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LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL
MEANING (part 2)
Lexical and Cultural Categories
• Taxonomic systems: The classification system
that orders things in a logical hierarchical way, a
system that orders by indicating natural
relationships
• Semantic domains: an aggregate of words (words
put together). All sharing a core meaning, related
to a specific topic
Example: Kinship terms, body-parts words, or
colours
Language expresses
• Cultural focus: cultural priorities
• Transformation
• Relationship to members in society
Why are semantic domains
important?
• Speaker’s perception of his/her cultural
universe
• Degree of cultural interest
innovation, extension of semantic domains
• Shows how language and meaning changes
over time
Lexical (vocabulary) components
• Kinship terminology comparison
• Peoples’ priorities in social relations
• Usage of words to name relatives
Mother, father, son, daughter, etc
The analysis of these contrasts
reveals that
• First: there is a distinction between
generations grandmother/mother,
father/son
• Two: there is a distinction of sex:
father/mother, son/daughter
• Third: there is also a distinction between
direct and collateral relatives: mother/aunt,
son/nephew
Componential analysis
• Determines significance of contrast by
isolating components of meanings
• Example kinship terminology
---Younger generation-female-lineal=
daughter
---Older generation-male-lineal =
grandfather
Kinship terminology not a
universal
• (Seneca ) Iroquoian languages (Quebec,
Ontario, and New York)
• My Grandmother and her sisters: one word
• My Grandfather and his brothers: one word
• My Mother and mother’s sister: one word
• My Father and father’s brother: one word
Seneca Kinship Terminology
• Different terms for for older and younger
siblings
• My mother’s sister’s daughter –sister
• My mother’s sister’s son = son
• My Father’s brother’s daughter = sister
• My father’s brother’s son – brother
Lexical classifications
• Classification of words to make sense of speech
• Degrees of complexity
• Ambiguity: Whale fish or mammal
• Classification indicates:
cultural interest
discrimination
Ethnoscience
• A classification system in a given domain
that organizes people’s knowledge of
aspects of their universe, as, for example,
botanical or zoological terminologies.
Ethnoscientific systems are based on
taxonomic hierarchies of similarity and
contrast.
Classification of words is cultural
specific
•
•
•
•
Papagos (Arizona)
Life is divided: living things and plants
Word for living = animals
Animals are the prototype (best example) of
living things among the Papagos
Focal points and prototypes
•
•
•
•
Focal point or a word is its central sense
Best example
Agreed upon by culture
Prototype: idealized, internalized
conceptualization of an object, quality or
activity
• Understood in the context of culture
Cultural Presuppositions
. Cultural presupposition is the notion that
participants in speech interactions come to
interactive situations with certain cultural
knowledge.
. Transmitted language
. Some more complex: symbolic, rhetorical
Summary
• Worldviews are expressed through language
use
• Language frames intentions and activities
• Framing accomplished through contrasting
of words, classification of words
• Language use expresses cultural models
Discussion Question:
How do cultural models provide
frameworks for understanding the
physical and social world we live in?
Howdo cultu ralmod els provide fra meworks for unde rstand ingthe phy sical andso cial
world we l ive in ?