LIR 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Semiotics, Nonverbal Communication, Linguistic Anthropology

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Language and Intercultural Relations
• Course: LIR 100
• Professor: Pelkey Jamin

Document Summary

Cultural relativity: not good; not bad; just different. In order to understand the practices of beliefs of another group. It is necessary to understand their social, cultural and historical context: food (hamburger, cheval, chitlins, choi dofu, customs ( tattooing, arranged marriages, child beauty contests, polygamy) See it differently: differences in vocabulary and grammar are entangled with differences in culture and worldview. Speech practices in different languages reveal widely different ways of thinking about the same phenomenon. Curing sickness: warfare? (sick kids commercial with war etc) vs eating? (nepal photo of eating soup) Strong vs weak versions of sapir-whorf hypothesis: strong : linguistic determinism (language controls thought and culture, weak: linguistic relativist (language influences thought and worldview) Cultural keywords: cultural focal points for understanding core values and beliefs, li (cid:894)chi(cid:374)ese(cid:895) (cid:858)polite(cid:374)ess/appropriate(cid:374)ess(cid:859, toksa (cid:894) ussia(cid:374)(cid:895) (cid:858)(cid:455)ear(cid:374)i(cid:374)g/(cid:373)ela(cid:374)(cid:272)hol(cid:455, u(cid:271)u(cid:374)tu (cid:894)ngu(cid:374)i(cid:895) (cid:858)perso(cid:374)hood(cid:859);(cid:272)o(cid:373)(cid:373)o(cid:374) i(cid:374) afri(cid:272)a(cid:374) la(cid:374)guages. Mono-, bi-, multi-legualism: paying attention to similarities vs. relationships. The frankfurt debacle: proxemics, haptics, kniesics.