Unit 4: Language and Enculturation

The first three units of this course have introduced you to key concepts and debates
within cultural anthropology, the history of fieldwork and participant observation, and
the development of anthropology as a discipline in relation to the colonial context. In
this unit, we move on to a close examination of an important area of study within
anthropology: language. As noted in Unit I, linguistic anthropology constitutes a
separate sub-discipline of its own within a four fields approach to the discipline.
However, language and its study are also central to cultural anthropology and many
anthropologists cross between these two sub-disciplines.

Cultural and linguistic anthropologists are interested in how language operates and
how it links to culture. Indeed, one might argue that language both requires cultural
knowledge and is culture. To put this otherwise, individuals both rely on an immense
array of cultural and social knowledge in order to use language effectively, and
language is also an essential means through which individuals reproduce, alter, and
negotiate social and cultural identities, beliefs, and behaviours. Finally, language often
plays an important role in establishing systems of power and inequality. Since
language is one of the ways in which individuals are introduced to and come to
reproduce dominant social norms, beliefs, and identities, in this unit we will also
discuss the concepts of enculturation and socialization as key processes through which
individuals acquire and learn to reproduce dominant cultural beliefs and social norms.

In this unit, we will address four main topics:

1. Enculturation
2. Language and Anthropology: An Introduction
3. The Design Features and Components of Language
4. Language, Culture, and Inequality

Learning Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:

1. Identify and explain the concepts of enculturation and socialization.

2. Define and explain the design features that distinguish human languages from the
call systems of primates.

3. Define and explain the structure of human languages, including the five basic
components: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
4. Discuss and explain two main theoretical approaches that anthropologists have
considered in order to explain how language shapes cultural beliefs and behaviours,
including the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which has been largely refuted, and the now
more dominant pragmatic and ethnopragmatic approaches to the study of language
use in context.

5. Recognize and consider the effects of language on reproducing social inequality,

with reference to specific case studies.

Assigned Reading and Viewing

Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods, Chapter 4, and the section “Socialization and
Enculturation” from Chapter 5.

Aesop Rock, “Pigs,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc9qJS-GG-c

David S. Thomsen. “The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Worlds Shaped by Words.”

How to Proceed
1. Read the section “Socialization and Enculturation,” from Chapter 5 in Lavenda,
Schultz, and Dods.

2. Read Part I of the instructional notes.

3. Read Chapter 4 of Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods.

4. Read Parts II and III of the instructional notes.

5. Read David S. Thomsen "The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis."

6. Read Part IV of the instructional notes, watch Aesop Rock “Pigs,” and complete the
practice exercise.

7. Complete the review questions.

Instructional Content
Contents
Part I: Enculturation
1.1 Enculturation and Socialization

Part II: Language and Anthropology: An Introduction

2.1 Language, Context, and Culture

2.2 Why should cultural anthropologists study language?

2.3 What is Language: A Preliminary Definition

Part III: The Design Features and Components of Language

3.1 The Design Features of Language

3.1.1 Openness

3.1.2 Displacement

3.1.3 Prevarication

3.1.4 Arbitrariness

3.1.5 Duality of Patterning

3.2. The Components of Language

3.2.1 Phonology

3.2.2 Morphology

3.2.3 Syntax

3.2.4 Semantics

Exercise 1: Aesop Rock and Language in Context

3.2.5 Pragmatics

Part IV: Language, Culture, and Inequality

4.1 The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

4.2 Ethnopragmatics
4.3 Language and Inequality

4.3.1 Language and Gender

4.3.2 Pidgin and Creole Languages

4.3.3 African American English

Part I: Enculturation and the Self

Key to the concept of culture, as I noted in Unit I of this course, is the idea that many
of our beliefs, behaviours, and identities are not the result of biology but rather are
acquired through time as individuals observe and copy the actions of others. This
emphasis on culture as learned leads to an important question: how do individuals
learn, acquire, and incorporate cultural and social beliefs, behaviours, and identities?

1.1 Enculturation and Socialization

Your textbook points to two major concepts as key answers to this question:

1. Socialization: “the process by which human beings learn to become members

of a group both by interacting appropriately with others and by coping with the
behavioural rules established by the group.”
2. Enculturation: “the process by which human beings living with one another
must learn to come to terms with the ways of thinking and feeling that are
considered appropriate to their respective cultures” (Lavenda, Schultz, and
Dods 2015: 110).

