Download Anthropology: Anthropology is Holistic The four fields Anthro

ANTH / LING 203
Introduction to
Linguistic Anthropology
•
•
•
•
Defining the fields
Defining basic terms
Basic semiotics (icon/index/symbol)
Linguistic relativity
Anthropology is Holistic
• All aspects of human condition—
from past to present
physical to metaphysical
• 4 fields (archaeology, bio/physical, linguistic,
sociocultural)
• + applied anth.
+ environmental
Anthro- historically:
• Study of the “Other”
• Originally inherently colonialist enterprise:
study of “primitives,” “exotics”
• Also, nationalizing: study of “authentic”
villagers in Europe
• Key role of language in early anthro.
studies
Anthropology:
The study of humans & other primates
• Holistic
• Comparative
• Fieldwork-based
The four fields
• Archeology (past cultures)
• Physical anthropology (evolution,
biological, medical aspects)
• Cultural anthropology (all aspects of
systems of meaning and their implications,
including art, religion, politics, science)
• Linguistic Anthropology (all of the above
from the angle of language’)
• Interrelationships between the fields
Ethnocentrism
• Judging another culture on the basis of
your own
1
Cultural relativism
• Different cultures can have different logics
and values systems
• you should not judge one based on the
system of another
Anthro- now
• Study of all people
• Self-othering, self-reflexive anthropology
• Impossibility of neutrality-effort to
acknowledge biases
• Science vs./& Humanities
• Ethnography: study of a culture
Comparative & Field-work based
• Building on tradition of study of “Other”
cultures
• Participant observation
• Learning what questions are important to
the people you study
Semiotics: how things mean
• ICON: meaning by virtue of resemblance
• INDEX: meaning by virtue of physical
relationship
• SYMBOL: meaning by virtue of convention
Culture-defined:
• Symbolic mediation of the
environment by humans
• Human system of symbolic
thought & communication
& its products
onomatopoeia
• example of how spoken language is iconic
• Words that sound like what they represent:
tick-tock, slush, whirr
• Animal sounds:
cock-a-doodle-doo, kukuriku
woof woof, hav hav, wa wa
2
deixis
• example of how spoken language is
indexical
• Deictics: words whose meaning depends
on context, like “I, you, here, now”
The symbolic
• Most of human language is symbolic:
Connections between words & meanings
based on convention
LANGUAGE-defined:
ANTH / LING 203
Week 1, Tuesday
• Finishing up with definitions & signs
• Saussure’s concepts
• Linguistic relativity
Linguistics
• Studies systems of language at all levels
(sounds, words, sentences, discourse)
• Historical
• Cognitive
Human system of symbolic thought &
communication that involves:
• distinguishing & producing sounds according to
a limited set of distinctions (phonemes)
• sounds combined into meaningful units
(morphemes)
• whose meanings are arbitrarily assigned
• morphemes are combined according to rules
• to yield an infinite set of sentences
• whose meanings can be derived.
Linguistic anthropology
• also called anthropological linguistics
• The study of:
-language origins
-how humans use language
-how language relates to culture & thought
-how language matters in politics & society
3
Ferdinand de Saussure
•
•
•
•
“Father of modern linguistics”
signifier & signified: arbitrary relationship
langue vs. parole
Structuralism
(paradigmatic & syntagmatic relationships)
more Saussure…
• Langue: idealized system—
“language inside the circle” (Agar)
object of study of linguistics
grammar rules, patterns
ideal speaker-hearer
• Parole: messy, imperfect actual speech
Saussure’s semiotics
A sign is made up of:
• signifier (e.g. a word: “tree”)
• signified (e.g. an object or concept:
• relationship between signifier & signified is
arbitrary
• Language: chops up world of sounds &
world of experiences into units, correlates
them (sets stage for linguistic relativism)
Saussure’s Structuralism
• Meaning of a sign depends on it position
relative to other signs
(again, this sets the stage for linguistic relativism)
• Paradigmatic—relationship to things that
can go in the “same slot”
e.g. animate nouns
• Syntagmatic—relationship to signs “in
other slots” (e.g. adjectives, nouns, verbs)
4