Language and Culture

Part 1: Structural Linguistics

Language

• Chief means of communication among humans

• Involves spoken (speech) and written (last 6000 years) forms

• Form of communication based on learning associations between words and the things for which they stand

• Every healthy human infant is born with the capacity for language

Language as Culture

• Transmitted through learning the arbitrary associations between sounds (words) and meaning, and ability to produce infinite number of expressions that are comprehensible to other users of the language

• How is human language fundamentally different than communication of nonhuman animals?

Call Systems

• Nonhuman primates communicate through system of calls (as well as visual and olfactory means)

• Gombe chimps have at least 25 distinct calls

• Each has specific meaning and is used only in response to specific stimuli

• Calls are not usually combined to make new calls or signify new things

Ape Language?

• Vocal tract of apes not suitable for speech

• But experiments show apes have capacity to use, if not speak, language

• For example, apes have been taught American sign language, a gesture-based language

“Cultural” Aspects of Ape Language Use

• Experiments further show that ape language use has many of the features of human language

– transmission: some apes attempted to teach others the sign language they learned

– productivity: produce entirely new expressions that are comprehensible to others

– displacement: ability to “talk” about things that are not present

Limits to Ape Vocalization

• Human skull repositions larynx downward; smaller mouth enables wider range of sounds

• Also elaboration of brain for more complex communication

• Anatomy for speech in place as early as 200,000 B.P., perhaps much earlier

Structural Linguistics

• All spoken languages consist of:

– sounds (phonemes),

– combinations of sounds that constitute words (morphemes),

– meanings that are assigned to words (lexicon and semantics),

– combinations of words that constitute sentences (syntax), and

– rules for how sentence combinations are formed (grammar)

Phonology

• The study of sounds

– PHONETICS: study of speech sounds in general

– PHONEMICS: study of speech sounds of particular languages

• Sounds begin in brain with electrical impulses that control the tongue and other mouth parts to effect passage of air

– when one talks, air passes through glottal opening between vocal chords, through the upper throat, mouth, and nasal passage

– different sounds come from different configurations of the throat and mouth

Classifying Sounds

• Linguists classify sounds according to position of tongue, openness of mouth, and whether the glottis is open or closed

– for example, stops are sounds made when the mouth or other part of the passage is temporarily closed (as in b, d, or g in Standard English)

– or, fricitives are formed when closure is not complete (as in f, s, v, or z)

Phonemes

• The elementary sound segments of a particular language are its phonemes

– generally correspond with letters with which words are formed, but include other sounds

– /p/ and /b/ are consonant phonemes of Standard English that match letters of alphabet, but another is /q/, which symbolizes the th sound in words like thin and bath (Note that phonemes are set in slashes)

– by definition, these are phonemes of Standard English because they confer different meaning to the words in which they are used

• Vowel phonemes in Standard English according to height of tongue and its position at front, center, or back of mouth

• Most pairings of words listed here are what linguists refer to as MINIMAL PAIRS

Minimal Pairs

• Linguists determine the phonemes of a particular language by looking for MINIMAL PAIRS

– words that are similar except for one sound and have different meanings because of that sound difference

– for example, beat and bit are a minimal pair in Standard English

Number of Phonemes

• Number of phonemes in languages vary from 15 to 60

• Standard English has 35 to 40 phonemes (depending on who you ask)

• No relationship between number of phonemes and complexity of culture using the language

Morphology

• Aspect of language study that deals with internal structure of WORDS

• Words are the lifeblood of language because they make the transition from sound to meaning

• Each word represents a particular group of phonological and semantic (meaning) properties

• Each word also has syntactic properties: it can be combined with others to form sentences

Morphemes

• Morpheme: minimal unit of sound that conveys a particular meaning

– a morpheme can be “free” (stands alone as a word, as in nouns, verbs, or prepositions) or “bound” (as in prefixes and suffixes, which have to be bound to a free morpheme)

– in all languages, there are rules by which morphemes are combined to form words

– rules vary across languages, some simple, others complex

• e.g., plurality in English is pretty complex because its rules vary across nouns

• Morphology can be illustrated with tree diagrams

• Note that the structure is hierarchical, from whole word (top) to morphemes (bottom)

• Note also that each word has a stem or root and one or more affixes

Lexicon

• The totality of words in a given language is its LEXICON or vocabulary

– the selection of words and their meaning are culturally-determined and shared

• However, the actual words used by a group of language users is often highly specialized or localized