In the first unit, I emphasized that culture both limits and allows for agency as well as
change over time. Paying attention to the ways in which humans acquire the values,
beliefs, and behaviours considered appropriate within specific cultural contexts for
particular social roles and statuses draws our attention to just how deeply rooted our
cultural and social identities can be. While cultural beliefs, behaviours, and identities
are learned and can be changed and contested over time, they also shape who we are
in ways that can often feel quite unshakeable.

We begin learning our cultures and our places within them from the moment we are
born and even, arguably, before we are born. For example, in North America it is
common to ask an expectant mother whether she is expecting a boy or a girl.
Depending on her politics and our own, her answer to this question might then
determine what types of gifts we give her at a baby shower. In 21st century Canada,
many people commonly associate blue as a colour most appropriate for boys while
pink is deemed a better colour for girls. Toys are often similarly gendered, with cars
and trucks deemed appropriate for boys and dolls deemed best for girls. These sorts of
divisions can seem quite natural to us, as though what nurses and doctors can make
out of the genitalia of a just-born chid or even of a fetus using a prenatal ultrasound
will naturally lead to that child’s gender assignment and identity. Yet as we will see in
greater detail in Unit 8, while gender identity is often culturally associated with
biological distinctions between male and female, biology does not determine gender
nor are the differences between genders or even how many genders exist conceived in
the same way across all times and places.

Indeed, as historian Jo B Paoletti argues in her recent book, Pink and Blue: Telling
the Boys from the Girls in America (2012), the idea that blue is for boys and pink is
for girls is in fact a relatively recent invention in North America. As late as the
eighteenth century, babies were uniformly dressed in frilly white dresses. It wasn’t
until the early twentieth century that various journals and advertising campaigns
began to assign specific colours to gender for babies. According to Paoletti, these
associations went out of fashion with the rise of women’s liberation movements in the
1960s. But they became popular again in the 1980s when advances in prenatal testing
made it possible to determine the genitalia of a child even before birth, which in turn
allowed companies and marketers to encourage parents-to-be to purchase entire
nurseries designed around the supposed gender of their yet-to-be-born children.

The point here is that even through such a seemingly small distinction, such as
associating specific colours with specific genders, we begin enculturating children, or,
in other words, encouraging them to incorporate cultural understandings of gender
into their senses of self and to take up assigned gender positions, even before their
birth. Moreover, as Paoletti’s history demonstrates, it is not just parents who are
involved in this process of enculturation, but their families and friends, changes in
technologies, and an entire consumer industry with investments in reinforcing various
social identities and differences in order to be able to market more products.
Considering the vast quantities of “princess” related toys marketed to girls in recent
decades within North America can also help demonstrate how industry and
advertising act as agents of enculturation alongside families, peers, and institutions
such as schools to enculturate children, encouraging them to incorporate and accept
dominant social norms about gender, such as the association of being a girl or a
woman with a need to be beautiful.

Part II: Language and Anthropology: An Introduction

As your textbook notes, language is an important medium for enculturation. It is also
one of the primary means through which individuals reproduce and contest cultural
beliefs and norms, including subject positions and systems of power and inequality.

2.1 Language, Context, and Culture

The importance of language in terms of reproducing and contesting cultural norms

and social identities can be seen by paying attention to the role that context plays in
how individuals use language. As your textbook notes, learning how to speak French
can be quite challenges for an English language speaker. Whereas in English we use
only one pronoun – “you” – to address another person, French makes use of two
pronouns for this one task. “Vous,” or the second personal plural, is used in formal
contexts when addressing someone whose authority the speaker wishes to
acknowledge or in the case of speaking to a stranger. “Tu,” or the second person
singular, is used in informal contexts, in order to indicate similar social standing or a
degree of intimacy. For instance, whereas it would be typically assumed that a student
should use the more formal “vous” to address a professor in order to indicate respect
for the professor’s authority, students may often use the less formal “tu” to address
other students, even in cases where they don’t know each other well, in order to
indicate social solidarity or equality.

As this example indicates, being competent in a language requires far more than
knowledge of its vocabulary and grammatical rules. Rather, as Dell Hymes argued,
the socially effective use of language also requires what he termed communicative
competence, that is, the “mastery of rules for socially and culturally appropriate
speech” within a given context (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 80). Effective
language use thus relies on an individual’s mastery of cultural knowledge about the
grammar, vocabulary, and other formal elements of a language as well as knowledge
about how to use these elements in specific contexts with regards to specific
individuals. However, not only does language rely on cultural knowledge, it also can
shape, reproduce, or contest dominant cultural beliefs and social identities. The way in
which individuals use specific linguistic forms in specific contexts communicates and
shapes assumptions about social interaction, including the social identities of those
involved.

