ANTH 1102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Benjamin Lee Whorf, Edward Sapir, Kinesics
9 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Body language: kinesics: proxemics: the examination of personal space. Odor: can often hold specific cultural meanings. Relationship of language to biology and culture: based in biology. Focal vocabularies: sets of words that describe a culture"s activities, how societies categorize their experiences, saami example. Sapir-whorf hypothesis: language shapes the way people see the world, focal vocabularies frame how people experience life, influences culture and thus thought. Culture and language are interrelated: sapir-whorf shows that language & culture shape perceptions via focal vocabularies. Hypothesis does not address changing language: they have a reciprocal relationship. Language and society is about cultural diversity: principle of linguistic relativity. All dialects and languages are equally effective: how languages reflect cultural understanding and behavior. How speech pattern reflect social status: language marking social status and role differences. Language differences b/w males and females: cultures vary in gender and language, people break gendered speech for specific reasons.
