Language, Thought and Culture

March 7, 2005

What do we know?

• Voice No. 1 • Voice No. 2• Voice No. 3• Voice No. 4• Voice No. 5• Voice No. 6

How do we know?

• Code (structure)

• Performance

Linguistics

• Descriptive Linguistics• Sociolinguistics• Historical Linguistics

Linguistics

Descriptive Linguistics (Grammar)

• Phonology (Sound)– Phoneme

• Morphology (unit of meaning)– Morpheme

• Lexicon– Dictionary, vocabulary

• Syntax– Structure, word order

Descriptive Linguistics

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• Furious idealess color greenly sleeps.– Syntax– Morphology

• Semantics– System for conveying meaning.

Historical Linguistics

Historical Linguistics

• English– Germanic (Angles, Saxons, Jutes)– Celtic– Latin, Greek– Old Norse– French

Historical Linguistics

• American English– American Indian languages– African languages– Spanish

• Barbeque (Guiana)

Sociolinguistics

• Performance• Conveys different meanings using

the same code:– Class– Race– Gender– Politics

Language, Thought and Culture

• Language structures thought and knowledge

• Epistemology• Does language:

– Describe reality?Or…

– Create reality?

Language, Thought and Culture

• Structuralism – Basic structures in

the human brain– Limited number of

structures– Infinite number of

possibilities

• “Generative Transformational Grammar”

• Noam Chomsky

Language, Thought and Culture

• Evidence– People can learn

other languages– Children learn new

languages easier than adults

– Words can be translated between languages

• Noam Chomsky

Language, Thought and Culture

• Sapir-Worf Hypothesis:

Languages produce different ways of thinking that affect perception of reality

• Edward Sapir

Language, Thought and Culture

• Evidence:– Gender

• Palaung• English• Spanish, French

– Time• English• Hopi

• Edward Sapir

Dude, what does this have to do with ink?

What do these tell us?

What about these?

Where does meaning come from?

• All communication is symbolic

• Meaning of symbols is arbitrary

• Because language is generative, we can make new meanings . . . Fo shizzle.

Language, Thought and Culture

• Communication requires that we understand the code and the performance.

Language, Thought and Culture

• People perform the code in creative ways to make a statement.