaneously , according to the rules of their language . It also makes possible the creation of new words and even the ability to lie . A number of great apes , including gorillas , chimpanzees , bonobos , and orangutans , have been taught human sign languages with all of the human design features . In each case , the apes have able to communicate as humans do to an extent , but their linguistic abilities are reduced by the limited cognitive abilities that accompany their smaller brains . The Linguistic Perspective The Perspective anthropology ) The Perspective Adapted from Perspectives , Language ( Linda Light , 2017 ) A THREEFOLD APPROACH TO LANGUAGE The study of the mechanics of language . final with person verbs in English , It marks the person . word order in a sentence eg , how do we produce sounds , and how do sounds affect meaning ?

The various uses of language in different cultures , and what type of language is needed to function appropriately in a given culture . What kind of language you need to know to function in society ( means the anthropologist needs to also study the culture of a society ) honorifics in Japanese culture , what does one have to do or say to apologize or make a request politely in a given community ?

linguistic The study of language use ( ie , variations in usage ) amongst different groups of people . Linguistic characteristics in relation to specific social groups , rising intonation in American women , final dropped in African American vernacular English ,