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Chapter 4
 Language and Social Relations
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© David Eller 2009
Language is a major part of culture
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distinct subdiscipline to study language cross-culturally =
linguistic anthropology
language is a matter of concern for all anthropologists because
(1) anthropologists almost always work in a community with a
language different from their own
(2) much of a community’s thought and value and experience is
encoded in its language
© David Eller 2009
Many sciences examine language, including psychology, biology, and of
course linguistics
The anthropological perspective on language involves
 investigating the cross-cultural variation and commonality in
language
 relating language to other aspects of culture and society
 discovering how language helps construct, perform, and perpetuate
social relations
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Humans are not the only species that communicates, even with sounds
 all species communicate in some way
 most animals communicate with sounds in some way
 humans also communicate in ways other than sounds, including facial
expressions, “body language” and gestures, and even scent
 some non-human species can master some forms of human language,
although not speech (for example, sign language)
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Human language does have unique features, e.g Hockett’s “design
features”
rapid fading
interchangeability
feedback
semanticity
arbitrariness
discreteness
displacement
productivity
reflexiveness
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 prevarication
 learnability
 cultural transmission
The same (psychological and social) skills and abilities that make culture
possible also make language possible
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Especially
(1) Symbolism—language stores meaning in arbitrary and
conventional symbols
(2) Productivity—language uses a limited set of elements to produce
new words, sentences, and larger linguistic units and performances
(3) Displacement—humans can use language to talk about things that
“are not there” (past/present, absent or hidden, invisible, purely
abstract or conceptual, even non-existent
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The Structure of Language
Human language consists of a set of nested practices for combining
minimal bits (sounds) into larger and more complex utterances
From sound…
To meaning…
To intelligible utterances…
To socially-appropriate speech
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(1) Phonology: the sounds of language
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which sounds occur in a language
how sounds are used in a language
1. particularly common sounds
2. possible combinations of sound
3. where sounds can occur in words
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 Warlpiri only contains 3 vowel sounds, while Nuer contains as many
as 200 vowel sounds, and English contains over a dozen vowels
 English contains consonants like “th” while French does not, and
consonant clusters like “str” while Japanese does not
 !Kung or Ju/hoansi contains click sounds while English does not
 English contains sounds like “ng” and “rd” but never as an initial
sound in a word
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© David Eller 2009
Different languages have different practices of sound matching and
sound harmony
 English article “a” cannot precede a noun that starts with a vowel—
becomes “an”
 a Turkish word will contain all “front” vowels or “back” vowels but
never a mixture
 in English and French, the consonant sounds connect sequential
words or even contract into a shortened form
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© David Eller 2009
Examples of elision and liaison:
English—
“the mall” can sound like “them all”
“there is” can become “there’s”
“can not” can become “can’t”
French—
mes amis (“my friends”) can sound like me samis
de le (“of ”/“from the”) always becomes du
Je te aime (“I love you”) always becomes Je t’aime
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© David Eller 2009
(2)
Morphology/Semantics
 how meaning is achieved through the combination or manipulation
of sounds
 Morpheme = a unit of meaningful sound
1. free morpheme = essentially, a word (has meaning when it stands
alone)
2. bound morpheme = has meaning but only when combined with
another morpheme: in English, ordinarily a prefix or suffix
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For instance, English uses the suffix -ed (normally) to indicate “past
tense”
Tagalog (Philippines language) uses the infix
-um-, so gawa (“to do”) becomes g-um-awa (“did”)
French uses a circumfix to indicate negative:
“I do not love you” = Je ne t’aime pas
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© David Eller 2009
Many of the world’s languages use tone to establish semantic meaning
For example, Mandarin Chinese has four tones: flat, rising, falling, and
falling-then-rising
Ba (flat tone) = “eight”
Ba (rising tone) = “to uproot”
Ba (falling tone) = “a harrow”
Ba (falling-then-rising tone) = “to hold”
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Words also have a semantic range = the domain of meaning they cover
For instance, “to know” in English has the semantic range of
 to know a fact
 to be familiar with a person
 to possess a skill (“to know how to ride a bicycle”)
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“To know a fact” in French or Spanish is
savoir or saber
“To know/be familiar with a person” in French or Spanish is connaître or
conocer
So French and Spanish have two words for “to know” where English has
one
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Spanish also makes a distinction between the leg of an animal (pata)
and the leg of a human (pierna), where English does not
So different languages make different semantic distinctions, and it is
not always possible to capture the semantic range of a word in one
language with a word in another language
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(3)
Grammar/syntax
 how words are combined into intelligible utterances (like sentences)
 the transformations that convert one kind of sentence into another
(e.g. statement, question, command, etc.)
 the kinds of concepts or experiences that are encoded and conveyed
in sentence constructions
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In English, the most basic grammatical issue is word order—subject
first, verb second, object third
75% of the world’s languages use S-V-O or
S-O-V form
Example: English “I love you” = S-V-O
French “Je t’aime” = S-O-V
Spanish “Te amo” = O-V! No subject pronoun
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Languages can encode syntactic information in ways other than
additional words
 in Spanish “Te amo,” the subject is encoded in the verb conjugation –o
= first-person singular (“I”)
 in Warlpiri, the subject takes a distinct suffix, so word order is
irrelevant:
“The man hit the dog” =
wati-ngki pakarnu maliki
(man-subject suffix)—hit/past tense—dog)
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© David Eller 2009
Issues in grammar:
 person (who is doing the action)
 number (how many)
 gender (type/category of noun)
 tense (time-aspect of action)
 case (function of noun in sentence)
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For example, French and Spanish assign gender to every noun, either
masculine or feminine.
