LAC 1000C Lecture 1: Lesson 1 LAC
10 Jan 2019
School
Department
Course
Professor
Linguistic Anthropology and language families
Communication
• Human language is complex and surpasses all other forms of language in the animal
kingdom
• Linguistic anthropology is study of speech within the arena or perspective of
anthropology
• The 1960s saw a formal development of study of grammar and language with advocates
like Noam Chomsky
• Linguistic competence depicting the underlying ability possessed by the human person
Linguistic Anthropology
• Prior to Noam Chomsky and Hymes scholars like Edward Sapir ad Benjamin Whorf had
done extensive work in this area
• Both of them had studied language and cultures of Native Americans
• Sapir’s interests centered around the need to analyze vocabulary in order to uncover the
physical and social environment people live
• A complete vocabulary maybe seen from complex inventory of the ideas, interests and
occupations hat consume the community
• Hs argument is that all human experience is mediated through culture and language
• Cultural Significance is the only reason for labelling in language form all the objects and
forces around physical environment
• As soon as a language provides word for an object or event they become culturally
relevant to the people
• The giving of names to objects within the environment creates the physical encounter of
noticing and experiencing them in that context
• Sapir believes that the world individuals live are distinct worlds and not necessarily same
world with different labels
• This applies to concrete geographical features, which carries detailed or glossed over
terms as named by the people
• The more detail means the more culturally significant to the people and thereby survival
of this object depends on the particular environment in context
Edward Sapir-Benjamin Whorf Thesis
• States that people see and understand the world through the cultural lens of language
• Their work has raised a lot of controversy among scholars concerning whether language
shapes reality or reality shapes language
• For the two it is language that shape reality
• Therefore, a New Yorker who thinks and speaks Spanish will experience his or her
environment differently from other New Yorkers who think in English
• Reason being that the symbols which are the foundation of their reality are distinct
• Every language has words or expressions not existent in other symbolic systems
• Recent evidence from scholars has shown that language do not determine reality
