Language

Topic 3
 Communication and Languages
• Although passing information is critical to the survival of most
living things, members of other species communicate very
differently than humans. No member of any other species can
make up a story and tell it to another, understand a piece of
poetry, or discuss what it would like to eat tomorrow, yet these
are things that people in all human cultures do regularly.
• Animal vocalizations are referred to as calls, and animal call
systems may have up to 60 sounds. However, even large call
systems are restricted to a fixed number of signals generally
uttered in response to specific events. Human language, on the
other hand, is capable of re-creating complex thought patterns
 Language and Communication
• Linguistic anthropology illustrates anthropology’s characteristic interests in
diversity, comparison, and change—but here the focus is on language.
• Language, spoken (speech) and written (writing—which has existed for about
6,000 years), is our primary means of communication. Like culture in general,
of which language is a part, language is transmitted through learning.
• Language is based on arbitrary, learned associations between words and the
things they stand for.
• Unlike the communication systems of other animals, language allows us to
discuss the past and future, share our experiences with others, and benefit from
their experiences.
 Views on the role of language
• The importance of language in our daily interaction cannot be denied or
contradicted. One view suggests that there is a language faculty in the
human brain that enables a human child to learn any language in just
about four years.
• Contrary views argues that there is no such faculty, since language
derives from general purpose mechanisms of the brain.
• Recent experiments with brain imaging, reveal that both arguments are
not entirely unfounded. Whatever the argument, both camps
acknowledge the centrality of language in human cognitive development.
 Views on the role of language
• With respect to communication, again two views emerge. One,
promoted arduously(laboriously) by philosophers like John Locke
and Bertrand Russell, espouse that language is essentially for
communicating thoughts.

• The other view claims that language is part and parcel of

thought, i.e. language plays a cognitive function, and is not a
mere vehicle of thought. Interestingly, studies on animals
demonstrate that animals can think too, and yet they have no
language like ours.
 What is language?
• A language can be defined as a system of signs (verbal or otherwise)
intended for communication. It is a system since its constituent
components relate to each other in an intricate and yet organized fashion.
• Again, it is intended for communication, for it can be safely assumed that
we speak to pass on information to others. But communication is not the
only function of language.
• In fact, language can be used for dreaming, internal monologue,
soliloquy(speech/oration), poetry, etc. In summary, language plays a
communicative role
 Language and culture
• Language encodes(converts/translates) the values and norms in a given society. As a culture changes, so
does the language. Cultural values, appear, then wax and wane. Languages are no exception. A language
can appear, mostly from a contact with other languages, blossom, then wither and die altogether.

• It can be argued that when a civilization disintegrates, so does its language since language is the
medium that purveys the values of that civilization. The result of a collapse of a civilization is the death
of a language. The Greek and Roman civilizations are a case in point.

