Language and Communication
This chapter introduces students to the study of
linguistics. It discusses the
differences between animal and human communication, the basic categories and
definitions used to study language, and the many ways in which language,
culture, and social action intersect.
Introduction
t Language
is our primary means of communication.
t Language
is transmitted through learning, as part of enculturation.
t Language
is based on arbitrary, learned associations between words and the things they
represent.
t Only
humans have the linguistic capacity to discuss the past and future in addition
to the present.
t Anthropologists
study language in its social and cultural context.
Call Systems
t Call
systems consist of a limited number of sounds that are produced in response to
specific stimuli (e.g. food or danger)
t Calls
cannot be combined to produce new calls.
t Calls
are reflexive in that they are automatic responses to specific stimuli.
t Although
primates use call systems, their vocal tract is not suitable for speech.
Sign language
t A
few nonhuman primates have been able to learn to use American Sign Language
(ASL).
t Washoe,
a chimpanzee, eventually acquired a vocabulary of over 100 ASL signs.
t Lucy,
another chimpanzee, lived in a foster family until she was introduced to the
“wild” where she was killed by poachers.
t Koko,
a gorilla, regularly uses 400 ASL signs and has used 700 at least once.
t These
nonhuman primates have displayed some “human-like” capacities with ASL.
t Joking
and lying
t Cultural
transmission: they have tried to teach ASL to other animals
t Productivity:
they have combined two or more signs to create a new expressions
t Displacement:
the ability to talk about things that are not present
t The
experiments with ASL demonstrate that chimps and gorillas have a rudimentary
capacity for language.
t It
is important to remember that these animals were taught ASL by humans.
t There
are no known instances where chimps or gorillas in the wild have developed a
comparable system of signs on their own.
The origin Of language
t The
human capacity for language developed over hundreds of thousands of years, as
call systems were transformed into language.
t Language
is a uniquely effective vehicle for learning that enables humans to adapt more
rapidly to new stimuli than other primates.
NonVerbal communication
t Kinesics
is the study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures and
facial expressions.
t Odors
also play an important role in nonverbal communication.
The structure Of Language
t The
scientific study of spoken language involves several levels of organization:
phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax.
t Phonology
is the study of the sounds use in speech.
t Morphology
studies the forms in which sounds are grouped in speech.
t A
language’s lexicon is a dictionary containing all of the smallest units of
speech that have a meaning (morpheme).
t Syntax
refers to the rules that order words and phrases into sentences.
Speech Sounds
t In
any given language, phonemes are the smallest sound contrasts that distinguish
meaning (they carry no meaning themselves).
t Phones
are the sounds made by humans that might act as phonemes in any given language.
t Phonetics
is the study of human speech sounds, phonemics is the study of phones as they
act in a particular language.
t Phonemics
studies only the significant sound contrasts of a given language.
Language, Thought, and Culture
t Chomsky
argues that the universal grammar is finite, and the fact that any language is
translatable to any other language is taken to be evidence supporting this
claim.
t The
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Sapir and Whorf are described as early advocates of the
view that different languages imply different ways of thinking (e.g., Palaung
vs. English, Hopi speculative tense).
Focal Vocabulary
t Lexical
elaboration that corresponds to an activity or item that is culturally central
is called a focal vocabulary.
t It
is argued that, while language, thought, and culture are interrelated, change
is more likely to move from culture to language, rather than the reverse.
t Focal
Vocabulary for Hockey
Meaning :
t Semantics
“refers to a language’s meaning system.”
t Ethnoscience,
or ethnosemantics, is the study of linguistic categorization of difference,
such as in classification systems, taxonomies, and specialized terminologies
(such as astronomy and medicine).
Refrensi : binusmaya.binus.ac.id