Pop vs.
Folk
Culture
What is Culture?
• Sum of all the typical activities of a
group of people
– Values
– Material items
– Political institutions
• Pop/Folk Culture refers to material items
– 2 aspects of material culture
• Survival techniques – food, shelter, clothing
• Leisure activities – art, sports, music, movies,
etc.
Pop
(changes from time to time)
vs. Folk
(changes from place to place)
• Large groups of people
• Heterogeneous groups
• Small, isolated groups
• Homogeneous groups
• Changes quickly
• Slow to change
• Dispersed – Global
scale
• Clustered – local scale
• Little interaction w/
others
• Ex. Wearing a sari,
driving a horse and
buggy
• Ex. Wearing jeans,
eating fast food,
attending sporting
events
Folk Culture
• Stable and close knit
• Usually a rural community
• Tradition controls
• Resistance to change
• Buildings erected without architect or
blueprint using locally available building
materials
• anonymous origins, diffuses slowly
through migration. Develops over time.
• Clustered distributions: isolation/lack of
interaction breed uniqueness and ties to
physical environment.
Diffusion of Culture
• Pop diffuses…?
– Hierarchically through major centers i.e.
NYC, LA, Chicago, London
– Pretty soon, what’s there is here
• Folk diffuses…?
– Relocation i.e. movement of Amish people
from PA. to KY.
Why is F.C. Clustered?
• Isolation
– Keeps folk cultures from changing much
• Physical Environment
– Limits some choices of how people can survive
– BUT REMEMBER POSSIBILISM!!
1. Some cultures in similar environments have
different cultural traits
2. Some cultures in different environments have
similar cultural traits (pop culture)
• Some examples of these…
a. Food customs (repetitive act of a group is a
custom) throughout the U.S.
b. Clothing different in similar environments
c. Food attractions
– Abipone Indians in Paraguay jaguars = strength
– Fertility foods??
d. Taboos (especially food taboos)
– People in the U.S. don’t eat insects (decent nutritional
value) TED talk by Peter Menzel on the local diets of the
world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsYOhRdlpuw
– Religious food taboos (often environmental reasons)
• Hindus don’t eat beef
• Muslims/Jews don’t eat pigs
– Talking on the phone in the bathroom
– Americans don’t sunbathe nude
2. Different housing styles: combo of social customs
& environment
Why Do Folk Cultures survive or
NOT?
http://www.boredpanda.org/vanishing-tribes-before-they-pass-away-jimmy-nelson/
Stunning portraits of the world’s vanishing tribes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPPxBpTP5hE
Before They Pass Away – Jimmy Nelson TED Talk (13.31)
Why is P. C. Widely Dispersed?
• Diffusion of Housing
– Housing b/co standard across cultures in MDCs
• Cheaper to build
• Built by professionals
– Housing varies across time NOT space
• Diffusion of Clothing
– Dress = Status/Income
– (Folk Culture: Dress = Cultural Group)
– Clothing choices NOT environmentally driven
• Diffusion of Food
– MDCs consume LOTS of snack foods & alcohol (higher
standards of living)
– Huge $$$ on advertising to encourage consumption
Popular Culture
Clothing: Jeans and other clothing
have become valuable status
symbols in many regions including
Asia and Russia despite
longstanding folk traditions.
Diffusion of TV, 1954–2005
Fig. 4-14: Television has diffused widely since the 1950s, but some areas still have
low numbers of TVs per population.
Role of Tech. in Diffusion Pop
Culture
• Diffusion of TV
– Most popular leisure activity in the world
– Most popular means of communicating pop
culture around the world
• Most MDC countries have at least 1 TV in every
household
• Diffusion of the Internet
– Growing means of communicating pop culture
– Beginning to diffuse from U.S. to other MDCs
more rapidly and now to developing and LDCs
Problems Associated w/
Globalization of P. C.
• Threatens F. C.
