Language and Cultural Meaning

Language and Cultural Meaning A man who waits for a roast duck to fly into his mouth must wait a very, very long time.

Proverbs Reflect Culture Chinese Proverbs A camel standing amidst a flock of sheep. A man who says it cannot be done should not interrupt a man doing it. Give a man a fish, and he will live a day; give him a net, and he will live a lifetime. Butcher the donkey after it has finished the job What do these proverbs tell us about Chinese culture and its values?

North American Proverbs • Blow your own horn • if you want a job done right do it yourself • Keep your eye on the ball • Work before pleasure. • God helps those who help themselves, • stand on your own two feet. • If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. • The early bird gets the worm. • “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” What do these sayings and proverbs say about N. American culture?

High and Low Context Cultures • High-context cultures (Japan, China, and Arab countries) tend to be relational, collectivist, intuitive, and contemplative. • In a high context culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain. • Cultures where the group is valued over the individual promote in-groups and group reliance • High-context cultures prefer group values, duties, and group decisions. • prefer more formality. • Communication style: High-context cultures rely on nonverbal cues and the total picture to communicate. Meanings are embedded at many social levels. • Time Orientation: Time is unlimited and never-ending in some cultures. Relaxed attitude toward time.

Low Context Cultures • Low-context cultures (North America, Scandinavia, and Germany) tend to be logical, linear, and action-oriented. • In a low context culture, similar experiences and expectations, are to a lesser extent used to communicate. • Much more is explained through words, instead of the context. • Less emphasis on tradition, ceremony, and social rules - Don’t stand on tradition (formality) • Communication style: emphasize words, straightforwardness, openness. People tend to be informal, impatient, literal. • Time Orientation: Time is precious to North Americans. It correlates with productivity, efficiency, and money.

High Japanese Arab Latin American Spanish English Italian French North American Scandinavian German Swiss Low High-Context and Low-Context Cultures

Different cultures have different attitudes, ideas, and emotions towards people’s rights and obligations and about the world is in general • A cultural model: A construction of reality that is created, shared and transmitted by members of a group • cultural models provide a unique world view, providing both an understanding of the world as it is thought to be and a blueprint for the way one ought to behave • These models are encoded in different words and grammatical forms • The process of encoding the values, ideas and emotions in language is universal, although what is encoded is culturally relative • Proverbs, sayings, stories, myths guide human thought and behaviour by providing moral lessons Pandora’s box

More often cultural models are expressed more subtly • In the metaphoric and symbolic meaning of the vocabulary we use • The world is full of meaning and shape our perception and experience of reality • To what extent due the words in a language influence people’s perceptions of their world?

Which word seems to go with each picture? taketa naluma Which one is Masculine and which one Feminine?

Sound Symbolism: The vast majority of people pair taketa with the angular illustration and naluma with the curved one. taketa Because the consonants are hard it is perceived as “harder” and more “masculine” naluma consonants are sonorants perceived as “softer” and more “feminine” Clorox, a hard-working laundry product Chanel, a perfume

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 'Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication and reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.' 1929 Benjamin Lee Whorf Edward Sapir (1897-1941) (1884-1939)

linguistic relativity • According to Sapir, “The complex vocabulary of a language may indeed be looked upon as a complex inventory of all the ideas, interests and occupations that take up the attention of the community” • People label things, forces, and events in both their physical and social world only if they are important to them , i.e. have cultural significance. • The more words, the more significant, and the more noticed and experienced • Through this process unique cultural models are created and reinforced • People give specific names for details of their environment when it is important for their survival • Other languages have to be more descriptive • conclusions can be drawn about cultural attitudes from the degree of specialization within sectors of vocabulary Dinka cattle camp

The colour spectrum, is a continuum, each colour blends gradually into the next; • But we impose boundaries; and talk of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. • these discriminations are arbitrary and are different in other languages

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis • The physiology of our eyes is essentially the same. • All normal humans share similar sense perceptions of color despite differences in color terminology from one language to another. • People can see subtle gradations of color and can comprehend other ways of dividing up the spectrum of visible light. • However, as a society's economy and technology increase in complexity, the number of color terms usually also increases. • i.e. the spectrum of visible light gets subdivided into more categories. • As the environment changes, culture and language typically respond by creating new terminology to describe it. • Culture and language are in a constant state of interaction and association • Because cultures change more rapidly than languages the forms of language will in course of time cease to symbolize those of culture.

Colour Terms • Dani (New Guinea) have only two colour categories • mili which means dark, cold colours such as black • mola which means warm, bright colours such as white • languages with three colour terms add Red • those with four add yellow • English has 11 (red, yellow, black, white, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, orange, grey)

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis • Sapir Whorf says habitual thought might be influenced, if not determined, by linguistic structures. • We perceive the world through language - the colors we see is predetermined by what our culture prepares us to see • do we see blue and green colours because our language has two different names for these two neighbouring parts of the colour spectrum? • Can the Tiv perceive or distinguish between Red and yellow?

