Chapter 5 Language and Communication. Chapter Preview What Is Language? How Is Language Related to Culture? How Did Language Begin?

Chapter 5

Language and Communication

Chapter Preview

• What Is Language?• How Is Language Related to Culture?• How Did Language Begin?

Friday November 8, 2013• OBJ: SWBAT how language is a part of

culture by • Drill: What is language? What characteristics

does it have? Do you think it is necessary to continue culture?

• Homework:

What Is Language?

• A system for the communication, in symbols, of any kind of information.

• Through language, people share their experiences, concerns, and beliefs and communicate these to the next generation.

Language

• A system of communication using sounds or gestures that are put together in meaningful ways according to a set of rules.

• A signal is a sound or gesture that has a natural or self-evident meaning.

How Is Language Related to Culture?

• Without our capacity for complex language, human culture as we know it could not exist.

• Age, gender, and economic status, may influence how people use language.

• People communicate what is meaningful to them, and that is largely defined by their culture.

How Do Languages Change?

• Languages are constantly transforming— new words are adopted or coined, others are dropped, and some shift in meaning.

• Languages change for various reasons:– selective borrowing by one language from

another– the need for new vocabulary to deal with

technological innovations or altered social realities.

– What is some “new vocabulary” you have encountered in your lifetime?

How has the English Language Changed in the last 50 years?• Look over the list of new words added to our

vocabulary over the last fifty years.• Do you see any trends?• You are going to choose two of those words

to make a poster, it should include.– The word– Definition– Cultural Relevance (how it has changed

our culture)– Animations (BE APPROPRIATE!!!)

Language and Orangutans

• Orangutans have an insightful, humanlike thonking style characterized by longer attention spans and quiet deliberate action.

• Orangutans make shelters, tie knots, recognize themselves in mirrors, use one tool to make another, and are the most skilled of the apes in manipulating objects.

Wednesday November 13, 2013• OBJ: SWBAT understand the development of

language from both a physical and cultural way.

• Drill: What trends in language have you seen over the last 100 years?

• Homework: None

The Nature of Language

• There are approximately 6,000 languages. • All languages are organized in the same

basic way.• Spoken languages use sounds and rules for

putting the sounds together. • Sign languages use gestures rather than

sounds.

Linguists and Fieldwork

• For linguists studying language in the field, laptops and recording devices are indispensable tools.

• Here Tiffany Kershner of Kansas State University works with native Sukwa speakers in northern Malawi, Africa.

 Linguistics

• The study of all aspects of language: – Phonetics– Phonology– Morphology – Syntax – Grammar

Descriptive Linguistics

• The branch of linguistics that involves unraveling a language by recording, describing, and analyzing all of its features.

Phonology

• The study of language sounds.• Phonetics is the study of the production,

transmission, and reception of speech sounds.

• In linguistics, phonemes are the smallest classes of sound that make a difference in meaning.

Morphology

• The study of the patterns or rules of word formation in a language (including such things as rules concerning verb tense, pluralization, and compound words).

• In linguistics, morphemes are the smallest units of sound that carry a meaning.

Syntax and Grammar

• Syntax– In linguistics, the rules or principles of

phrase and sentence making.• Grammar

– The entire formal structure of a language consisting of all observations about the morphemes and syntax.

Chapter 5 Vocabulary

• Grab a book, You may split up the words in groups.

Wrap Up

• I have lots of activities planned for the chapter on language. What do YOU want to know?

Question

• The smallest class of sound that makes a difference in meaning is a/an

A. allophone.

B. morpheme.

C. allomorph.

D. phoneme.

E. free morpheme.

Answer: D

• The smallest class of sound that makes a difference in meaning is a/an phoneme.

Question

• The study of the production, transmission and reception of speech sounds is __________

A. linguistics.

B. morphology.

C. phonetics.

D. glottochronology.

E. phonemics.

Answer: C

• The study of the production, transmission and reception of speech sounds is phonetics.

Monday November 18, 2013

• OBJ: SWBAT understand the biological origins of human speech.

• Drill: What are some biological differences between Primates and Humans that would effect speech?

• Homework: none.

Studying a Language

1. Isolate the phonemes, or the smallest classes of sound that make a difference in meaning.

2. Determine all groups or combinations of sounds that seem to have meaning.

3. See how morphemes are put together to form phrases or sentences.

Biology and Human Speech

Historical Linguistics

• Historical linguistics deals with the fact that languages change.

• Specialists in this field investigate relationships between earlier and later forms of the same language, study older languages for developments in modern ones, and examine interrelationships among older languages.

Historical Linguistics

• Language family– A group of languages descended from a

single ancestral language.• Linguistic divergence

– The development of different languages from a single ancestral language.

The Indo-European languages

English and the Indo-European Language Family

Glottochronology

• In linguistics, a method for identifying the approximate time that languages branched off from a common ancestor.

• It is based on analyzing core vocabularies.• Core vocabularies

– In language, pronouns, lower numerals, and names for body parts and natural objects.

Digital Divide

• 80% of today’s Internet users are native speakers of just ten of the world’s 6,500 languages.

Linguistic Nationalism

• The attempt by ethnic minorities, and even countries to proclaim independence by purging their languages of foreign terms.

Wednesday November 20, 2013

• OBJ: SWBAT Understand how language and culture are related.

• Drill: Make a list of words that people that were not from Glenelg wouldn’t understand (an outsider, maybe someone from a different school, state, generation)

• Homework: None

Think about these

• Why do some groups create and use their own “languages”?

