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
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.
1.
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=eiW59UUiv
c0
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.
•