EMPTY • Whorf believed that language influenced people’s thoughts and behaviours • noticed that fires were often caused by a person’s inappropriate behaviour motivated by labels given to objects • Workmen often threw matches and cigarette butts into “empty” gasoline drums even though the drums contained vapours and invisible traces of gasoline • Whorf concluded that the men’s behaviour resulted from the misinterpretation of the word “empty”

Whorf concluded that Hopi and English have different conceptions of time, number and duration • Hopi emphasizes continuity, cyclcity and intensity of events • English emphasize the boundedness and objectification of entities • e.g. English uses terms like summer and morning • Hopi they are more like adverbs – e.g. morning becomes “while morning phase is occurring” • English tenses divide time into three distinct units of past, present and future • Hopi do not indicate the time of an event but focus on the manner or duration of an event. Whorf concluded that concepts of time and matter are not given in substantially the same form by experience to all people but depend on the nature of the language or languages through which the use of which they have been developed

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis • linguistic determinism • the language we use to some extent determines the way in which we view and think about the world • Strong determinism • language actually determines thought, that language and thought are identical. • Weak determinism thought and behaviour are merely affected by or influenced by our language

Language and Gender Concept • do children learn to recognize themselves as boys or girls when their language emphasizes gender? • Alexander Guiora looked at children in Hebrew speaking homes, Finnish, speaking homes and English speaking homes • Hebrew has the most gender emphasis of the three languages - nouns are either masculine or feminine and even second person and plurals are differentiated by gender "Land" is feminine, but "field" is masculine; "mountain" is masculine, but "hill" is feminine "bed" is feminine, but "table" and "chair" are masculine; "month" is masculine, but "year" is feminine; "lamp" is masculine, but "lampstand" is feminine.

English emphasizes gender less, only in third person singular his and hers Finish emphasizes gender least, only man and woman convey gender Consistent with the idea that language may influence thought Hebrew speaking children acquired the concept of gender identity the earliest on the average and Finnish speaking children the latest This comparative approach to discourse provides a way to understand the interrelationships of linguistic and cultural factors

language can also influence memory and classifying tasks • The plural of English nouns referring to animate beings (animals, humans) and most inanimate objects requires a plural marker • amorphous substances such as sugar, mud, water etc. Do not require the marker – they cannot be counted • Mayan language Yucatec requires plural marking only for animate objects • In recalling and sorting tasks speakers of English paid attention to number for animate beings and objects but ignored number for substances while Yucatec paid attention to number but only for animate beings, ignoring number for everything else

Which belong together? The green things and the blue things Or the circles and the bars ?

Carroll and Casagrande looked at Navaho Indians • they place great stress on form and shape, rigidity and material from which an object is constructed • they gave three groups of children • one Navaho speaking • one English speaking • one bilingual • showed them a green stick, a green rope and a blue rope and a blue stick • asked them which objects went together • Navaho speakers said objects with the same form i.e. ropes went together • English speakers categorize by colour rather than form put green stick and green rope together • Other languages (e.g. Yucatec in Mexico) sort objects on the basis of material because the words in their language emphasize the material rather than the shape.

Issues of language and perception can also be addressed by examining differences in conversational style favoured by speakers of different languages • When people interact with one another verbally they continually interpret and evaluate the other’s speech in order to ascertain not only its meaning but also its intention. • speakers respond to what they perceive as the other person’s meaning • when people learn second and third languages they may learn to properly use the pronunciations, words and grammatical patterns but may unconsciously transfer the conversational inferences they learned in their native language • they therefore misinterpret the meanings and intentions of their co=participants regardless of the fact that they may understand the literal meaning of the words spoken to them.

communicative practices considered appropriate within a particular community foster feelings of identity and group membership • Features signalling group membership include intonation (pitch, rhythm, velocity), pausing, and stylistic and rhetorical choices • People therefore are unaware of making particular interpretations and evaluations of other people’s speaking styles assuming that their reactions are normal and natural as well • People with different cultural backgrounds may assume that different styles of speaking are appropriate in particular settings, resulting in miscommunication “lucky bastards” people thinking differently about what is going on in their interaction

Semantic Domains • A set or aggregate of words, all sharing a core meaning related to a specific topic • e.g. kinship terms, body-part words, animals, colours • words within a domain all share common meaning in that they refer to the same type of object or event, • but each word in the set and labels a specific and distinct entity i.e. It contrasts with others. • What are the principles upon which these similarities and distinctions are made? • When we know this we can make inferences about how speakers experience their world. • The number of distinctions made within a domain reflects the degree of cultural interest.

