Malagasy Voices & Linguistic Anthropology

• In Malagasy, three sentence styles or “voices” exist, with 2 matching English's active and passive voices.
• The third style, circumstantial, lacks a precise English equivalent.
• It shifts the sentence's subject from the addressed person to the object used for an action.
• The question for a speaker is when to use each particular form, and what difference does it make.
• It is preferable to use the circumstantial voice.
• Active voice can be considered impolite to express direct anger, disagreement or criticism.
• Direct speech can be "harsh, abrupt, without respect"
• Linguistic anthropology is a subdiscipline that investigates language, concerned with variations, how people use variations to express and maintain social relations, and how concepts and values in language shape the experience of its speakers.
• Language is holistically related to other aspects of society and culture.

Human Languages as a Communication System

• All species communicate, humans can communicate through speech, hand gestures, facial expressions and body postures.
• Language possess design features like rapid fading, interchangeability, feedback, semanticity, arbitrariness, discreteness, displacement, productivity, reflexiveness, prevarication, learnability, cultural transmission.
• Language is profoundly connected to culture.

The Structure of Language

• Language consists of a finite set of elements and rules for combining them into units.
• Linguistic competence must be achieved to make intelligible utterances.

Phonology

• Study of sounds that are combined and used in language.
• Refers to the processes of the physical production and sensory reception of sounds
• Concerns which sounds are used in a language and how they generate words.
• Not concerned with meaning.
• Sounds present in a language, or the way those sounds are used vary.
• The smallest bits of linguistic sound are called phonemes.

Morphology or Semantics

• Begins building meaning on the foundation of orderly sound.
• Study of the meaningful bits of language and form or shape is called morphology.
• Phonemes are usable sounds in a language, while morphemes are possible bits of meaning.
• Words consist of free morphemes.
• “Dog” is an example of a free morpheme since it is independently meaningful.
• Bound morphemes convey meaning only in combination with another morpheme.

Grammar or Syntax

• Refers to the rules by which a language combines words and other morphemes into utterances, such as sentences to convey complete ideas or statements.
• In English the fundamental rule is word order, subject, verb and object is how most sentences are made.

Pragmatics or Sociolinguistics

• These are the rules or conventions for how language is used, indicating social code and social status
• Malagasy "voice" conveys other critical information.

Making Society Through Language

• Language expresses and constructs social relationships including political and religious affiliations.

Language as Performance

• Linguistic performatives are utterances that do not describe.
• Instead, they actually accomplish a transformation in the social world.
• Utterances are more than mere words
• Utterances are social acts that accomplish some social effect.
• Speaking in such cases is doing something like “I now pronounce you man and wife"

Language and Political Power

• Language is central to obtaining and challenging power.
• Oratory or purung was a prized and formally structured speech form combining art and politics.

Oral Literature and Specialized Language Style

• Cultural knowledge and the language styles that communicate it is referred to as folklore.
• Forms that it takes are myths, legends, folktales, jokes, proverbs, riddles, chants etc.

Paralanguage and non-verbal languages

• Not all of human communication is verbal, gestures of various kinds can have meaning independent of spoken language to alter it.
• Paralanguage includes delivery features like tone, pitch, speed rhythm and volume.
• Kinesics is the general name for bodily movements or gestures that augment and modify verbal communication.
• Proxemics looks specifically at the use of personal space in interactions.

Language change, Loss and competition

• Multiple languages co-exist, "Linguistic nationalism” can threaten societies.
• In imbalanced culture contact language changes may occur to one or both languages.
• This can result in a hybrid language called a pidgin and have reduced structure.
• Over time, pidgin can be multi functional and become the first language called a creole.
• Anti-language is one that exists opposing the norm.

Language Acquisition and the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

• No one is born knowing and speaking any particular language, but is learned like culture.
• Language is not innate, instead the human brain extracts or constructs language from experienced speech.
• Societies speak languages relative to a particular society.
• Linguistic relativity states language is a constituent of experience with concepts relations and values.