ANT206H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Universal Grammar, Elinor Ochs, Noam Chomsky
Document Summary
The last few weeks : thinkers who have influenced how we think about and study language, ferdinand de saussure, charles pierce, roman jakobson, franz boas, edward sapir, benjamin lee whorf. Linking language to culture: we assign meanings through and to language, culturally situated meanings are linguistically mediated, culture is semiotically produced. Linguistic relativity: how does the language we speak effect the way we think and experience the world, semiotic relativity: any language, any thought, structural relativity: structure and perception, discursive relativity: discourse an view/understanding. Time is money : military metaphors for illnesses: heroic measures, courageous battles, among north american english speakers, arguments become wars, and time becomes a commodity. How do we become competent speakers: linguistic competence and communicative competence, acquisition and socialization, how do we acquire language, how are we socialized into particular ways of speaking and using languages, nature vs. nurture.