English animal names • Age and sex of horses and cows are culturally important we have separate names for them • We also have names for different breeds of these animals • other animals we treat more generally e.g. chipmunk, otter moose etc. • Foal • Filly • colt Mare Stallion

In some domains of vocabulary, cross-cultural comparisons uncover basic differences in the ways people perceive their universe • e.g. kinship terms can reveal people’s perception of their social relations • Three sets of contrasts – generation, sex of relative and lineality • Define the features of our kin that we consider meaningful • Some cultures, e.g. Iroquois make distinctions based on relatative age of sibling English kin terms Sudanese kin terms Hawaiian kin terms

componential analysis e.g. Seneca grandmother and her sisters grandfather and his brothers mother and mother’s sister father and father’s brother mother’s brother father’ sister older sister younger sister older brother younger brother cousin daughter son niece (female speaker) niece (male speaker) nephew (female speaker ) nephew male speaker granddaughter grandson principles – generation and sex of relative • the procedure used to determine significant contrasts • words in a domain are viewed as being composed of isolable “components” of meaning that co-occur in different combinations e.g. younger generation+ female lineal = daughter • comparisons of distinctive components allow us to understand better systems of meaning,of a culture and its members

differences in kinship terminologies are not merely linguistic but reflect societal attitudes towards one’s relatives • individuals called by each kin term are understood by speakers to stand in particular social relationships and to have certain rights and obligations vis a vis speakers • the meanings of words thus reflect one’s social universe • Within each generation the males of one Yanomamo lineage call each other brother and all the women sister. • Males of lineage X call males of lineage Y brother-in-law and are eligible to marry their sisters whom they call wife, even though they may not marry them. • A man must marry a woman of a category called wife,

A fish or a whale? • In order to classify words speakers need to know the defining characteristics of each class • The “mistake” of classifying a whale as a fish reveals that definitional criteria of category membership do not have equal weight • Certain traits are considered by speakers to be more important than others

Criteria for classification are different in different languages • e.g. some language organize noun categories in the basis of gender i.e. masculine or feminine, or animate and inanimate What do a deer and a rock have in common? • Algonquian languages (Ojibwa, Cree, Blackfoot, Cheyenne) would classify all persons, animals, spirits, large trees, tobacco, maize, apple, raspberry, calf of leg, stomach, spittle, feather, bird’s tail, horn, kettle, pip, snowshoe together • The principle of classification is personhood • In Algonquian, personhood in religious contexts, can include stones which can have a spirit and thus have agency and perform actions or they are spiritually relevant • embodies several important aspects of Algonquian worldview • Thinking not in dichotomies

Ethnoscience • How different languages classify the world • Different cultures have different underlying assumptions that can be used to group entities How would you classify these creatures? • Papago (Arizona) divide birds into those that rarely fly – (quail, chicken road runner) and those that often fly – eagle, crow dove • The fact that some birds are more likely than others to fly is considered important by Papago speakers and is directly expressed in their language • plants contain 5 classes : trees, cacti, cultivated seasonal (things planted from seeds) wild seasonal (growing by itself) and unlabeled ( wild perennials that are neither cacti, trees nor bushes) • The Papago system of plant science highlights their interests in environment and economy • The class of cacti is singled out no doubt because if the preponderance of cacti in the environment • Seasonal plants are distinguished on the basis of their origins

Focal meaning and Prototypes Which square provides the best example of blue? • The focal meaning of a word is its central sense within the whole reange of meanings that it has - the best example • in colour terminology each word covers a graded range of different hues along a continuum, rather than a discrete and absolute quality • speakers in a community generally agree on the focal meaning of a word, • Berlin and Kay found that focal meanings of basic color terms were substantially similar in all languages suggesting a universal color system based on physical stimuli

Prototypes • An idealized internalized conceptualization of an object, quality, or activity • Real-life objects and activities are measured against these internalized concepts and are named according to how well they approximate the ideal. • speakers in our culture agree that robin is closest to the prototype or idealization Which is the best example of a bird?

a man above the age of majority who has never been married • What would be some poor examples? What is a bachelor What is a confirmed bachelor? • People and activities can also be evaluated with reference to prototypical constructs • Speakers depend on cultural models consisting of expectations for and evaluations of behaviour • A man living in a stable conjugal relationship, a priest are poor examples • The point is that categories like these cannot be defined abstractly but, rather are appropriately understood only in the context of culturally shared expectations –background setting

What is an argument • Because all communication occurs in cultural contexts, speakers understanding of what is happening is often measured against prototypical constructs • What is an argument • What is a discussion • What is a debate • What is a lecture • What is an apology • We evaluate our own and the behaviour of others depending on what type of interaction we think is taking place • Participants may not agree on the type of interaction • Lack of consensus may result when participants have different goals and are motivated to define encounters in particular ways given

Concepts of Space and location How would you describe the relation between the table and chair? • Everyone has perceives space and the relationship of objects in space but how it is conceived and encoded in language may differ from one culture and language to the next • languages have lexical and or syntactic devices that allow speakers to describe spatial relations between objects and grounds • The locative case corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". • spatial representation must include the encoding of objects shapes, dimensions, relationships with other objects and background, as well as ideas of location, physical motion, etc.