– linguists refer to this lexicon as FOCAL VOCABULARY

– examples include the specialized language of farmers, steel workers, skiers, or computer programmers

• Also, lexicon changes with changes in culture

– words added, others deleted, others change meaning

Syntax and Grammar

• Syntax refers to the internal structure of sentences

• Grammar is our knowledge about how we understand and produce sentences we have never heard before (overall structure of a language, including morphology and syntax)

• Syntax involves two things:

– SELECTION: choosing the right words

– ARRANGEMENT: putting the words in proper order

• Arrangement can be correct (“Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously”), but the resultant sentence nonsensical

• With a vocabulary and grammatical rules, a speaker or writer can generate an infinite number of different sentences

• We can add to this two other dimensions of communication that affect meaning:

– PARALANGUAGE: sounds that are not directly part of language but still convey meaning

• whispering, shouting, pitch, or even sounds like whistling, hissing, or booing

• in Tai-Kadai (Cambodian, Vietnamese), three different pitches for word maa convey three different meanings (hi=horse, med=come, lo=dog)

– GESTURE: physical or physiological cues that serve as context for communication (Kinesics: method of studying “body language”)

• nodding, waving finger, winking

• American sign language is fully gesture-based

Part 2: Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics

• Sociolinguistics is the study of the connections between language and society

– the way we use language in different social situations

– ranging from the study of the wide variety of dialects across a given region

– to the analysis between the way men and women speak to one another

– or, how use of a given language reflects the age, sex, and social class of the speaker

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• More than just reflecting social contexts, different languages arguably reproduce different ways of thinking (the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)

• For example, the third-person singular pronouns in Standard English distinguish gender (he, she; him, her; his hers), but those of the Palaung (a Burmese tribe) do not, while Romance languages like French include noun-gender distinctions

• The hypothesis would suggest that English speakers pay more attention to gender differences than do the Palaung, but less so than French speakers

• Another example: metaphors for success in Standard English

– “on top of the world”

– “a cut above the rest”

– “head of the class”

• or failure:

– “hit rock bottom”

– “nice guys finish last”

– “take a back seat”

• All are SPATIAL METAPHORS that describe hierarchy and rank (with top and front superior to bottom and back)

• They serve to reproduce hierarchy and rank

Competence vs. Performance

• In sociolinguistics, we are interested in seeing how a person actually speaks in a given situation (LANGUAGE PERFORMANCE), as opposed to their knowledge of the rules of a given language (LANGUAGE COMPETENCE)

• Language performance will vary with social context of communication

Choosing among Language Varieties

• When choosing among the variety of languages/dialects available to the speaker, factors considered include the following:

– How well participants know each other

– Whether social setting is formal or informal

– Status relationship/social roles of person speaking (student vs. professor)

– Purpose of conversation

– Topic

Diglossia

• when two languages or dialects are used differently according to different social situations

• this occurs at a variety of scales

• in the same language, used in the same community, there is usually an acknowledged “proper” variety (high) and “everyday” varieties (low), each used for distinct functions

• No one actually uses the “high” in everyday conversation, or, if they do, it is to deliberately separate from other varieties

Intergroup Communication within a Given Society

• Participants in conversation often possess different subcultural rules or patterns of communication, even as members of the same society

• Conversation is negotiated activity that requires agreement between participants on the unwritten (and sometimes unspoken) rules of meaning: tone of voice, visual cues, silence, and other subtle conventions

Indirect Communication

• “Why Don’t You Say What You Mean?” by Deborah Tannen

• Use of indirect language to convey information varies across cultures, subgroups of cultures, and particular circumstances of conversation

• In America, directness often (mistakenly?) associated with authority and control; indirectness with subservience and dishonesty

• Tannen gives good examples of both ineffectiveness and effectiveness of indirect speech

Male-Female Miscommunication

• Studies of cross-sex conversations in America suggest that men and women do not play the same roles in seemingly equal interaction

• Studies based on young married couples and jury deliberations

Male-Female Miscommunication

WOMEN

• ask more questions

• use more comments that encourage responses from other

• greater use of positive minimal responses (“mm hmm”)

• silent protest when interrupted

• more use of pronouns “you” and “we”

MEN

• more likely to interrupt

• more likely to dispute comments of other

• more likely to ignore comments of other

• use more means of controlling conversation

• more direct declarations of opinion

Male-Female Miscommunication

• One example of miscommunication stemming from these differences is the gender-specific meanings of “minimal responses” (nods or short utterances that are a normal part of conversational interaction)

– “mm hmm” for women often means “I’m listening, please go on”

– for men, it often means “I agree,” or “I follow”

• typical result: men think women are always agreeing, but conclude it’s impossible to know what they really think, while women conclude that men never seem to listen

Who Talks More, Men or Women?

