ANT206H5 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Standard Average European, Language Ideology, Ferdinand De Saussure
Document Summary
The study of the history and development of languages. Not the historical connections between languages but the system, the structure of the language they speak now. Language is like a game of chess: symbolic objects that only mean something in terms of what they do and their position in the game. Saussure was only interested in the structure of language, not in its actually usage. Saussure argued that you need to figure out the system that underlies the mess: the structure and the rules that allow people to communicate. Their relation to all other possible words that could be used (paradigmatic relations) Their position within the sentence (syntagmatic relations: drew a circle around language (threw speech out in favour of language) linguistic anthropology. The study of language in context, an investigation of the relationships between linguistic forms and cultural processes and practices.
