ANTH100 Lecture Notes - Endangered Language, Kimono, Sociolinguistics

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTH100
• Professor: Jennifer Liu

Document Summary

Communication is the process of sending and receiving meaningful messages. Among humans it involved a form of language, a systematic set of symbols and signs with learned meanings . Body language (walking style, eye movements, posture) Clothing (head coverings, kimono sleeve length, different colors according to gender) Phonemes: sound that makes a difference in spoken language. Ethnosemantics: meaning of language in particular cultural contexts. Cross culturally study of communication through media. Radio, tv, film, music, literature, newspapers, internet. Sapir-whorf hypothesis: people"s language affects how they think. People who speak different languages know the world in different ways. Sociolinguistics: cultural and social contexts shape people"s language and their meanings including a person"s social position. No two languages are similar enough to be considered as representing the same social reality. The words in which different cultures live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached. Historical linguistics: language families from which languages derived.