To return to the previous example of the use of personal pronouns in French, it is

important to note that a speaker’s use of either the more formal “vous” or the more
informal “tu” not only relies on their communicative competence, or their ability to
match the appropriate linguistic form to the appropriate context, it also, as a result,
communicates to the other person involved in the speech event assumptions about the
nature of their relationship. If a student addresses a professor as “tu,” s/he is assuming
a certain familiarity to their relationship that may or may not be well received.
Perhaps the professor will accept the use of this personal pronoun, indicating either a
familiarity between those two individuals or maybe even changing ideas about the
nature of the relationship between student and teacher. Alternatively, the professor
may respond by correcting the student’s use of pronoun either overtly or implicitly,
thus reminding the student that s/he needs to acknowledge the professor’s authority
and social status. What is important to retain here is both how much cultural
knowledge goes into knowing how to use a seemingly simple grammatical distinction,
like personal pronouns, and how manipulating these linguistic forms can itself work
as a means of either reproducing or challenging dominant cultural norms, for instance,
about the nature of the relationship between students and teachers.

2.2 Why should cultural anthropologists study language?

This argument about how the use of language in context relies on and communicates
cultural knowledge is key to the interest that many contemporary linguistic and
cultural anthropologists have in its study and we will return to it throughout the
remainder of this unit. Before elaborating on this point, however, let’s return to the
beginning with a key question: why should cultural anthropologists care about
language?

Your textbook provides three answers to this question:

1) The first reason is a practical one. Since cultural anthropologists frequently conduct
fieldwork in cultures that are not their own, learning a new language is often an
important step in one’s training as a cultural anthropologist.

2) The second reason is more abstract. Here, Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods point out
that language contains grammatical and conceptual intricacies that have often served
as inspiration for anthropologists in their study of culture more broadly. This can be
seen, for instance, in the work of one famous anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss,
whose ideas about culture drew on arguments about the nature of linguistic signs or
symbols developed by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. We will discuss Levi-Strauss’s
theories in greater detail in Unit 5.

3) Your textbook’s third reason for why cultural anthropologists should be interested
in language draws on the points that I made above about the relationship between
language, context, and cultural knowledge. If individuals both draw on and
communicate all sorts of cultural beliefs and social identities through language,
knowing something about how language works can provide anthropologists with
important insight into a culture.
It is also possible to reverse this statement to get an even stronger sense of why
cultural anthropologists need to know something about language. Cultural
anthropologists are often interested in studying non-linguistic practices and
behaviours, such as dance. However, cultural anthropologists may rely on language to
gain insight even into these non-linguistic cultural practices. That is, an anthropologist
may observe a dance by taking note of the steps involved, the types of people who
perform the dance, and the types of contexts in which it is carried out. However, to
gain a full understanding of the cultural significance and function of the dance, they
will also most likely speak to participants and observers. Since language both relies on
and communicates all sorts of cultural knowledge, it is important that all cultural
anthropologists know something about how it works in order to better evaluate the
nature of the information that they gather through such informal conversations, formal
and semi-formal interviews, and participant observation. Language is not a transparent
window onto a social world, so anthropologists need to know something about how it
works in order to better evaluate the sorts of data that ethnographic interviews and
informal conversations yield.

2.3 What is Language: A Preliminary Definition

Having established the importance of language to an analysis of culture and, hence, to

cultural anthropology, this then leads us to other preliminary questions. Namely, what
is language and how does it work? Your textbook provides three basic introductory
criteria for defining language and how it works.

Language, as your textbook notes, can be defined as “the system of arbitrary vocal
symbols we use to encode our experiences of the world” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods
2015: 77). We will return later in this unit to explain what the authors mean by the
concept of “arbitrary vocal symbols.” For now, note how this emphasis on language
as a medium through which we encode our experiences of the world again draws
attention to the important role that language can play in shaping and communicating
social experience or culture.

