Communication, Language and Culture

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LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION
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Basic Concepts

• Anthropology
• Culture
• Cultural Holism
• Norms
• Cultural Model
• Enculturation
• Cultural relativism
• Ethnocentrism
• Ethnography
• Ethnology
• Participant Observation
• Emic
• etic
• Ethnolinguistics

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What is language?
Characteristics of language

• a system of symbols - visual, auditory, or
  tactile
• put together according to certain rules
• symbols used are arbitrary meaning based on
  consensus
• Learned
• unconscious
• Dynamic (living)
• A form of communication (interaction)
• shared - communicators know the rules and
  meanings

A form of communication that is a systematic set
of arbitrary symbols shared among a group and
passed on from generation to generation
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System

• system of sounds that when put together
  according to certain rules results in meanings

• Systematic nature of language is usually
  unconscious

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arbitrary symbols

• associations between words/sounds and the things
  they represent are arbitrary
• not natural or self-evident meaning.
• meaning provided by tradition and consensus
• Because symbols are arbitrary they have to be
  learned.

Rabbit Conejo Usagi Kanninchen Cuniglio
Eng Sp Jp Gr It
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A form of Communication

• Other forms?
• What is communicated?
• thoughts, knowledge, meaning, feelings,
  intentions and desires
• Information about ourselves and others

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Sociolingusitics

• Study of language(s) in relation to society -
  Social Uses and function of language
• Basic assumption is that there is an intimate
  connection between language and social factors
• The differences in language use reflect and
  maintain social distinctions.
• The social differences are reflected in language
  use
• Three things influence the meanings and language
  we use.
• Social Relationships
• Situational Context
• Cultural Meanings

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Social Relationships

• Speakers choose between alternatives of
  vocabulary, pronunciation, sentence construction,
  etc.
• Social variables influence a person's choices
• Social meanings are signalled by linguistic
  alternatives chosen by different groups of people

• Class
• Gender
• Status
• Age
• education
• occupation
• ethnicity
• regional identity

• A child learning a language also acquires social
  competence i.e. the ability to recognize and
  interpret the social activity taking place.

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Language and Identity

• we use language to send social messages about
• who we are
• where we come from
• who we associate with

we may judge a person's background, character,
and intentions based upon the person's language,
dialect, or, in some instances, even the choice
of a single word.
Gangland to God
Newfie translation
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Situational Context

• Different situational contexts influence the
  forms of language that occur.
• The forms of language that occur or are excluded
  reflect the meaning of various contexts

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Cultural Meanings

• Cultural meanings are expressed by the symbolic
  meanings of words
• Speakers evaluate the communicative behaviour of
  each other based on shared understandings of the
  world, i.e. On cultural models.

cultural model - eels

• Speech is constantly, although unconsciously
  evaluated
• Analysis of speech reveals social and cultural
  beliefs about how society is structured and the
  ways that people are expected to behave and
  interact

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Why is understanding communication (language)
important for anthropology?

• The act of speaking is action which creates
  particular meanings and expectations in given
  contexts

In order for social scientists to understand how
people organize their lives, carry out work,
practice religions, and the like, they need to be
aware of how people talk to each other
(Bonvillain 2008 2)

• Studying language use in context helps us to
• Understand social organization
• Social institutions - religion, law, etc.
• Patterns of behavior
• Cultural meanings, values, attitudes

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STUDYING LANGUAGE CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION
Language needs to be understood within the
contexts - social, situational, cultural in
which communicative interaction occurs

• Therefore we have to understand and analyze
• Speech how sounds are produced and meaning is
  created, grammatical constructions, vocabulary
• Situational and social contexts in which speech
  acts take place
• The cultural norms used in evaluating speech.

How Do we do that?
Ethnographically
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ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION

• gathering data from observations of peoples
  daily lives how they make requests, express
  opinions, the norms of appropriate behaviour, use
  of language in various contexts

• attempting to understand behaviour from the
  participants point of view - emically
• Interviews with individual native speakers - to
  collect material dealing with specific categories
  of vocabulary or types of grammatical
  construction
• extracting communicative rules by observing the
  reactions of members of a community to each
  others actions - etically
• Analyses of these facts of communicative
  behaviour reveal underlying cultural models and
  demonstrate the cognitive and conceptual bonds
  that unify people within their culture.

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Sociolinguistic Approach

• Concerned with discovering patterns of
  linguistic variation
• recording and analyzing actual speech behaviour
  of members of distinct groups within of the
  population.

• What specific attributes of a person (e.g. Age,
  gender, ethnicity etc.) influence a speakers
  selection, in any given situation, of the
  linguistic choices they make?

• What elements of context such as setting,
  participants topics and goals influence speech

• What social factors (e.g. Gender of class,
  ethnicity) influence the sensitivity to context

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because sociolinguistic patterns are
discoverable on the basis of frequencies of
usage, research methodologies emphasize
interviews, experimental and situational
observations and quantitative analysis socioling
uistics ideally collects large samples
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• Discourse analysis
• analysis of the connected stretches of speech
  that occur in informal as well as formal contexts
  
• looks at what speakers say, what they intend to
  mean, what they intend to do, and how their
  speech is interpreted by participants the
  meanings
• Includes analysis of the cultural contexts in
  which speech occurs, the norms of production and
  interpretation that give it meaning

• emphasis on the socio-political relations of
  power that inform both the production and
  interpretation of discourse

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Speech community

• people who speak the same language but are also
  united other ways norms and shared rules, the
  proper and improper uses of language.
• Canadians, Australians, Indians, all speak
  English but differ in what is the proper way to
  speak - e.g. what situations requiring a
  greeting, what topics are forbidden etc.

• society exerts pressure for conformity through
  the transmission of cultural models on both
  conscious and unconscious levels

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• Speech network
• people who have regular contact with each
• dense networks
• have frequent contact - e.g. related, work
  together, same neighbourhood and know one another
• exert pressure on members to conform since
  values are shared and individuals behaviour is
  readily known.
• tend to maintain speech norms with little
  variation
• weak networks
• less contact
• do not share values as constantly
• do not have mechanisms that can apply social
  sanction against non- conformists on an
  individual basis.
• Analysis of speech networks focuses on actual
  speakers and the mechanisms of control that
  lead to establishing and maintaining group norms
  in small scale, daily interactions.

gangland sign langauge