Linguistic DiversityGoal s &methods vary: 2 camps

Generative Grammarians• Few general principles• Theory of universal

Grammar• Describe the grammar

of ANY language• Assume homogeneity

not diversity in speech community

Sociolinguists- opposite• Start with empirical

obs.• Differentiation within

speech community• Methods to systematic

study linguistic variation in relation to contextual factors

Linguist Anthropologists

• Similar to sociolinguists

• Face the complex relation between language and thought -Linguist relativity

• Language diversity recast as one dimension of “language ideology”

Chapter draws on various traditions

3.1 Language in culture: The Boasian Tradition

Born 1858 Germany

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The Boasian Tradition

Based on fieldwork among Eskimos and Kwaliutls, Boas considered language essential to

• Practical means to understand thenological problems -- nothing to do with problems, He also considered

• Pure linguistic inquiry “part and parcel of a thorough investigation of the psychology of the people of the world.” (1911 n.d. 52)

Recorded and transcribed what informants recalled“Salvaging anthropologist” worried about fading

traditions and languages

1. Hamat’sa life group, prepared by Franz Boas at the US National

Museum, c.1896

http://blogs.nyu.edu/projects/materialworld/2006/10/

3.2 Linguistic Relativity

• Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

• Metaphors: language as guide to the World

Whorf’s fire-causing example

Language as Objectification of the world

From Von Humboldt (1767-1835) to Cassirer (1940’s)

• Humboldt replaced Kant’s cognitive categories with linguistic ones.

• Price: from universal to highly specific

• Ex. Gender European vs.. Bantu

• What then is “freedom of expression’?

3.2.2 Language as a guide to World: metaphors

• George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) • We live my more metaphors than we suspect• Metaphor: see something in terms of

something else ex. “head of state” “theories as buildings” “understanding as seeing”

• Connect experiential domains and “find” coherence

• Acceptable because fits other more general metaphor concepts and forms a coherent whole. (Culture as knowledge)

Color-terms Research and Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

• Critique sociolinguists Berlin (1969)• 20 languages universal constraints on

– Lang. encode and organize color terms– Change over time to add color terms

• P. 65 figure 3.2 and Footnote • Neurophysio-logical process of perception• Unrelated languages code same basic

colors= strong evidence against• No discreet categories => Prototype theory

Implicational Hierarchy of basic color terms

3.2.4 Language and Science

• Q: If language is or can be really constraining, how can describe what we or others do, believe, think and feel?

• 1st Solution: Turn into an artist (Cassirer) Act as creative beings. – The art of discovery .. Use “ahas” and sudden

intuitions. – Art of presentation– Researchers live in market of ideas

2nd Solution; study cultural products, like myths, which reveal truths about community (symbolic anthropology)

• Beyond descriptive statements in interviews • Culture as communication: Stories,

performances, everyday expressions may reveal inner motivations. (See educational forms)

• Dreams are smarter than dreamer (Freud)

3rd Solution

• Study conditions under which speakers of a language can overcome limits of their own worldview or metaphysics via study of meta-pragmatics

3.4 Language, Languages and Linguistic Varieties

• Language vs. a language– Human faculty to communicate (signs,

units of of signs) – A specific Socio-historical product– From “dialect” to variety of language– Variety implies linguistic repertoire and

speech community

Linguistic repertoire- Issues

• Def: “The totality of linguistic forms regularly used in the course of a socially significant interaction” Gumperz, 1964

• Individual repertoire may be different from that of the speech community

• Social differences associated with social class- can it be treated differently

• Individual Freedom: can leaders affect the linguistic choices of their community?

Speech communities

• Anthropologist assume that language varieties assume a community of speakers

• This community is point of reference for the speaker and for the researcher

Speech Community:From idealization to

heteroglossia• Idealized

homogenous speech community

• Example: does this sound right?

• Generalizations associated with “deep” structures

• Problems when applied “to know A language”

• Labov it includes what is socially acceptable

Multilingual Speech communities

• Arizona Tewa• Catalan in Barcelona - maintains high status

Why? • Woolard: it’s not where a language is spoken

but WHO speaks it. Authority inculcated in personal relationships

• Mexicano -- syncretic language instead of language mixing. (p.77)

Definitions of Speech communities

• Gumperz “Speech community” • Labov “by participation in a set of shared

norms” NYC a speech community. Key shared patters of variation or evaluation

• Alternative: social contract– Example exogenous marriage unintelligible

languages! Vaupes. P 81

Duranti’s preference

• Speech community: the product of communicative speech activities engaged in by a give group of people

• P.82

Labov’s contributions

Conclusions, p 83

• Language diversity ties together linguistic relativity, language contact and language mixing

• Language variation is the norm• Implies the study language ideology and its

complexities • In sum, to study language requires interplay

between language as human resource AND as historical product and process.