Your textbook also notes that language is a biocultural phenomenon. Spoken

language involves sound. In other words, it is a wave propagated through the air,
which strikes your ear drums and is interpreted by your brain s meaningful speech. In
order to create those disturbances in the air you must move the anatomy of your
mouth, tongue, teeth, larynx, pharynx, vocal cords, nasal cavity and of course your
lungs, which push the air through the whole complex apparatus. Language thus relies
on some basic human biological capacities. But at the same time, as we have already
noted, the use of language presupposes both knowledge of the basic vocabulary and
grammatical forms of a language as well as a whole array of cultural knowledge about
how to use those forms in a given context. The way in which individuals use linguistic
forms in turn communicates assumptions about the nature of a given social
interaction. Language is thus more than merely biological, but also distinctively
cultural. It is a biocultural phenomenon.

Finally, your textbook notes an important conclusion maintained by many linguistic

and cultural anthropologists: all languages are equal in their ability to
communicate experience. They note that different languages will naturally develop
different vocabularies adapted to addressing experiences that may be of particular
importance within a given social group, at a particular time. However, such
differences do not indicate any hierarchical differences between different languages.
Rather, as your textbook notes, cultural and linguistic anthropologists maintain that
“[e]ach language, having the ability to change and adapt, is adequate for its speakers’
needs, given their particular way of life.”). Or to put this otherwise, “all languages
[are] equal in their open potential to communicate experiences” (Lavenda, Schultz,
and Dods 2015: 78). Cultural and linguistic anthropologists thus take a firm stance
against linguistic ethnocentrism, or the assumption that a particular language is
superior to another, and are frequently active in pointing out and combatting the forms
of inequality that can result from such an ethnocentric stance. We will return to this
point later in the unit, in our discussion of language and inequality.

Part III: The Design Features and Components of Language

As part of their study of language, linguistic and cultural anthropologists have been
interested in defining its difference from call systems used by non-human primates as
well as its formal features and structures. The design features of language indicate
how human language differs from animal call systems, while the components of
language reveal the formal structures of language that frequently constitute an
important area of study for linguistic anthropologists.

3.1 The Design Features of Language

Western philosophers from Plato to René Descartes have often asserted that the
capacity for speech and language is a crucial aspect of what distinguishes humans
from animals. Yet researchers have demonstrated that animals in fact have often quite
varied systems that they use in order to communicate. Nonetheless, anthropological
linguists such as Charles Hockett have discovered a number of features that
distinguish human language from animal call systems, including those of our closest
relatives, non-human primates. Of the sixteen design features emphasized by Hockett,
your textbook argues that six of these features are especially important for
understanding how human language functions: openness, displacement, prevarication,
arbitrariness, duality of patterning, and semanticity.
3.1.1 Openness

Openness, also sometimes referred to as productivity, is the first and most important
of the design features that distinguish human language from animal call systems. Your
textbook defines openness as “the ability to talk about the same experiences from
different perspectives, using different words and various grammatical construction”
(Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 79). To explain this design feature, the authors of
your textbook compare human language to non-human primate call systems. They
note that the call systems used by monkeys and apes are “closed.” Monkeys and apes
have several different calls that they use in specific situations, for instance, when the
animal has discovered food, when it is in danger or pain, when it wants to mark its
location, and so on. Unlike human language, however, each of these calls is only
appropriate to one specific situation and they cannot be combined in order to produce
a more complex message. By contrast, the signs or symbols of human language can be
combined and recombined together in an infinite variety of ways in order to produce
meaning.

3.1.2 Displacement

The second design feature that distinguishes human language from animal call
systems is displacement. Displacement, as your textbook explains, refers to the human
“ability to talk about absent or non-existent objects and past or future events as easily
as we discuss our immediate situations” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 79). As
your textbook notes, non-human primates have good memories and some species such
as chimpanzees seem to be able to plan social action in advance, for eg when hunting
for meat. However, they cannot use their call systems to refer to things that are not
immediately present in their surrounding environment. By contrast, human language
allows us to discuss events, emotional states, and objects that are in the past and the
future as easily as we discuss those that are immediately present. We can also use
language to discuss ideas, objects, and entities that don’t exist in reality, such as
unicorns.