German assigns three genders—masculine, feminine, or neuter
Adjectives and articles (“a” and “the”) must agree with the noun in
gender and number
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Articles in German must also agree with the noun by case: subject,
direct object, indirect object, or possessive—e.g. how to say “the” in
German:
CASE
Masculine
Neuter
Feminine
Plural
Nominative
(subject)
der
das
die
die
Accusative
(direct obj)
den
das
die
die
Dative
(indirect obj)
dem
dem
der
den + n
on noun
Genitive
(possessive)
des + s on
noun
des + s
der
der
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© David Eller 2009
Russian has six noun cases, requiring “conjugation” of nouns—subject,
direct object, possessive/quantity/negation, indirect object, location,
or means (i.e., by/with)
Shoshone has several verb tenses/aspects for which there are no
equivalents in English– progressive (ongoing over time), continuative
(happening over and over), customary-habitual, resultative (resulting
from some previous action), future, completive (finished in the past
but having effects in the present), and expective (expected to occur)
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(4)
Pragmatics/Sociolinguistics
 the use or practice of language, to say socially-appropriate things
(saying the correct thing to the correct person in the correct
circumstances)
 variations of speech depending on the social qualities and relations of
the speaker(s), the topic, and the context
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© David Eller 2009
Language is more than a set of words for things; language
also encodes social relations, concepts, and values
 familiarity or intimacy
 status/power differences and respect
 age and gender differences
 class differences
 regional, racial, and ethnic differences
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For example, honorifics
 French tu for “you-familiar” versus vous for “you-formal”
 Thai has 13 forms of the first-person singular pronoun (“I”)
depending on status of speaker and hearer
 Japanese styles for politeness to strangers and out-group (tatemae) or
for familiarity to family members and friends (honne)
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© David Eller 2009
The Social Effectiveness of Speech
Three functions of language:
1. Convey factual information
2. Convey social information
3. Construct social relations—make, perform, comment on, and
change statuses
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© David Eller 2009
Language is not just “something to say” but is a form of social action—
and often calls for an active response
J. L. Austin “performatives” = speech-acts that accomplish the state of
affairs they utter
 “I pronounce you man and wife”
 “I knight thee”
 “I find you not guilty”
 “You are under arrest”
 “I apologize”
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© David Eller 2009
Language does not always merely describe things but achieves things;
has a real effect on the (social) world
In many societies, politics depends on the ability to exercise power, or
to acquire power, through masterful speech
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© David Eller 2009
Every language also contains or consists of a “literature”—customary
things to say
Folklore includes various speech forms such as “myths, legends,
folktales, jokes, proverbs, riddles, chants, charms, blessings, curses,
oaths, insults, retorts, taunts, teases, toasts, tongue-twisters, and
greeting and leave-taking formulas…. It also includes folk costume,
folk dance, folk drama, folk instrumental music..., folksongs…, folk
speech…, folk similies…, folk metaphors…, and names”
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© David Eller 2009
Languages include:
 proverbs and sayings
 riddles and jokes
 metaphors
 ritual languages (like Latin for Christianity)
 specialized styles for occasions or genres
“Once upon a time”
“My fellow Americans”
“Hear ye, hear ye”
“Dearly beloved”
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© David Eller 2009
Language also includes a variety of non-verbal and non-semantic verbal
practices:
 paralanguage
 kinesics or “body language”
 proxemics
 sign languages
 gestures
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Language changes over time, especially as a result of contact between
language communities
 bilingual societies and borrowing between languages
 diglossia = co-existence of two language forms, usually one “high”
or prestigious and one “low”
 pidgins and creoles
 technical and subcultural jargons
 “anti-languages” in opposition to society
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Does Language Influence Thought and Experience: The Linguistic
Relativity Hypothesis
Benjamin Lee Whorf: “the background linguistic system (in other
words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing
instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas,
the program and guide for the individual’s mental activity, for his
analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade”
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Edward Sapir: “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. 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”
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© David Eller 2009
The linguistic relativity hypothesis is controversial, and comes in a
weak (language influences thought and experience) and a strong
(language, and language alone, determines thought and experience)
version
But essentially the idea is:
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A language is more than a list of words for things, but a set of
verbal concepts, ideas, relations, values, meanings, categories, etc.
Humans are born without any particular language
As humans acquire a language, they acquire its particular set of
verbal concepts, ideas, relations, values, meanings, categories, etc.
Humans who speak different languages would thus think and
experience different concepts, ideas, relations, etc.
© David Eller 2009
The evidence for the linguistic relativity hypothesis is mixed
 Berlin and Kay suggest that there is a universal sequence of color
terms across cultures, so language does not determine color
perception
 Ross, Xun, and Wilson and Ramirez-Esparza et al. find “cultural
frame switching” = bilingual speakers actually think differently
depending on the language they are currently thinking in
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So, there is some evidence that individuals “change their interpretations
of the world, depending upon their internalized cultures, in response
to cues in their environment…as subtle as language”
Certainly humans who function in languages that lack particular
concepts—e.g. “sin” or jukurrpa or nirvana—will not experience the
world in terms of these concepts
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