– Muslims view Western dress as a threat
• Males lose power over females
• Miss Afghanistan
• Problems of looking “Westernized”
– Effect on religious taboos and habits
• Less people observe food/clothing restrictions
• Negative popular culture transfers
– Increase in prostitution in LDCs
– Blood Diamonds (Conflict Diamonds) in Africa
• MDCs dominate the media (CNN)
– Over-represents Western ideas
– Focus on negative aspects of LDCs
• Control Foreign countries economically?
Problems Cont.
• Impact on the Environment
– Uniform landscapes = most suburban areas
VERY similar
– Depletion of nat. resources
• Golf courses use up a lot of land
• Over-killing of animals for products (Africa)
• Eating meat instead of grains – inefficient and
expensive; Suitability for LDCs??
– Pollution
• MDCs create MUCH more waste than LDCs (where
folk culture is more prevalent)
• (Keep in mind folk cultures also produce waste)
Problems with the Globalization of
Popular Culture
Western Media Imperialism?
 U.S., Britain, and Japan dominate
worldwide media.
 Glorified consumerism, violence, sexuality,
and militarism?
 U.S. (Networks and CNN) and British
(BBC) news media provide/control the
dissemination of information worldwide.
 These networks are unlikely to focus or
provide third world perspective on issues
important in the LDCs.
Environmental Problems with
Cultural Globalization
Accelerated Resource Use through Accelerated
Consumption
• Furs: minx, lynx, jaguar, kangaroo, whale, sea otters
(18th Century Russians) fed early fashion trends
• Inefficient over-consumption of Meats, Poultry, even Fish
by meat-eating pop cultures
 Mineral Extraction for Machines, Plastics and Fuel
 New Housing and associated energy and water use.
 Golf courses use valuable water and destroy habitat
worldwide.
Pollution: waste from fuel generation and discarded
products, plastics, marketing and packaging
materials
Urban Sprawl = Progress?
http://www.geographyalltheway.com/igcse_geography/imagesetc/urban_spra
wl.gif
Ski Dubai?
McDonald’s, Tokyo, Japan
Swimming Pool, West
Edmonton Mall, Canada
McDonald’s, Jerusalem
Countries without a Mickey Ds
Linguistics
• Language @ heart of culture
– W/o lang., culture cannot be passed on
– Literary tradition  cultural continuity
• Ideograms v. alphabets
• Mandarin = oldest surviving writing system
• Printing press!
• Between 4-8,000 different lang. (depends on
definition)
– (ethnologue.com lists 7,413)
– 600+ in India
most are
– 1000+ in Africa
preliterate
Washoe lived at Central Wash. U. She learned 800+ signs
in Amer. Sign Lang. AND taught her kids how to
communicate!!
Vocalization is the crucial part of the def. of lang!
Xhosa language – South Africa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZlp-croVYw
Khoisan – Namibia –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz44WiTVJww
I. Language Classification
A. Language Family
= collection of related langs. with a
“prehistoric” ancestor
– Indo-European is largest 50%;
– Sino-Tibetan (20%) is 2nd
– Afro-Asiatic (Northern Africa/Middle East)
– Austronesian (Southeast Asia)
– Niger-Congo (Sub-Saharan Africa)
– Dravidian (India)
Diffusion of Indo-European
languages
The origin of words we use all the time
https://www.businessinsider.com/european-maps-showing-origins-of-common-words-2013
11?utm_content=bufferb7d3a&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Buffer
Hungarian surrounded by Indo-European
languages! Why?
B. Language Branch
• Collection of related langs. w/ a more recent
ancestor
• More recent language divergence
• Indo-European has 8 branches:
– 4 major:
• Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian
– 4 minor:
• Hellenic, Albanian, Celtic, Armenian
C. Language Group
• Common modern ancestor w/ similar
vocab. and grammar
– Ex: West Germanic v. North Germanic
– English is West Germanic
D. Language
i.e. English, Hindi, Arabic, etc.
