Chapter 3
Culture and Language
Chapter Outline
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Humanity and Language
Five Properties of Language
How Language Works
Language and Culture
Social Uses of Speech
Language
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Homo sapiens is the only animal capable
of speech.
Language makes it possible for people to
communicate and think about abstract
concepts.
Language
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Social learning by which children acquire
culture would be impossible without
language.
Language allows us to communicate
about past, present and future events.
Properties of Language
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Multimedia potential: Language can be
transmitted through a variety of media.
Discreteness: Language is made up of
discrete elements.
Properties of Language
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Arbitrariness: The meaning of each
individual word is arbitrary.
Productivity: A finite number of words
can be combined into an infinite number
of sentences.
Displacement: Language makes it
possible to communicate about people,
things and events that are not present.
Grammar
The knowledge shared by those who
speak and understand a language:
 Sounds
 Rules for combining them
 Meanings that are conveyed
 How sentences are constructed
Two Aspects of Grammar
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Sounds and their patterning.
Sound combinations and their meanings.
Grammar
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Total system of linguistic knowledge that
allows the speakers of a language to send
meaningful messages and hearers to
understand them.
 Dialect - A regional or subcultural
variant of languages.
Sound Systems
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Phonology
Sounds of a language and how they occur
in patterns.
Phonemes
Sounds that speakers of a language
recognize as distinct from other sounds.
Tone Languages
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Languages in which changing voice pitch
within a word alters the entire meaning of
the word.
Words and Meanings
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lexicon
The total words in a language.
morphology
The study of the units of meaning in
language.
morpheme
The sequence of phonemes that carries
meaning.
Morphemes
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free morpheme
A morpheme that can't be used alone.
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bound morpheme
A morpheme attached to a free
morpheme to alter its meaning.
Language and Culture
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Language is a part of culture.
Language and culture are independent.
Language and culture are partly
interconnected.
Semantic Domain
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A class of things or properties that are
perceived as alike in some fundamental
respect; hierarchically organized.
Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis
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Language defines the world view of its
speakers.
Not widely accepted:
 World views change more rapidly than
language.
 Speakers of languages with a common
ancestor should show cultural
similarities.
Social Uses of Speech
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To speak appropriately, people must take
the total context into account.
They must know the various situations, or
social scenes, of their culture.
People must recognize the kinds of
interactions they are expected to have
with others.
Sociolinguistics
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Specialty within cultural anthropology that
studies how language is related to culture
and the social uses of speech.
Quick Quiz
1. Which of the following is not a key
property of language?
a)
b)
c)
d)
proper grammar
arbitrariness
discrete and recombinable units
displacement
Answer: a
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Proper grammar is not a key property of
language.
2. The ability to talk about things that don’t
exist is called:
a)
b)
c)
d)
arbitrariness
displacement
grammar
discrete and recombinable elements
Answer: b
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The ability to talk about things that don’t
exist is called displacement.
3. The sounds and words in a language and
the rules that govern how words are
combined are called:
a)
b)
c)
d)
phonetics
arbitrariness
grammar
syntax
Answer: c
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The sounds and words in a language and
the rules that govern how words are
combined are called grammar.