Anthro 170 Introduction to Culture PDF

NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 Anthro 170 LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY 1 ▶ 4ANTHROPOLOGY: 4 Fields (subfields) ▶ Biological/Physical ▶ Archaeological Anthropology ▶ Social/Cultural Anthropology ▶ Linguistic Anthropology 2...

NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 Anthro 170 LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY 1 ▶ 4ANTHROPOLOGY: 4 Fields (subfields) ▶ Biological/Physical ▶ Archaeological Anthropology ▶ Social/Cultural Anthropology ▶ Linguistic Anthropology 2 1  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 ▶ ANTHROPOLOGY and LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY(Salzmann) ▶ Scope of Anthropology 1) Because members of the Homo sapiens species are biological organisms, the study of human begins must try to understand their origin and nature in the appropriate context 2) As humans strove to adapt to a great variety of natural and self made conditions, they engaged in a long series of innovations referred to by the term culture. 3 3) In the course of their cultural evolution during the past million years, humans were immeasurably aided by their developing of an effective means of communication, the most remarkable and crucial component of which is human language. Linguistic anthropology is concerned with the consequences of the process referred to in the 3rd proposition. 4 2  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 ▶ Also known as “language and (or in) culture” courses, *anthropological linguistics, ethnolinguistics(40-50’s US) ▶ Hymes (1963: 277): “the study of speech and language within the context of anthropology.” ▶ “the study of language as a cultural resource and speaking as a cultural practice”(Duranti 1997:2) 5 ▶ WHAT IS NOT LINGUISTIC ANTHRO ▶ just any study of language done by anthropologists. ▶ the collection of “exotic” texts studied by anthropologists. ▶ the act of providing a written account of some aspects of the grammar of a language spoken by a people without writing – in the Brazilian jungle or in the Kalahari desert for example. 6 3  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 ▶ WHAT IS LINGUISTIC ANTHRO ▶ focus on language as a set of symbolic resources that enter the constitution of social fabric and the individual representation of actual or possible worlds. ▶ address in innovative ways some of the issues such as -the politics of representation (ex.gender) -the legitimation of power (ex.kgg) -the cultural basis of racism and ethnic conflict(ex.kulot, egoy) -the process of socialization (ex.w/c can and cannot -the cultural construction of the person (or self)(ex.deaf/Deaf) -the politics of emotion (ex.malambot/mahina) -domain specific knowledge and cognition(ex.pagtatanim) -artistic performance and the politics of aesthetic consumption(ex.bolahan) 7 THE STUDY OF LINGUISTIC PRACTICES ▶ As a domain of inquiry, linguistic anthropology starts from the theoretical assumption that words matter and from the empirical finding that linguistic signs as representations of the world and connections to the world are never neutral; they are constantly used for the construction of cultural affinities and cultural differentiations…(and)differences do not just live in the symbolic codes that represent them. 8 4  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 THE STUDY OF LINGUISTIC PRACTICES ▶ When we think about what is said in contrast with what is not said, we set up a background against which to evaluate the said (Tyler 1978). But how wide and how deep should we search? How many levels of analysis are sufficient? This is not just a question about the number of utterances, speakers, and languages that should be studied. It is about the function of ethnography, its merits and limits. It is about the range of phenomena that we take as relevant to what language is and does. (ex. “kamusta?”, “san punta?” “okay lang.” pagtango, “pagpayag”/di tumanggi sa usapin ng harassment cases) 9 THE STUDY OF LINGUISTIC PRACTICES ▶ What is unique about linguistic anthropology lies… in its interest in speakers as social actors, in language as both a resource for and a product of social interaction, in speech communities as simultaneously real and imaginary entities whose boundaries are constantly being reshaped and negotiated through myriad acts of speaking. (Duranti) 10 5  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 THE STUDY OF LINGUISTIC PRACTICES ▶ “language as the measure of our lives” (Morrison) ▶ …tend to focus on linguistic performance and situated discourse. Rather than exclusively concentrating on what makes us cognitively equal, linguistic anthropologists also focus on how language allows for and creates differentiations – between groups, individuals, identities. 11 THE STUDY OF LINGUISTIC PRACTICES ▶ speaking that can only be captured by studying what people actually do with language, by matching words, silences, and gestures with the context in which those signs are produced. ▶ speaking is a social act and as such is subject to the constraints of social action - has consequences for our ways of being in the world, and ultimately for humanity. 