E. Dialects: Standard vs. vulgar
• Standard language (standard “dialect”)
1. Sets quality of a lang., (part of cultural ID &
national concern)
2. May be sustained by gov’t policies (ex: tests
for teachers or officials)
3. Powerful people decide the standard language
• Ex of standard lang.:
– Chinese = “Mandarin”
– British English = “British Received
Pronunciation”
– Sec of State. Kerry English NOT Pres. Bush
English
– American Sign Language
Why is BRP and American
English so different?
• What cohorts left Britain for the USA?
– Mostly lower/middle class immigrants (not
speakers of BRP)
– Webster  “national” American English dialect
• B/c of time and isolation vocab. & pronunciation
considerably different
– Different words for new inventions
– Examples???
– American vs. British English..
http://esl.about.com/library/vocabulary/blbritam.htm?once=true
&terms=british-american
English Dialects
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k
Amy Walker 21 Accents (2:36)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NriDTxseog
Amy Walker, How to do an American accent? (6:40)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VSdYaX114Q
Jeff Foxworthy Words of the South
http://www.businessinsider.com/southern-sayings-2013-10
13 Southern Sayings that the rest of America will not understand 
Some other great video clips to introduce you to dialects and variations
in language. The cockney pronunciation segment from My Fair Lady
(the Rain in Spain) and the hilarious clip of Lucy and Ricky discussing how they (Ricky)
will teach their child proper English pronunciation 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJr9SSJKkII (4:47)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g10jFL423ho (5:25)
•
•
Vulgar Dialects
Variants of the standard lang.
– Regional accents reveal origin
– Dialects marked by diff. in vocab. =
“isogloss”
– Isogloss = line separating 2 diff. words 4
same concept
Ex. “Coke” vs. “soda” vs. “pop”
Ex. “Crabbing”
http://www.reelseo.com/best-vimeo-videosnovember-2013/ Regional Variations
– More common  dialects differ in pronunciation
IF 2 dialects become “mutually unintelligible”  two
separate languages emerge  “language divergence”
Language Divergence
The basic process: time and isolation
1.
2.
3.
4.
Separation
Time & isolation  branch into dialects
Dialects remain isolated
Pronunciations change, new words created for
new discoveries
5. More time & isolation  dialects become
discrete languages  “mutually unintelligible”
– Ex. Vulgar Latin  Romance Languages
• How does this relate to time-distance
decay?
II. Languages of the World
Our goal… Know what language/ language
branch/ language family is spoken in almost
every place on Earth!!
1.Mandarin = most common primary lang.
Chinglish. Can it be translated to English?
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/05/03/world/asia/20100503_CHINGLISH.html?_r=0
2. English = 2nd just passed … Spanish is 3rd then Hindi and Arabic. *English
lang. of 100s of millions
–English official lang. 40+ countries
–2 billion+ in a country w/ English official language
–Who is #2 in English speakers b/h U.S.?
(India =“ 398 scheduled languages, 11 extinct”; 22 official languages)
Many not mutually understood. Each state has an official language!
3. *Could English be spoken in some places JUST for business and not casually?
Why and where?
Six Official languages of U.N.? _________________
Languages of Europe
1. Indo-Euro. lang. dominates
2. Language map & pol. boundaries usually
overlap
– SW Europe is ___Romance___
– NW Europe is __Germanic______
– E. Europe is ____Slavic___
– (Keep in mind Estonia, Hungary and Finland –
Uralic language family)
European Languages cont.
• Romance languages dominate in 5 states
• E. boundary of Germ. = Germanic  BaltoSlavic tongues
• Believed Uralic lang. spread 7000-10,000
years ago
• Basque language = mystery in history =
“isolated lang.”
Langs of India
http://www.mapsofindia.com/culture/indian-languages.html
• 4 lang. fams
– Indo-Euro. most speakers
– Dravidian 2nd
– Who cares about other 2 families??
