LANGUAGE, CULTURE, COGNITION Week 1: INTRODUCTION: KEY ISSUES

1. University of SplitDanica Škara, PhDe-mail: dskara@ffst.hrOffice hours: Wednesday, 15:30-16:30h LANGUAGE, CULTURE, COGNITION Week 1: INTRODUCTION: KEY ISSUES

2. In order to survive as living beings, we must interact with our environment. We develop patterns of interaction based upon our bodily capacities (five senses), our culture and our language. Language/reality

3. Brain/Imagery What are your five senses? Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, and Smell • An image conveys a sense perception , i.e., a visual picture, a sound, a feeling of touch, a taste, or an odor

4. THE HUMAN BRAIN • The human brain is the center of the human nervous system and is a highly complex organ. It has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times as large as the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Especially expanded are the frontal lobes, which are involved in executive functions such as self-control, planning, reasoning, and abstract thought. The portion of the brain devoted to vision is also greatly enlarged in human beings.

5. ‘The mind is a connecting organ..’ • Everything we experience is reflected in the brain by neurons which communicate to form what are called neural networks. • The brain is a collection of about 10 billion interconnected neurons. Each neuron is a cell [right] that uses biochemical reactions to receive, process and transmit information. • The brain creates knowledge /understanding of the world. • I.A. Richards, (The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Oxford University Press: New York and London, 1936:125) claims that ‘The mind is a connecting organ, it works only by connecting and it can connect any two things in an indefinitely large number of different ways.‘

6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90cj4NX87Yk&feature=related • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvxXnQuvTD8&NR=1

7. CAT

9. Humans are very different from other animals! Exceptional ability to adapt to local conditions

10. Humans are better at adapting to a wide range of environments than other creatures wolves Apes lions

11. Humans are very different from other animals • They inhabited almost all parts of the globe.

12. Every living organism strives to evaluate the various items in its environment, to discover which are beneficial, which harmful, so that advantage may be derived from the one and injury from the latter avoided. In addition to the sensorymeans employed in this evaluating process by other animals, man employs verbal symbols.

13. What is Language? • Language, the principal means used by human beings to communicate with one another. Language can be spoken or written . • “A language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.” Noam Chomsky (1957)

14. What is Language? • “Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntrily produced symbols.” • Edward Sapir (1921)

15. A language is a system for encoding and decoding information. Chomsky’s view: Language is a special faculty apart from other higher faculties, genetically inherited (innate ability) as a special species-specific endowement within the species. the term refers to the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. What is Language?

16. What is communication? • Any means by which two (or more) individuals exchange information • Paralinguistic techniques - hand signals, facial expressions, body language, nods, smiles, winks, etc. • Non-linguistic communication - that do involve vocalization • Grunts, groans, snorts, sighs, whimpers, etc. • Not all produced sounds are intended to convey messages, so they aren’t communication • e.g., snoring

17. Communication

18. The Linguistic Sign • Language is made up of signs, which have little to do with the referent, the actuasl objects in the world. • The signs are composed of two parts: the signifier and the signified (form/content)

19. Ferdinand de Saussure

20. Ogden & Richards Triangle

21. Language as human knowledge • ‘When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the “human essence,” the distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique to man.’ • Norm Chomsky: Language and Mind • What does knowing a language mean? • Sound and no sound; • word and non-word; • well-formed sentences and ill-formed sentences • Sense and nonsense

22. Design Features of Human Language (1) 1.Productivity (creativity) • Ability to produce and understand a virtually infinite set of messages. • In all other animal communication systems, the number of messages is fixed (i.e., is finite).

23. Design Features of Human Language (2) • Arbitrariness • No resemblance between the language signal and the thing that it represents “dog” “hund” “pas” “cane”

24. Design Features of Human Language (3) • Universality • Wherever human exists, language exists. • All languages are equally complex and equally capable of expressing any idea in the universe. • Similar grammatical categories are found in all languages, nouns, verbs, gender, time, etc. • Any normal child, born anywhere in the world, of any racial, geographical, social, or economic heritage, is capable of learning any language to which he or she is exposed. The differences we find among languages can’t be due to biological reasons.

25. Design Features of Human Language (4) MULTI-DIMENSIONALITY Human language consists of several levels or dimensions of knowledge (competences). • Phonological knowledge, • Lexical knowledge • Syntactic knowledge • Semantic/conceptual knowledge

26. Universals & specifics • If all cultures share certain features of social organization and behaviour it will not be surprising that all languages have terms referring to kinships, posession, war, etc.>cultural universals • Other universals may arise from technological transmission or from common features of the natural environment (biological, topographical terms)>technological universals and the universals of natural environment

27. Specifics • Language reflects cultural, social, political attitudes. • The language of different cultures do not have the same vocabulary referring to the same referent, reality, e.g. • red wine > crno vino, • brown bread >crni kruh. • Even within one language speakers have different options to refer to the same reality.

28. One or many conceptual systems • The first question which arises is whether language is a single conceptual system or whether there are as many conceptual systems as there are languages? • A universal conceptual framework which is common to all human languages • Languages differ in the way they classify experience. Languages have a tendency to impose structure upon the real world by treating some distintions as crucial, and ignoring others. Sometimes the motivation is supplied by cultural norms, rather than by external reality.

29. The nature of human language • For centuries, scholars and thinkers have tried to unravel the nature of human language. Here are some views: • Pierre Paul Broca, identifies Broca's Area in the brain's left hemisphere, a region, he says, controls human grammar and speech. Damage to Broca's Area impairs the ability to use words and construct grammatically correct sentences.

