Study guide for final exam, linguistic anthropology
Exam is scheduled for 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., June 14
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Phonetics
The importance and uses of the International Phonetic Alphabet
Phonemics
Phoneme
Phone
Phonology
Morphology
How might an anthropologist use morphology to better understand culture? (lecture notes week
4. See North Carolina case study.)
9. Morpheme
10. Minimal pairs and minimal pair test (what does the minimal pair test reveal?)
11. Pragmatics
12. Semantics
13. Syntax
14. What did Biologist Quentin Atkinson, U of Auckland New Zealand, discover about the
Khoisan language family in Africa when he compared phonemes in languages by applying
statistical methods that were developed for a different kind of study, that of constructing
genetic trees based on DNA? (lecture notes week 4)
15. What are some ways that new words are formed in language?
16. Neologisms
17. Borrowing
18. Compounding
19. Derivation
20. Conversion
21. Blending
22. Clipping
23. Acronyms
24. Alphabetism
25. Coining
26. Reduplication
Ethnicity, class, and language
27. What does Mary Bucholtz and others mean by the historical unmarked status of whiteness and
what does it have to do with language? (The Whiteness of Nerds)
28. What does Bucholtz and others mean by markedness and what does it have to do with
language?
29. How does Bucholtz describe and analyze the different ways that some groups create a sense of
identity through maintaining marked status or unmarked status?
30. What examples does John Rickford use to demonstrate that Ebonics is systematically rule
governed rather than slang or ‘lazy’ English? What does he say about the origins of Ebonics?
(Suite for Ebony and Phonics)
31. How does Rosina Lippi-Green describe and define the standard language ideology and the
dominant language bloc? Who are the members of this bloc? What are some examples of how
institutions that are part of this bloc discriminate (consciously or unconsciously) when it comes
to English uses, what many call ‘accents’, and dialects? (Accent, Standard Language Ideology,
and Discriminatory Pretext in Courts)
32. According to Lindsay Whaley (The Future of Native Languages), what are ways to classify and
categorize the health of languages and what are some of the variables that make categorization
complex? Why are social, political, economic, and other influences so important in the health
of languages and what are some examples of how a category cannot apply the same to one
language as it does to another?
33. How did Whaley (above) and John McWhorter (Most of the World’s Languages Went Extinct)
describe periods of punctuation, equilibrium, language death and decreases in diversity as
patterns that have repeated themselves possibly four or five times in human history and
prehistory? What were crucial economic, political, and technological changes that influenced
these repeating patterns?
34. How does McWhorter discuss the reasons for language death or language morbidity and what
does he say about attempts in the world to halt the death of minority languages? Why are
children so important in the efforts to prevent language death?
35. In Laura Ahearn’s chapter on language death and revitalization, and in the videos we watched
about language loss, what is described as lost when languages are lost?
36. Why was Nu Shu in China a hidden language and why is it nearly lost, according to the film Nu
Shu – A Hidden Language of Women in China
Discourse analysis is primarily an examination of power. As Michel Foucault wrote, “power
is about processes and actions – embedded within everyday social and linguistic
interactions.” Discourse analysis begins with definitions and theories of power. Methods
come from applying those theories to everyday circumstances.
Concepts about power (Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Raymond Williams, etc. in text
book and lecture notes) (see list below)
37. Habitus
38. Doxa
39. Orthodoxy
40. Heterodoxy
41. Hegemony
42. Agency
43. Practice theory (Ahearn)
44. Symbolic capital (lecture notes, text book, videos)
45. Cultural capital (lecture notes, text book, videos)
46. The importance of privileged (empty) signifiers
47. Dislocation theory and ideology
48. Logics of equivalence
49. Logics of difference
50. Examples of studying social and linguistic inequality in institutional settings through looking at
turn economies, control of ratification, question control
51. The case study in agency, voice and storytelling in South Africa Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC) hearings. What does Colin de Souza’s story tell us about how expectations
about affect and stance and storytelling often become standardized so that those who fail to
meet the language and communication standards remain unheard or ignored? What did Jan
Blommaert say about Colin’s communication style and where it came from? What was ‘the
moral of the story’ for those studying power and language?