• Classical Greek and Latin are today termed “dead” languages as opposed to modern Greek and Italian.
etc. The argument is that for a language to be alive and vibrant, the culture of the people it represents
has to be alive and vibrant as well. As the culture evolves through time and space, so does the
language.//
 Language and culture
• Culture is many different things. It is learning, symbolism and meaning, patterns of
thought and behaviour, the things we share with those around us, the ways in which
we survive in our world, and dynamism and change. It is both consensus and
conflict.
• Culture makes us human and ties us to others everywhere. Ultimately, because all
societies are based around fundamental patterns of culture, no society can be utterly
incomprehensible to members of another.
• On the other hand, enormous variability is built into these patterns. The fact that
human lifeways(lifestyles) are shared, learned, and symbolic, the fact that we don’t
simply adapt to our environment but fill it with meaning, results in extraordinary
differences in human cultures.
 Language and culture
• Communication in general and language in particular are great examples of
the ways in which human biology and human culture are intimately entangled.
• Language is a biological aspect of human beings. All humans who are
physically able to do so communicate through language.
• Deaf communities create sign languages that are as complex and
sophisticated as spoken languages.
• However, speech is not just an aspect of biology. The language we speak, the
style of our speaking, to whom we speak, and how we speak to them are all
aspects of culture.
 Language and culture
• Regardless of when humans acquired language, anthropologists generally agree that
language is part of our biological adaptation.
• Although in any culture, some people talk with greater or lesser artistry than others,
all physiologically normal individuals in all cultures develop adequate language
skills.
• Human language is first and foremost a system of symbols. A symbol is just
something that stands for something else. Words are symbols, and they stand for
things, actions, and ideas because speakers of a language agree that they do, a
feature of human language called conventionality
• (The notion that, in human language, words are only arbitrarily or conventionally connected to
the things for which they stand..)
 Language and culture
• This seemingly trivial fact is critical for two reasons. First, because the relationship between
a series of sounds (a word) and their meaning is symbolic, relatively few sounds can be used
to refer to an infinitely large number of meanings.
• Productivity (linguistics): The idea that humans can combine words and sounds into new,
meaningful utterances they have never before heard.
• Second, symbols enable humans to transmit and store information, a capacity that makes our
cultures possible. If humans had to learn everything they know by trial and error or by
watching others, our lives would be vastly different and much simpler than they are.
• Human beings do learn by these methods, but they also learn by talking. We tell each other
our experiences and the stories passed down to us. We discuss the past and plan for the
future using words. This human ability to speak about different times and places is called
displacement.
 Language and culture
• Displacement: The capacity of all human languages to describe
things not happening in the present. In cultures with writing, the
information stored symbolically is truly vast.
• Consider, for example, that no one individual could possibly know
everything written in the books in even a relatively small
university library. However, because we can store our knowledge
symbolically as words, we can have access to everything that is
there.
 Language and culture
• Language is so heavily freighted(laden or loaded) with culture that
understanding one is almost always a key to understanding the other. One
way anthropologists analyse this relationship is to think in terms of speech
performance.
• Such performance includes what people are saying as well as what they are
communicating beyond the actual words.
• Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and
culture. Sociolinguists study speech performances and attempt to identify,
describe, and understand the ways in which language is used in different
social contexts.
 Language and culture
• The ways in which people actually speak are highly dependent on the
context of their speech as well as issues such as class, gender, ethnicity, and
geography.
• A public political speech has different purposes and is limited by different
norms than a political discussion among friends. For example, American
Presidents since Ronald Reagan have almost always ended their annual
State of the Union address with the “God bless America” or similar wording.
• Sociolinguists contend that language reflects social status, gender, ethnicity,
and other forms of social diversity. In the United States, ethnicity can be
expressed through the use of specific words and patterns of speech.
 Language as a means of
communication
• Language is essentially a means of communication among the members of a society. In the
expression of culture, language is a fundamental aspect. It is the tool that conveys traditions
and values related to group identity.
• A common language is one of the most important features of a community and the ceaseless
use of the same language is the most certain proof of the historical continuity of a community
of people.
• This function is strongly related to the social nature of a language, whereas there are
interdependency and mutual conditionality relations between language occurrence and a
society with its inherent culture.
• We are going to take into account several aspects of language such as speaking and writing
while also keeping in mind that the study of language is a multidisciplinary endeavour.
Communication takes place not only orally, but also in writing.
 Language as a means of
communication
• The need to communicate triggers both the occurrence and the development of a
language and this need arises and becomes stronger and stronger when one has
someone else to communicate with, i.e. where there is a society.
• Society acquires self-awareness through the contact and communication between
its members. The significance of communication between people equates the
significance of language – the most important means of communication.
• In this respect, language is of crucial importance in the individual development of
humans and this is best mirrored by the development of blind people as opposed
to the deaf (we speak, of course, of blindness and deafness at birth)
 Language as a means of
communication
• Research has revealed the fact that the blind develop their intellectual
propensities better than the deaf. Although deprived of their sight, they
can hear, which enables them to acquire language, by means of which
they can “see” better than with their own eyes.
• The deaf, on the other hand, compelled to silence, hence unable to access
language freely, develop more difficultly on an intellectual level and do
not attain all the instruments of a complex abstract thinking process.
• Hence, as a means of communication in a community, “wherever
communities of deaf people exist, sign languages have been developed.
 Language as a means of
communication
• As a tool of communication among the members of a society, language is
influenced by the very society where it functions.
• Moreover, being the most significant tool of communication, a particular
language which is mastered only by some people (e.g. Latin, Greek, French,
English etc.) has often been the determining factor in turning these people
into a separate group as a people, a nation or a state. [GENESIS 11:
• The distinction between peoples and nations mainly traces the geographical
distribution in space of the pertaining languages while the linguistic
community, i.e. the fact that they all use the same language, is the essentially
defining element for economical and political communities.
 Language as a means of
communication
• All people subconsciously mirror their cultural backgrounds in day-to-day
communication. Language is both a great advocate for communication and
an important reflection of one's cultural background.
• Intracultural “miscommunication often stems from different and conflicting
styles of speech and messages. A perfectly normal intonation pattern for a
native German speaker may seem angry and aggressive to a foreign listener.
• Connotations of words, as well as meanings of slang phrases, vary greatly
across cultural lines, and a lack of tolerance and understanding of this fact
often results in misinterpretations.”
 Language as a producer of
behaviour
• Language pervades social life. It is the principal vehicle for the
transmission of cultural knowledge, and the primary means by which we
gain access to the contents of others' minds.
• Language is implicated in most of the phenomena that lie at the core of
social psychology: attitude change, social perception, personal identity,
social interaction, intergroup bias and stereotyping, attribution, and so on.
• Moreover language typically is the medium by which subjects' responses
are elicited, and in which they respond: in social psychological research,
more often than not, language plays a role in both stimulus and response.
 Language as producer of
behaviour
• Language is a fundamental tool in human social processes,
playing a key role in sharing and influencing reality, in the
transmission of cultural knowledge, and in establishing and
maintaining relationships.
• What people say to each other strongly influences the quality of
their relationships and their psychological well-being. Humans
are surrounded by language throughout the day – in face-to-face
interaction, but also in the media, such as newspapers, literature
and on social medias on the internet.
• Annoy(irritate, infuriate), mesmerise(captivate, fascinate or
hypnotise)
 Language as a producer of
behaviour
• Acts of speaking can be regarded as actions intended to accomplish a
specific purpose by verbal means. Utterances can be thought of as
speech acts that can be identified in terms of their intended purposes
—assertions, questions, requests, etc. (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969,
1985).

• English, for example, has an interrogative mode for asking questions,

an imperative for issuing commands, a declarative for making
assertions, and so on. All these elicit consequent behaviours.