Chapter 5
Language and Communication
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What Will You Learn?
• Define language and distinguish between a
sign and symbol.
• Specify the three branches of linguistic
anthropology.
• Observe cross-cultural differences in
nonverbal means of communication.
• Trace the emergence of language, speech, and
writing.
• Understand the relationship between
language and culture.
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What Is Language?
• Language is a system of communication using
sounds, gestures, or marks that are put
together in meaningful ways according to a set
of rules resulting in meanings that are
intelligible to all who share that language.
• Through language, people can transmit their
culture from one generation to the next. This
makes language the most important symbol in
any culture.
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What Is Language?
• A signal is an instinctive sound or gesture that
carries a natural or self evident meaning.
Often signals can be used with languages but
they are innate, not learned.
– Coughing, sighs, screaming, etc.
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Linguistic Research and the Nature of
Language
• No matter which language, all are a means of
transmitting information and sharing with
others both collective and individual
experiences.
• There are approximately 6,000 languages
worldwide today.
• Linguistics is the systematic study of all
aspects of language.
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Descriptive Linguistics
• This branch of linguistics involves unraveling a
language by recording, describing, and
analyzing all of its features. These linguists
focus on:
– Phonology
– Morphology
– Syntax
– Grammar
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Phonology
• Phonology is 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.
– Example: bit and pit
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Morphology
• Morphology is 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).
– Morphemes are the smallest units of sound that
carry a meaning compared to phonemes which
can alter meaning but have no meaning by
themselves.
• Example: Cow(s) the “s” carries a meaning of plural.
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Syntax & Grammar
• Syntax - the rules or principles of phrase and
sentence making.
• To best understand the entire formal structure
one must analyze the grammar of the
language.
• Grammar - the entire formal structure of a
language including morphology and syntax.
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Historical Linguistics
• Historical linguists study not only historical or
dead languages but also current languages.
Languages change as culture changes.
• 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.
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Historical Linguistics
• Language families are groups of languages
descended from a single ancestral language.
• Each language family shows the linguistic
divergence of a language to the next over
several thousand years. Better described as
the development of different languages from
a single ancestral language.
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Language Families
European Language Subgroups in Europe.
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Processes of Linguistic Divergence
• One way in which languages change is through
borrowing from one language to another.
• Over the past decade the internet has
widened the meaning of a host of already
existing words from hacking and surfing to
spam. Also new words such as blogging,
vlogging and netiquette have been coined.
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Critical Thought
• Can you think of any “new” words or
meanings of words that have been
revolutionized by the internet, social media,
texting, instant messaging, etc?
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Language Loss and Revival
• One of the most powerful forces of language
change is the domination of one society over
another.
• Over the past 500 years about half of the
world’s 12,000 or so languages have become
extinct as a direct result of warfare, epidemics,
and forced assimilation brought on by colonial
powers.
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Linguistic Nationalism
• Trying to secure a limited change in a nation’s
language is called linguistic nationalism - the
attempt by ethnic minorities and even
countries to proclaim independence by
purging their languages of foreign terms.
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Sociolinguistics
• 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.
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Dialects
• Sociolinguists are also interested in dialects varying forms of a language that reflect
particular regions, occupations, or social
classes and that are similar enough to be
mutually intelligible.
• Geographical boundaries can often create a
dialect as can economics. One of the most
significant dialects in recent history is the
emergence of AAVE (Ebonics, black English)
– “African American Vernacular English”
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AAVE
• Like any other dialect or language, AAVE is a
highly structured mode of speech with
patterned rules of sound and sequences.
• Many of the distinctive features stem from the
retention of sound patterns, grammatical rules
concerning verbs and even words of the West
African Languages.
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Code Switching
• Code Switching is having and using the ability
to change from one level of a language to
another as the situation demands. This could
be from one language to another or from one
dialect to the next.
• People speaking minority-based dialects may
be forced to better adapt if they code switch
into the standard dialect from their own
personal dialect choice.
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Ethnolinguistics
• This is a branch of linguistics that studies the
relationship between language and culture
and how they mutually influence and inform
each other.
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Linguistic Relativity
• The idea that the words and grammar of a
language are directly linked to culture and
affect how speakers of the language perceive
and think about the world is better known as
linguistic relativity.
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Gesture-Call System
• Gestures are facial expressions and bodily
postures and motions that convey intended as
well as subconscious messages. Human
speech is apart of the gesture call system.
• The study of gestures would fall under the
study of nonverbal signs also known as
kinesics.
– Gesture component consists of body motions
used to convey messages.
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Gestures
• A division of kinesics known as proxemics is
the cross-cultural study of humankind’s
perception and use of space.
• Founded by Edward Hall who coined the term,
he found that different cultures have unique
ways of dividing and utilizing space.
• He identified four categories of spatial use.
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Proxemics
•
•
•
•
Intimate (0-18 in)
Personal-Casual (1.5-4 ft)
Social-Consultive (4-12ft)
Public (12+ ft)
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Paralanguage
• The second component of the gesture call
system is paralanguage - specific voice effects
that accompany speech and contribute to
communication. These vocalizations include:
crying, laughing, sighing, grunting, moaning.
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Tonal Languages
• Languages in which the pitch of a spoken word is
an essential part of its pronunciation and
meaning are known as tonal languages.
• Roughly 70% of the world’s languages fall into
this category.
• English is a non-tonal language, however, tones in
English can convey an attitude or ask a question
but not change the meaning of the words.
• In Mandarin careless use of tones with the
syllable ma could cause one to call someone’s
mother a horse!
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Whistled Speech
• Another traditional system of communication
used to expand acoustic space is whistled
speech, or whistled language, an exchange of
whistled words using a phonetic emulation of the
sounds produced in spoken voice.
• The whistled sound can far outreach the human
voice and can be picked up far as 8 kilometers.
• More than likely began in response to music
making through whistling.
• It is a dying practice occurring in only about 30
languages around the world.
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Origin of Language
• Cultures all around the world have sacred stories
or myths addressing the age-old question of the
origins of human language.
• Groups tend to locate the place of origin in their
own ancestral homeland and believe that the first
humans also spoke their language.
• Because human language is embedded within a
gesture call system of a type we share with nonhuman primates, anthropologists have
discovered that some apes have the ability to
exhibit displacement.
– Referring to things and events removed in time and
space.
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Speech to Writing
• Writing Systems are set(s) of visible or tactile
signs used to represent units of language in a
systematic way.
• The oldest “known” writing systems are those
of cuneiform at 5,000 yrs ago and
hieroglyphics at 3,500 yrs ago.
• Recent discovery suggests 8,600 yrs ago in
China.
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Speech to Writing
• While Cuneiform may have been one of the
earliest forms of writing, it led to the
development of the alphabet.
– Series of symbols representing the sounds of
language arranged in a traditional order.
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The Rosetta Stone
• This polished granitelike
stele, inscribed with a
royal decree in three
scripts, was placed in an
Egyptian temple over
2,200 years ago.
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