• A common cultural stereotype in America describes women as being talkative, always speaking and expressing their feelings

• Well, this may be true, but do women do it more than men?

• An experiment designed to measure the relative amount of speech produced between genders suggests that men are more prone to use up more talking time than women

• Linguist Marjorie Swacker presented three pictures by a fifteenth-century Flemish artist, Albrecht Durer to men and women separately

• They were told to take as much time as they wanted to describe the pictures

• The average time for males: 13.0 minutes

• The average time for women 3.17 minutes

Doublespeak

• Tools of deception, obfuscation, or manipulation (Lutz 1987)

– Euphemism

• “arbitrary deprivation of life” for “killing”

– Jargon

• “involuntary conversion” for “property loss”

– Gobbledygook/Bureaucratese

• “candidates for derecruitment” for “people to fire”

– Inflated Language

• “pre-owned vehicle” for “used car”

Black English Vernacular

• A variety of American English used today primarily by working-class African-American youth

• Has history that can be traced to pidgin language of African slaves in America

• It is systematic and rule-based, like any language

• Brought to public attention by 1996 declaration of Oakland City School District that BEV (or Ebonics) was primary language of their African-American students

Abridged RESOLUTION on the Oakland “Ebonics” Issue Unanimously Adopted at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Chicago, Illinois, January 3, 1997

The LSA hereby resolves to make it known that:

1. The variety known as “Ebonics” is systematic and rule-governed like all natural speech varieties. Characterizations as “slang,” “mutant,” “lazy,” “defective,” “ungrammatical,” or “broken English” are incorrect and demeaning.

2. The distinction between “languages” and “dialects” is usually made more on social and political grounds than on purely linguistic ones.

3. There are individual and group benefits to maintaining vernacular speech varieties and there are scientific and human advantages to linguistic diversity.

4. The Oakland School Board’s decision to recognize the vernacular of African American students in teaching them Standard English is linguistically and pedagogically sound.

Ebonics is Systematic

• Differs from Standard English in significant ways, but not because it is “sloppy” or “degenerated”

• For example, omitting consonants:

– as in “tes(t)” and “han(d)”

– consonants of other words, like “slant” are retained

– rule is that last consonant is only dropped when the last two consonants are both “voiced” (as with “st”) or “voiceless” (as with “nd”), but not mixed

• Another example: copula deletion

– deleting verb form “to be” (is, are, was, were)

• she busy (she is busy)

• In many ways Ebonics is simplified, but in other ways it is more complex than Standard English

– for example, it has at least five “present” tenses

• he runnin (he is running)

• he be runnin (he is usually running)

• he be steady runnin (he is usually running in an intensive, sustained manner)

• he bin runnin (he has been running)

• he bin runnin (he has been running for a long time and is still running)

History of Ebonics

• Language of enslaved Africans in Americas patterned somewhat after Niger-Congo languages (notably in range of tenses)

• But more complicated, because slaves were forced into multilingual situation without formal language training

• Under these circumstances a PIDGIN formed

– a simplified fusion of two or more languages to facilitate communication, in this case, between speakers of European languages and speakers of varied African languages and dialects

• After a few generations, pidgin evolved into the primary language of its users, becoming a true CREOLE language

• Particularly common to the Caribbean islands (Haitian Creole French, Jamaican Creole English)

• Gullah is a surviving creole language of the GA-SC sea islands

– perpetuated by virtue of geographic isolation

• Ebonics is perpetuated by virtue of social, ethnic, and economic isolation, and because it is asserted to mark difference

Politics of Language Classification

• Most linguists (though not all) agree that Ebonics is a DIALECT of English (meaning that it is mutually intelligible among users of different dialects of a language)

• But definitions of language and dialect are more political than academic

– for example, Cantonese and Mandarin are considered dialects of Chinese even though they are mutually unintelligible, whereas Norwegian and Swedish are considered different languages even though they are mutually intelligible

Benefits of Standard English

• No one disputes the benefits of Standard English (SE) in the market place of employment

• However, mastering the standard language may be easier if the difference between vernacular and standard languages were made explicit

• In an experiment in Chicago, inner-city African American students taught by contrasting Ebonics and SE for 11 weeks showed 59% reduction in use of Ebonics

• Students taught in traditional fashion showed a 8.5% increase in use of Ebonics