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Communications: Language Thought and Society.

Communications: Language Thought and Society. In order for social scientists to understand how people organize their lives, carry out work, practice religions, and the like, they need to be aware of how people talk to each other (Bonvillain 2003, 2). Communicative Interactions.

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Communications: Language Thought and Society.

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  1. Communications: Language Thought and Society. • In order for social scientists to understand how people organize their lives, carry out work, practice religions, and the like, they need to be aware of how people talk to each other (Bonvillain 2003, 2)

  2. Communicative Interactions

  3. Meanings transmitted through language Situational , Social and Cultural

  4. Situational Meanings: • Conveyed through the form of language depending on context • Example: formal and informal encounters

  5. Social Meanings: • Transmitted by members of different social sectors through a particular use of language • Example: gender differentiation, occupation, social class position, etc

  6. Cultural Meanings: • When words carry specific symbolic meaning or cultural specific meanings. Transmitted by a particular use of language • Example: language expressions

  7. The act of speaking is action

  8. The importance of the links between language and culture • To understand the importance of human communication • To understand social and cultural behaviors • Cultural contexts in which language is used

  9. Situational, social and cultural meanings of language are created within cultural contexts: Cultural contexts are connected to Cultural models:

  10. Cultural Model A cultural model is a construction of reality that is created, shared, and transmitted by members of a group (similar to an ideology)

  11. Speech Community A group of people who speak the same language, share norms about appropriate uses of language, and share social attitudes toward language ant its use.

  12. Linguistic Anthropology • Subfield of anthropology • Study of language and comunication (cross-culturally) • Compares language use • Language origins • Relationship between language and culture

  13. Linguistic Anthrop New Areas of Research • Nationalism and language • --Quebec, Ireland, and Yugoslavia • Language and social hierarchy • --class system and caste system • Language and politics

  14. Linguistic Anthropology: specialization and links • Links to archaeology: language origins • Links to physical anthropology: human evolution and language • Pragmatics: language usage

  15. Characteristics of Human Communication • Productivity: the ability to communicate many messages efficiently • Displacement: the ability to think in the past, the future and the present

  16. The Properties of Languages • Sounds --Phoneme: a minimal unit of sound that functions to differentiate the meaning of words • Vocabulary • Grammar: rules for combining sounds into sequences that carry meaning

  17. The Origins of Languages • Started 50,000 as paralanguage: non-verbal communication (body posture, voice tone, touch, smell and facial movements) • All languages are equally efficient (semantically and grammatically) • Semantics: the study of meaning in language, including the analysis of meaning of words and sentences

  18. Why is it important to understand the relationship between language, communication and social/cultural contexts?

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