Austroasiatic and Indo-Pacific
• 15 major lang.; all but four are IndoEuropean (Bengali and Hindi most common)
• Dravidian langs clustered in SE (Tamil/Telugu)
• Pol. divisions reflect regional langs
• Hindi is the main Indo-Euro lang. (IndoIranian branch) w/ 300+ million speakers
Languages of Africa
1. Most preliterate
2. Grouped into 4 fams
North Africa =
Central Africa =
Kalahari-Namib =
South Africa =
3. Largest fam.= Niger-Congo
4. Oldest are the Khoisan
languages (clicks)
Mandarin: One lang. or many?
(Sino-Tibetan family)
1. World's oldest written lang.
2. Spoken by the greatest contiguous pop.
cluster on Earth
3. Divided by dialects that are mutually
unintelligible
– Mandarin dominates with about 900 million
speakers
– Written lang. ALWAYS same  unifying force
– Several efforts have been made to create a
truly national language… today’s pinyin
South America
• Impact of
Colonialism
• Treaty of Tordesillas
divided New World
into 2 spheres:
– Western “half” =
Spain
– Eastern “half” =
Portugal
Proto-Indo-European Language
Hearth and Diffusion
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) lang?
• Indo-European lang = world's most common
• Proto-Indo-European
(common ancestor of Indo-European)
• Use reverse lang. diverg. to guess all I-E
langs came from ONE lang.
– Similar words
– Hypothesize about origin?
Diffusion of P.I.E lang?
A. Conquest theory
1. Originated N of Black Sea (steppes of
Ukraine/Russia)
2. Lang. diffused west thru conquest!
•
•
Superior tech. (wheel)
Domesticated horses
Historical Spread of the Chariot
(Years are BC)
B. Agriculture Theory
1. Diffusion by SHARING ag.
Techniques/spread of farming
2. Origin: Anatolia in Turkey (hilly words)
3. Supporting evidence:
– Few words for plains but many for relief
landforms
– Few words for trees/animals that live on the
plains
– Leading hearth of ag. innovation nearby
(Mesopotamia)
– Some genetic evidence
III. Globalization vs. Local Diversity
• Our goal: To be able to answer 2007’s FRQ
well!!:
• Globalization of lang.
– Lingua franca?
– Any common language spoken by peoples w/
diff. native tongues. (business purposes)
– Exs: Swahili, Indonesian, Russian, Hausa,
Arabic
– English (most important)
• Technology, Navigation, Education, Pop Culture,
Tourism, Finance
– Negative correlation b/t lingua franca & min.
lang.
Swahili
• Swahili has become the lingua franca of
East Africa
http://www.glcom.com/hassan/lessons/useful_swahili_words.html
– Developed from African Bantu languages,
Arabic, and Persian
– Has a complex vocabulary and structure
Hausa
• In West Africa
Hausa is a
regional lingua
franca
Language Replacement
• Stronger culture forces lang. on less
advanced people
• Colonialism’s linguistic legacy:
– Acculturation or assimilation?
– Latin America – Treaty of Tordesillas
– Africa
– USSR
– UK today
• Globalization of L. F. + Lang. Rep. may =
language extinction
– (Sanskrit, Cornish, Native American lang., etc.)
Pidgin Language?
Pidgin- NOT
PIGEON
Pidgin
• Mixture of 2 or more langs; allows comm.
b/t speakers of different tongues.
– Simple grammar  easier to learn
– Few synonyms
– Learned as second languages.
• aka “Contact Language”
• Ex: Spanglish, Chinglish, Franglais,
African pidgins
Creole and Creolization
1. Pidgins  mother tongue
a) Process = “Creolization”
b) 2 languages blend together = one native
language
Ex. Swahili, Afrikaans, French Creole
2. Stable over time, complex grammar & vocab
3. Difficult to distinguish b/t dialect/pidgin/creole
4. Rubenstein = “lang. resulting from mixing of
colonizer’s lang w/ indigenous lang.”
