Language and Communication: Understanding the World of Linguistics

1. Chapter 5 Language and Communication 1

2. 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. 2

3. 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. 3

4. 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. 4

5. 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. 5

6. 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 6

7. 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 7

8. 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. 8

9. 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. 9

10. 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. 10

11. 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. 11

12. Language Families European Language Subgroups in Europe. 12

13. 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. 13

14. 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? 14

15. 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. 15

16. 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. 16

17. 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. 17

18. 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” 18

19. 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. 19

20. 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. 20

21. Ethnolinguistics • This is a branch of linguistics that studies the relationship between language and culture and how they mutually influence and inform each other. 21

22. 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. 22

23. 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. 23

24. 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. 24

25. Proxemics • Intimate (0-18 in) • Personal-Casual (1.5-4 ft) • Social-Consultive (4-12ft) • Public (12+ ft) 25

26. 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. 26

27. 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! 27

28. 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. 28

29. 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 non-human primates, anthropologists have discovered that some apes have the ability to exhibit displacement. • Referring to things and events removed in time and space. 29

30. 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. 30

31. 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. 31

32. 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. 32