• What are the effects of having shared a vocabulary and language?

• How does language reflect culture? How does language shape culture?

• What exactly is culture? Is it static or fixed?• How do new technologies and the Internet

affect culture?

Sociolinguistics

• The study of the relationship between language and society, examines how social categories (such as age, gender, ethnicity, religion, occupation, and class) influence the use and significance of distinctive styles of speech.

• Gendered speech is distinct male and female syntax exhibited in various languages around the world.

Gendered Speech

• Makers of the film Dances with Wolves hired a language coach to teach Lakota to the actors who did not know how to speak it.

• The lessons did not include the “gendered speech” aspect of Lakota.

• When Lakota speakers saw the finished film, they were amused to hear the actors who portrayed Lakota warriors speaking like women.

Dialects

• Varying forms of a language that reflect particular regions or social classes and that are similar enough to be mutually intelligible.

Code Switching

• The process of changing from one language or dialect to another.

Ethnolinguistics

• The study of the relation between language and culture.

• Linguistic relativity is the proposition that diverse interpretations of reality embodied in languages yield demonstrable influences on thought.

What does it mean for a language to die?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiW59UUivc0

Thursday November 21, 2103

• OBJ: SWBAT understand the relationship between language and culture by examining an example of culture diffusion in France.

• Drill: Why do languages die? Is there anyway to save them? Is it worth the effort?

How is the Relationship between language and culture changing• Read the article with a partner and answer

the questions that follow.

Respond to the statements on Culture

• Group 1: What is culture? Where does culture come from? Where do we see evidence of it? What role does it play in our lives? In society? How does it reflect and/or shape our individual, group and national identities?

• Group 2: What is the relationship between culture and language? How does the use of language represent the broader notion of national or cultural identity? Why is language vital to cultural and national identity? How does it unify people? How might it separate them?

• Group 3: What does culture mean in a global world? Does globalization bring cultures together, force them further apart or both? Does it lead more to diversity or to homogeny? Does globalization mean Americanization?

• Group 4: How do writers use language to reflect and shape culture? Why might writers choose to write in a language that is not “their own”? What issues are raised by writing in one’s nonnative tongue? What issues are raised by reading works in translation? Do works in translation belong in an English literature class?

Monday December 2, 2013• OBJ: SWBAT

Linguistic Determinism

• The idea that language to some extent shapes the way in which we view and think about the world around us.

• Sometimes called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis after its originators Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• A language is not simply an encoding process but is rather a shaping force.

• Language guides thinking and behavior by predisposing people to see the world in a certain way.

• There has been a recent renewal of interest in this hypothesis.

Linguistic Determinism and the Aymara Indians

• Aymara Indians living in the highlands of Bolivia and Peru in South America depend on the potato as their major source of food.

• Their language has over 200 words for this vegetable, reflecting the many varieties they grow and the different ways they preserve and prepare it.

Monday December 2, 2013

• OBJ: SWBAT understand that spoken language is not the only way to share culture.

• Drill: What types of ways can you communicate with other people?

Gesture-Call System

• Inherited from our primate ancestors.• Gesture component consists of body motions

used to convey messages.• Call component consists of extralinguistic

noises involving various voice qualities and vocalizations.

Gestures

• Facial expressions and bodily postures and motions that convey intended and subconscious messages.

• Kinesics– A system of notating and analyzing postures,

facial expressions, and body motions that convey messages.

• Proxemics– The cross-cultural study of humankind’s

perception and use of space.

Learned Gestures

• The “Hook ‘em, horns”salute flashed by U.S. President Bush and his family during his 2005 inauguration shocked many Europeans who interpreted it as a salute to Satan.

Question

• _____________ is the process of switching from one level of language to another.

A. Linguistic divergence

B. Vocal segregation

C. Frame substitution

D. Linguistic nationalism

E. Code switching

Tuesday December 3, 2013• OBJ: Understand how code switching and

other forms of language affect culture• Drill: What is code switching? Why is it

important?• HW: Study for Quiz

Answer: E

• Code switching is the process of switching from one level of language to another.

Visual Counterpoint

• Cultures around the world have different attitudes concerning personal space How does the gap between the suited U.S. businessmen pictured here compare with that of the robed men of Saudi Arabia?

Paralanguage

• The extralinguistic noises that accompany language, for example, those of crying or laughing.

Tonal language

• A language in which the sound pitch of a spoken word is an essential part of its pronunciation and meaning.

Apes and Sign Language

• Several species of apes have been taught to use American Sign Language.

• Some chimpanzees have acquired signing vocabularies surpassing 400 words, and a lowland gorilla named Koko has a working vocabulary of more than 1,000 words.

Origin of Language: One Theory

• Early hominines, began using gestures to communicate intentions within a social setting.

• When Homo erectus moved out of the tropics, they needed to plan and communicate to survive seasons of cold temperatures.

• By the time archaic Homo sapiens appeared, finely controlled movements of the mouth and throat had given rise to spoken language.

Language and Symbols

• Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row, Mohawk chief of the Iroquois Confederacy, holding a wampum belt of hemp string and shell beads.

• Wampum designs were used to symbolize a variety of important messages or agreements, including treaties with other nations. (By Dutch painter Johannes Verelst in 1710. National Archives of Canada collections.)

Writing System

• A set of visible or tactile signs used to represent units of language in a systematic way.

• An alphabet is a series of symbols representing the sounds of a language arranged in a traditional order.