Chapter 6

Language and Communication

What We Will Learn• How does human language differ from forms of

communication in other animals?• How do languages change?• Are some languages superior to others? • Do people from different cultures have different

styles of linguistic discourse? • What is the relationship between language and

culture?• How do people communicate without using

words?

The Nature of Language

• Found in all cultures of the world.• Symbolic system of sounds that conveys

meaning when put together according to a set of rules.

• Meanings attached to any given word in all languages are totally arbitrary.

Diversity of Language

• There are as many as 6,000 discrete languages.

• 95% of the world’s people speak fewer than 100 of approximately 6,000 languages.

• Mandarin accounts for about 1 in every 5 people on earth.

• English, Hindi, Spanish, and Russian, accounts for about 45%.

Major Language Families of the World

Major Languages of the World

Language Primary CountryNumber of Speakers

Mandarin China 873,000,000

Spanish Spain/South American

322,000,000

English UK/USA 309,000,000

Hindi India 180,000,000

Portuguese Portugal/Brazil 177,000,000

Bengali Bangladesh 171,000,000

Major Languages of the World

Language Primary CountryNumber of Speakers

Russian Russia 145,000,000

Japanese Japan 122,000,000

German Germany 95,000,000

Wu China 77,000,000

Korean Korea 67,000,000

Characteristics of Human Communication Systems

• Capable of sending an infinite number of messages.

• Humans are only animals that speak of events from the past or in the future (displacement).

• Language is transmitted largely through tradition rather than experience alone.

Open and Closed Systems of Communication• Closed system of communication

• Communication system in which the user cannot create new sounds or words by combining two or more existing sounds or words.

• Open system of communication• System of communication in which the user

can create new sounds or words by combining two or more existing sounds or words.

Structure of Human Languages

• Phonological structure includes rules of how sounds combine to convey meanings.

• Each language has a grammatical structure that governs:• How morphemes are formed into words

(morphology).• How words are arranged into phrases and

sentences (syntax).

Morphemes Make Up Words

Morphemes

• Free morpheme• Morpheme that appears in a language

without being attached to other morphemes.

• Bound morpheme• A morpheme that can convey meaning

only when combined with another morpheme.

Grammar

• The systematic ways sounds are combined in a language to allow users to send and receive meaningful utterances.

Morphology

• The study of the rules governing how morphemes are turned into words.

Syntax

• The linguistic rules, found in all languages, that determine how phrases and sentences are constructed.

Question

• _______ involves the study of the basic building blocks of a language.

a) Linguistics

b) Phonology

c) Phonology

d) Grammar

Answer: b

• Phonology involves the study of the basic building blocks of a language.

Question

• The ________ is a combination of phonemes which convey some meaning.

a) morpheme

b) allomorph

c) phoneme

d) grammar

Answer: a

• The morpheme is a combination of phonemes which convey some meaning.

Question

• The rules of a language which controls how people speak and make themselves understood make up its

a) phonemes.

b) syntax.

c) grammar.

d) morphemes.

Answer: c

• The rules of a language which controls how people speak and make themselves understood make up its grammar.

Synchronic Analysis

• The analysis of cultural data at a single point in time, rather than through time.

Diachronic Analysis

• The analysis of sociocultural data through time, rather than at a single point in time.

Language Change

• Language is constantly changing. • When linguists study how languages

change over time, they are engaged in diachronic analysis.

Historical Linguistics

• The study of how languages change over time.

Language Families• A language family comprises all of the

languages that derive from its common protolanguage.

• The English language is part of the family known as the Indo-European language family.• Germanic is the mother of English.• French and Spanish are sister languages.• Russian, Bulgarian, and Polish share a

common Slavic mother.

Language Families

• Linguists generally agree that there are more than 250 different language families in the world today.

• Of these 150 are found in the Americas, 60 in New Guinea, 26 in Australia, 20 in Africa, and 37 in Europe and Asia.

English Is No Easy Language to Learn• The medic wound the bandage around the

wound.• The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the

desert.• When Mr. Cheney fired his gun, the dove dove

into the bushes.• I did not object to the object.• The invalid had an invalid driver’s license.• They were too close to the door to close it.

Cultural Emphasis of a Language

• The idea that the vocabulary in any language tends to emphasize words that are adaptively important in that culture.

Colloquialisms From Baseball

• She threw me a curve.• You’re way off base.• You’re batting 1,000 (500, zero) so far.• I want to touch all the bases.• He went to bat for me.• He has two strikes against him.• That’s way out in left field.• He drives me up the wall.

Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis

• Language influences perception.• Language establishes mental categories

that affect the ways people conceptualize the real world.

Culture and Language

• Would this skier have a more robust vocabulary focusing on different words for snow than would a nonskiing Floridian?

Culture and Language• Although the Navajo

and English languages have vastly different structures, these Navajo speakers can express abstract ideas every bit as effectively as native English speakers.

Doublespeak

• The use of euphemisms to make things appear better than they actually are.

Language and Perception• This Iraqi man became

totally distraught when an American missile attack reduced his house to rubble.

• A “preemptive war,” designed to create “shock and awe,” can lead to “collateral damage.”

Language and Perception

• This type of “in-your-face” advertising would not be well received in Japan.

Diglossia

• The situational use of language in complex speech communities.

• A linguistic situation where two varieties of the same language (such as standard form, dialect, or pidgin) are spoken by the same person at different times and under different social circumstances.

Examples of Diglossia

High Form Low Form

Religious service Marketplace

Political speeches Instructions to subordinates

Legislative proceedings Friendly conversations

University lectures Folk literature

News broadcasts Radio/TV programs

Newspapers Cartoons

Poetry Graffiti

Question

• _______ suggests that language actually establishes mental categories that predispose people to see things in a certain way.

a) Diachronic analysisb) Historical linguisticsc) Descriptive linguisticsd) The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Answer: d

• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that language actually establishes mental categories that predispose people to see things in a certain way.

Dialects

• Regional or class variations of a language that are sufficiently similar to be mutually understood.

• It is not uncommon for certain dialects in complex speech communities to be considered substandard or inferior to others.

Nonverbal Communication

• Most messages are sent and received without words:• Facial expressions• Gestures• Eye contact• Touching• Posture