30. Later, Karl Wernicke, a German doctor, discovers another area related to language in the left hemisphere. Patients with injuries to Wernicke's Area speak fluently and grammatically, but make little or no sense.

31. Philosophers were the first to ponder the roots of human language. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, says that use of words for communication stems from a desire to express our emotions. Also in the 1700s, J. G. von Herder writes two essays arguing that human rationality is the basis for language.

32. In 1871, Charles Darwin, writes about a human "instinct for language" in his book, Descent of Man. He suggests that language evolved from more primal communication abilities in other animals.

33. Noam Chomsky, a linguist, says humans are born with an innate, or hardwired, knowledge of a universal grammar. He observes that all languages share certain rules. • Researchers continue to ask: Is language a uniquely human skill?

34. Steven PinkerHe tries to combine the ideas of Noam Chomsky and Charles Darwin in his book, The Language Instinct. He offers an explanation for how natural selection might have shaped the evolution of human's "innate grammar."

35. CULTURE • Culture - totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects, and behavior. • Society - largest form of human group, consisting of people who share a common heritage and culture

36. Science is not a collection of facts and formulas. It is pre-eminently a way of dealing with experience. • The purpose of science is to render experience intelligible, i.e. to assist man to adjust himself to his environment • Science distinguishes living beings on the one hand and an external world independent of living organisms, on the other. Reality in this context consists of the organisms' interaction with the external world. • On the perceptual level reality is analysed into sense impressions-odors, tastes, colours, sounds, etc. • On the conceptual level it is analysed with symbolic instruments- • We use words, mathematical symbols, etc.

37. Culture • Webster'sdefinition: • The cultivation of soil. • The raising, improvement, or development of some plant, animal or product". This use of the word has its roots in the ancient Latin word cultura, "cultivation" or "tending," and its entrance into the English language had begun by the year 1430 (Oxford English Dictionary).

38. ‘Culture may be defined as the totality of the mental and physical reactions and activities that characterizes the behaviour of the individuals composing a social group collectivelly and individually in relation to their natural environment, to other groups, to members of the group itself and of each individual to himself. It also includes the products of these activities and their role in the life of the groups.’ (Boas, 1963:149)

39. Networks connecting individuals, groups, organizations and societies. Source: Van Dijk 2001/2003

40. In attempting to lay out the various meanings attached to the word "culture," Clifford Geertz refers to the important anthropological work, Clyde Kluckhohn's Mirror for Man, in which the following meanings are suggested: 1. "the total way of life of a people“ 2. "the social legacy the individual acquires from his group“ 3. "a way of thinking, feeling, and believing“ 4. "an abstraction from behavior“ 5. a theory on the part of the anthropologist about the way in which a group of people in fact behave 6. a "storehouse of pooled learning“ 7. "a set of standardized orientations to recurrent problems“ 8. "learned behavior“ 9. a mechanism for the normative regulation of behavior 10. "a set of techniques for adjusting both to the external environment and to other men“ 11. "a precipitate of history“ 12. a behavioral map, sieve, or matrix

41. Material vs Non-material Culture • Material culture refers to the physical and/or technological aspects of the daily life of a society (ex - food, housing, factories, etc) • Nonmaterial culture refers to the ways in which material culture is used and to the customs, beliefs, traditions, ideologies, etc of a society

42. Elements of Culture • Language • Norms • Sanctions • Values • Language is an abstract system of word meanings and symbols. It includes speech, written characters, numerals, symbols, and nonverbal gestures and expressions • Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis describes the role of language in determining our interpretation of reality

43. The linguistic relativity principle, or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, is the idea that differences in the way languages encode cultural and cognitive categories affect the way people think, so that speakers of different languages will tend to think and behave differently depending on the language they use. LANGUAGE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY SAPIR- WHORF HYPOTHESIS

44. Writing in 1929, Sapir argued in a classic passage that: • ‘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 or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.’ (Sapir 1958 [1929], p. 69)

45. This position was extended in the 1930s by his student Whorf, who, in another widely cited passage, declared that: • ‘We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds - and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees.’ (Whorf 1940, pp. 213-14; his emphasis)

46. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, advances in cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics renewed interest in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. • One of those who adopted a more Whorfian approach was George Lakoff. He argued that language is often used metaphorically and that different languages use different cultural metaphors that reveal something about how speakers of that language think. For example, English employs metaphors likening time with money, whereas other languages may not talk about time in that fashion. Other linguistic metaphors may be common to most languages because they are based on general human experience, for example, metaphors likening up with good and bad with down. • Lakoff also argues that metaphor plays an important part in political debates where it matters whether one is arguing in favor of the "right to life" or against the "right to choose"; whether one is discussing "illegal aliens" or "undocumented workers".

47. MIND • Mind is the aspect of intellect and consciousnessexperienced as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will, and imagination, including all unconscious cognitive processes.

48. Mental faculties • Thought is a mental process which allows individuals to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires. • Words referring to similar concepts and processes include cognition, idea, and imagination. Thinking involves the cerebral manipulation of information, as when we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reasoning and making decisions.

49. Linguistic categorization • Literal and figurative meaning • The most basic or fundamental level of linguistic description of reality is that of literal terms. Literal concepts are those entities whose meanings specify truth conditions for the objects and events that exist objectively in the world. • In the traditional analyses, words in literal expressions denote what they mean according to dictionary usage.

50. Figurative meaning • Figurative speech is a pervasive imaginative structure in human understanding of the world (see Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). • Metaphor • Metaphors are actually cognitive tools that help us structure our thoughts and experiences in the world around us.