Pidgin/Creole?
What if the parents
teach their children
the pidgin so that it
becomes their
primary language?
Is it still a pidgin?
Preservation of Local Diversity
• Minority lang. revival because…
– Maintenance of a unique culture
• Amer. Indians
• Quebecois in Canada
• Spanish-speakers in the U.S.
– Force for devolution (transfer of power away
from central gov’t.)
• Basques in Spain
• Maori in New Zealand (local autonomy)
– Gov’t attempting to promote unity = “centripetal
force”
•
•
•
•
22 official lang. in India
11 official lang. of South Africa
2 official lang. in Belgium
2 official lang. in Canada
Preservation cont.
• Promote nationalism w/i a group of people =
“centripetal force”
– Hebrew in Israel
– Gaelic in Ireland/Scotland
– Quebec banning non-French signs & ads
• Use of technology
– Maintaining and reinforce lang
– Welsh TV programs/radio stations
– Spanish speakers w/ Spanish TV stations
• To attract tourists
– Unique experiences!
– Signs & topynyms changed to reflect native culture
Multilingualism
• VERY few monolingual states
– Ex: Japan, Portugal, Poland, Venezuela,
Lesotho
– Most even have some people w/ minority lang.
• Japan: 500,000+ Koreans
• Venezuela indigenous langs
• Linguistic fragmentation = cultural
pluralism?
• Multilingual states = centrifugal force?
Multilingualism Case Studies
• A. Nigeria
– Unimaginable linguistic diversity – legacy of
colonialism (some source suggest 500+
languages
– 4 major regional lang. (Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and
Fulani)
– ~12 major local languages spoken by 1 to 5
million people
– Adopted English as its "official language”
• Has precluded major cultural conflict based on
language
• Caused problems for children first entering school
knowing only traditional languages
• Only spoken by small, urban minority
Multilingualism Case Studies
B. Canada
– Large French-speaking territory w/ even
larger English-speaking area
– French law and language sustained in
Quebec
– French language was protected in parliament
and in the courts
– Language divides the country
– 60 Minutes – War of Words - Quebec Language Wars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKOGgYaqwhg (7:44)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iki-pwrCpE8 (5:24)
Will Quebec succeed and secede?
Multilingualism Case Studies
C. Belgium
– Dutch-speaking region in the north & Frenchspeaking region in the south
– Another Velvet divorce?
– Brussels (capital) officially bilingual, Frenchspeaking majority
– Language regions separate Romance and
Germanic branches of Indo-European
Multilingualism Case Studies
Belgium
• Conflict has been
largely nonviolent
• Languages/ethnic
issues dominate
politics
D. Russia: During USSR the Russian language
became the lingua franca
Multilingualism Case Studies
E. The failure of Cyprus to unify
Multilingualism Case Studies
F. Switzerland
German speaking (63.7%), French
speaking (20.4%), Italian speaking
(6.5%), Romansch (0.5%)
1994 Czechoslovakia
Official languages
• Serve different purposes
– Used to enhance communication & unity among
peoples who speak diverse traditional languages
– Former African colonies sometimes adopt
European languages
– Creating an official language has caused
problems for some countries
• Ex: When Hindi was given official status in India, riots
and disorder broke out in non-Hindi areas
– Some former colonies chose two or more official
languages
What is the official language of the
USA?
30 states have declared English
their official language
Why is it ironic that Britain does not
have an official language?
The European Union
20 official languages
its annual translation cost is 1.3 billion
They include:
Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French,
German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese,
Spanish, Swedish.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/
2005/02/0222_050222_translation.html
Toponymy
• The systematic study of place names
– Place names can reveal much about the contents of
a culture area
• Place names will change/can cause
controversy
– Post Cold War  Soviet Union cities went back to
pre-Communism names
– South Africa  with new gov’t, change old names
or not??