12 6  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLINGUISTICS ▶ Linguistic anthropology …defined by Boas and his colleagues at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sociolinguistics(more quanti & urban) came out of urban dialectology in the late 1950s and early 1960s. ▶ areas of study, such as speech register, language and gender, speech acts, and discourse, have been more often shared with linguistic anthropologists and have thus provided opportunities for crossfertilization 13 LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLINGUISTICS ▶ Sociolinguists also continue to be concerned with the definition of the speech community as a reference point for investigating the limits of individual variation in language use. ▶ the importance of the concept of culture, which alone makes linguistic anthropological methods and theoretical goals quite distinct from sociolinguistic research 14 7  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 15 THEORIES OF CULTURE Culture as ▶ Distinct from nature ▶ Knowledge ▶ Communication ▶ Mediation ▶ System of practices ▶ System of participation ▶ Predicting andinterpreting 16 8  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 THEORIES OF CULTURE Culture as ▶ Distinct from nature ▶ In the acquisition of language, nature and culture interact in a number of ways to produce the uniqueness of human languages 17 THEORIES OF CULTURE Culture as ▶ Knowledge ▶ “a society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable for any one of themselves. Culture, being what people have to learn in as distinct from their biological heritage, must consist of the end product of learning: knowledge, in a most general, if relative, sense of the term. It is rather an organization of these things… people have in mind… models of perceiving… ” (Goodenough1964:36) 18 9  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 THEORIES OF CULTURE Culture as ▶ Communication ▶ Means to see it as a system of signs(semiotic) ▶ Culture is a representation of the world, a way of making sense of reality objectifying it in stories, myths, descriptions, theories, proverbs, artistic products and performances… appropriation of nature by humans 19 THEORIES OF CULTURE Culture as ▶ Mediation ▶ Human ----- Tool ----- Environment 20 10  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 THEORIES OF CULTURE Culture as ▶ System of practices ▶ The habitus – embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history – is the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product. As such, it is what gives practices their relative autonomy with respect to external determinations of the immediate present. 21 THEORIES OF CULTURE Culture as ▶ System of participation ▶ Related to culture as a system of practices and is based on the assumption that any action in the world, including verbal communication, has an inherently social, collective, and participatory quality. 22 11  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 THEORIES OF CULTURE Culture as ▶ Predicting and interpreting ▶ Prediction of individual occurrences of phenomena or interpretation of individual events, performances, dialogues, speech acts…? ▶ Can we predict human behavior?(think of formulas) ▶ Can we speak of scientific “laws” when we deal with human actions? 23 THEORIES OF CULTURE ▶ Predicting and interpreting (general principlel/assumptions by social scientist about language and culture) 1) Social actors(speakers) make predictions in daily life 2) Social actors, complex beings participate in complex systems(predictables and not predictables/uncertainties) 3) How often something happens(said, heard) is important 4)Phenomenon as occurrence partly due to interpretive frame 24 12  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 THEORIES OF CULTURE ▶ Predicting and interpreting (general principels/assumptions by social scientist about language and culture) 5)Social actors make their actions and interpretations fit into particular “models” 6)Metaphors(theories)-good to think w/, but should not get in the new ways of thinking about a problem 7) All theories are mortal 25 THEORIES OF CULTURE Culture – highly complex and much contested ground w/in anthropological theory - current theories avoid an all encompassing notion of culture in favor of more context-specific and context dependent practices or forms of participation. - language always play an important role - learned patterned behavior and interpretation - universe of thought for cognitive scientist - metalanguage (talk about talk?), theories about “any” 26 13  NOT for sharing (for class use only) 10/9/24 THEORIES OF CULTURE - much of social life is conducted, mediated, and evaluated though linguistic communication – Strauss used linguistic tools for the study of culture - Even thinking “privately”, rely on cultural resources - Ethnographers use language as resource for knowledge and tool to represent knowledge - Control over linguistic means - control(also reproduce) relationship w/ the world - Language as set of practices need to see linguistic communication as only a part of complex network of semiotic resources that carry us throughout life, link us to particular histories 27 THEORIES OF CULTURE “Each of the theories presented so far highlights a particular aspect of linguistic systems… contributes to our understanding of culture as a complex phenomenon… implies a different research agenda, but all of them together form a broad mandate for the study of culture and for the analysis of language as a conceptual and social tool that is both a product and an instrument of culture.” 28 14