Three different systems • absolute systems describe things in relation to is placement according to an orienting axis e.g. the points of a compass. – the chair is east of the table, or uphill/downhill • In order to apply such a system, speakers must constantly be aware of their absolute orientation in space • Such speakers have to utilize fundamentally different orientations to space and objects than do speakers of English • relative systems refer to objects relative to one another – the chair is to the right of table • Egocentric systems of spatial reference describe objects from the point of view of the speaker the chair is to my right • Languages differ in their preference and frequency of use of the various systems • English emphasizes relativistic • These relations are encoded in locative or directional propositions (at near, away from, toward, in front of etc.)

languages that encode spatial relations differently, lead speakers into habitual ways of expressing concepts and therefore of thinking about underlying relationships • Studies in children`s acquisition of spatial concepts indicate that the way their language structures space and location influences their perceptual processes

Cultural Presupposition • participants in speech interactions come to encounters with an array of knowledge and understanding (models) of their culture as expressed and transmitted through language • The vocabulary of a language is not merely an inventory of arbitrary labels referring to objects, entities or events • for conversation to run smoothly much of what speakers say depends on their accurate assessment of hearer`s knowledge e.g. about the Stanley cup • these presuppositions are collected by people during through a lifetime of experience in the culture • because all human experiences are cultural, a tremendous amount of accumulated but unstated knowledge is continuously carried with us. The Stanley Cup

Other kinds of cultural presuppositions are more complex and their incorporation into meanings of words more subtle • English has many terms expressing various types of coercion – cause, force, oblige, make, compel, order, command, constrain, must, have to, ought to • Navajo does not contain verbs of this sort • Instead of ``I have to go there` a Navajo speaker would say it is only good that I should go there` • This construction lacks the force of compelling necessity • English readily expresses the idea that a person has a right to impose her or his will on another animate being Navajo does not

Cultural presuppositions also involve an understanding of and assumptions about other peoples intentions, desires and goals • e.g. Telling a joke, teasing, insulting, or swearing. • These understandings are often cultural • We nay use the same words in telling a joke – calling some four-eyes, or insluting them • Speakers need to choose between options for word, tone of voice, and or facial expression to provide the right meaning • Listener`s must rely on social norms to determine whether they are the object of a joke or insult.

`How are you?` A greeting or a real concern? speakers have to know the social purposes of particular words or utterances Most such requests are routine and require a routine answer

Terrorists versus freedom fighters • Words convey symbolic meanings expressing cultural values and shared assumptions • `terrorists` expresses strongly negative judgement • “freedom fighter” a positive judgement • Labelling someone as a `terrorist` is in part an attempt to influence hearers opinions about this person because `terrorism `is an act that is socially condemned. • The use of words such as `new`, `bigger`, and improved` in advertisements reveal a cultural assumption of improvement and change and that this is good • also connected with ideas of evolution

Cultural symbols obtain their strength because speakers-hearers unconsciously accept their indirectly expressed assumptions • The power of language to convey social messages is recognized, for instance, by many American women who object to being called `girl’ or by African-American men who object to being called `boy` • In order to gain insights into a peoples worldview or system of values, it is necessary to ascertain the cultural symbols embedded in their words. • This is one reason why translation from one language into another is never completely accurate • Words in isolation can be translated • The meaning of words in context cannot be easily conveyed `boy`

Metaphor All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; — (William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2/7) • metaphors are unstated comparisons between entities or events that share certain features • cultural meanings are transferred through metaphor • Recurring metaphors in a language reveal underlying concepts that help construct the reality or worldview of the speakers • our conceptual system in terms of which we both think and act is fundamentally metaphorical in nature • we experience our world through cultural metaphors • analysis of metaphor provides insights into cultural constructions of reality

The metaphor "wall" is one of the most commonly used metaphors. • We think of a "mental wall" or a wall between two people, with little thought as to what makes this metaphor work. • As we think of a new kind of wall, we come up with a new metaphor. • And with each new metaphor, a new, deeper understanding of what a wall really is. Wall: a solid vertical plane that separates one area and its contents from another area and its contents. Metaphor: "A dam is a wall to water. It blocks the (outward) movement of water." Observation: Now we know that a (metaphoric) wall can block liquids. Metaphor: "An artery wall keeps blood from leaking." Observation: Now we also know that a (metaphoric) wall doesn't need to be flat. Metaphor: "A window is a wall to air but not to light." Observation: A (metaphoric) wall can block out one thing and not another.

Language and Cultural Meaning