– Post-Colonial African/Asian countries/cities
– Hartsfield-Jackson Airport
Francophone World
Literary Traditions + Technology
• Printing press and rise of national states
a) Invented in 1588, in Germany
b) Allowed for unprecedented
production of texts
c) Luther Bible for German and King
James Bible for English
Knowledge is no longer hierarchically
diffused
Crazy Fact
• More than 200 years ago, William Jones
discovered ancient Sanskrit bore a striking
resemblance to ancient Greek & Latin.
What can this mean?
True or False
• If people of a large region speak
languages that are somewhat different but
still closely related, it is reasonable to
conclude they migrated into that region
relatively recently.
• Languages with a common root but which
are very different from each other indicate
long-term modification.
Toponymy
Historian George Stewart classified place names into ten categories
a)
Descriptive—Rocky Mountains
b)
Associative—Mill Valley, California
c)
Incident—Battle Creek, Michigan
d)
Possessive—Johnson City, Texas
e)
Commendatory—Paradise Valley, Arizona
f)
Commemorative—San Francisco
g)
Folk-etymology—Plains, Georgia, or Academia, Pennsylvania
h)
Manufactured—Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
i)
Mistake—–names involving historic errors in identification or
translation
Nostratic
Russian scholars have long been in the
forefront of research on ancient languages
(what else do they have to do??)
a) Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon
Dolgopolsky
(1)Studied independently of each other
(2)Came to similar conclusions
pre-Proto-Indo-European language named
Nostratic
Nostratic
• No names for domestic plants or animals
so the people were hunters and gatherers,
not farmers
• May date back 14,000 years
• Believed to be the ancestral language for
many other languages
• Nostratic links widely separated languages
Some scholars have
suggested that
Nostratic is a direct
successor of a protoworld language that
goes back to the dawn
of human history
MOTHER TONGUE
What was vulgar Latin?
Vulgar Latin in Roman Empire (roads)
Collapse by Germanic tribes led to Vulgar
Latin’s evolution to 5 Romance lang.
What if two dialects reach a point of
mutual unintelligibility?
The Greenberg hypothesis
Proposed the migration to the Western
Hem must have occurred much earlier
than 12-13,000 years ago
Why?
There are 200 lang. families there and only
40 in the Old World
The Greenberg hypothesis
Supporting evidence:
a)Archaeological dating in Pennsylvania (16,000
B.P.), and Chile (tentatively 33,000 B.P.)
b)May lend credibility to Greenberg's hypothesis, if
proved beyond a doubt
c) May mean the first wave came across the Bering
Strait more than 40,000 years ago
d)Dental data gathered by Christy Turner conclude
that three waves of immigration took place over
a longer period that 12,000 years
LANGUAGE REPLACEMENT
• 15-18th centuries Latin America
Treaty of Tordesilla’s Line of Demarcation
1490’s
Creolization occurred in many places
• 18-20th centuries Africa and Asia
Africa and Berlin Conference 19th Century
Page 425
Primarily France and Britain (BRP)
• 20th century USSR and ELLBUMGAATUTKK
• Today: 3rd generation rule
Origins of Pop and Folk
• Pop originates (usually) in MDCs
– Where do most movies people watch worldwide
come from?
• Bollywood vs. Hollywood vs. Nollywood
Slumdog Millionaire
• Folk originates often anonymously or in one
or multiple hearths (we often know very little
about the origin of folk cultural traits)
– Who was the first hula dancer in Hawaii?
– Who cares?
Defining language
• Systematic means of communicating ideas
or feelings by the use of conventionalized
signs, gestures, marks, or especially
articulate vocal sounds
– Animals use symbolic calls, but only humans
have developed complex vocal communication
systems
The Esperanto experiment
1. An effort to create a world language
during the early twentieth century
2. Europeans were becoming more
multilingual
3. Few wanted to learn another language
that did not have practical utility
FYI for those with no life!
http://www.esperanto.ca/kurso/alphabet.htm