3.1.3 Prevarication

One of the consequences of the openness of human languages is a third design feature,
prevarication. Your textbook defines this feature as the ability of individuals to use
language both “to lie” and to “form statements that are grammatically correct but
semantically nonsensical.” To illustrate this feature, your textbook refers to the
following phrase coined by the famous linguist, Noam Chomsky: “colorless green
ideas sleep furiously” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 79). As the authors of your
textbook point out, this sentence is grammatically correct. The sentence has a subject,
ideas; a verb, sleep; and adjectives and adverbs that characterize the subject of the
sentence and its verb. But on a semantic level, that is, on the level of meaning, the
sentence doesn’t seem to make much sense. Note the adjective colorless used to
characterize dreams would seem to cancel out the second adjective used to
characterize dreams, green, while the notion that dreams might have a colour only
makes sense on a poetic level.

3.1.4 Arbitrariness

A fourth design feature that distinguishes human language from the closed call
systems of animals is arbitrariness, which we can define, following your textbook, as
“the lack of a necessary or logical connection between . . . [a linguistic] symbol and
its function or meaning” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 79). The arbitrariness of
the signs that compose human language can best be understood by considering
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s concept of the linguistic sign. Saussure demonstrated
that the words or other sound images that humans use, such as “tree,” have no
necessary connection to the concepts or things in the world to which they are
supposed to refer. Why not call that leafy wooden thing an “arbre” (French for tree)?
Or an árbol (Spanish for tree)? All will work equally well within their own context
and none have any necessary connection to the object or concept to which they are
taken to refer.

3.1.5 Duality of patterning

As your textbook notes, arbitrariness can clearly be seen at work in the fifth design
feature of human language: the duality of patterning. Charles Hockett argued that
language is patterned on two levels: sound and meaning, or phonemes and
morphemes.

Phonemes are the “basic units of sound that are characteristic of a language and come
together to form words” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 79). To understand what
a phoneme is, recall that earlier I noted that language is a biocultural phenomenon. To
produce the sounds that spoken language consists of you have to move your mouth,
tongue, teeth, larynx, pharynx, vocal cords, nasal cavity and lungs. The resulting
sounds are called phones. Each language only uses some of the sounds that humans
are capable of making. The phonetic inventory of a language is also then further
organized into a system of phonemes, which are the basic units of sound that can
produce contrasts between words within a language. By themselves, phonemes have
no referential or lexical meaning, but they come together to form and distinguish
words from one another.

Morphemes, by contrast, refer to the ways in which human languages are patterned
on the level of meaning. Your textbook defines morphemes as “the smallest meaning-
bearing units in any language” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 79). Note that
morphemes are not equivalent to words. Some words in the English language
constitute a morpheme, such as “boy,” but others carry meaning without constituting a
word on their own. Thus, in English, “s” is a morpheme, even though we would not
consider it a word. This is because “s” has meaning: it signals the plural. Adding “s”
to the morpheme boy thus radically changes the meaning of that initial morpheme:
instead of referring to “one boy,” we now mean to indicate “more than one boy.”

Another way to put this is, that as the smallest meaningful units of a language,
breaking morphemes apart will only give you sounds while adding morphemes
together will produce new meanings. Boy constitutes one morpheme because breaking
it apart into smaller units would result only in sound, such as “b,” which has no
meaning on its own. But “s” does constitute a morpheme, because it signals the plural
in the English language, and adding it to other words or morphemes changes their
meaning. With the addition of “s,” “boy” (one boy) becomes “boys” (more than one
boy), while “cat” (one cat), becomes “cats” (more than one cat). The word
“bookworm” in English also demonstrates the distinction between words and
morphemes. While this is considered one word in English, it is in fact constituted by
two separate morphemes: “book” and “worm.” “Book” and “worm,” in turn,
constitute a single morpheme each because they cannot be broken down into further
meaningful units.

3.1.6 Semanticity

The final design feature that your textbook discusses is semanticity, which it defines
as “language means things” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 79). Even though the
connection between a linguistic sign and the object or concept to which it refers is
arbitrary, people are able to use language to refer to and make sense of objects and
processes in the world and to communicate this to one another in ways that they can
agree upon. The question of how language is able to mean things is one that we began
to address in our discussion of the connection between language, cultural knowledge,
and contextual use, and that we will explore further in the next two sections of this
unit.

3.2 The Components of Language

In addition to the design features that distinguish human languages from animal call
systems, linguists and linguistic anthropologists interested in studying how language
works typically identify five main components that make up grammar, or the set of
structural rules governing the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in a
language. These five components also correspond to specific emphases within the
formal study of language and include phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and
pragmatics. Linguistic anthropologists recognize the importance of grammar to how
language works and comes to mean things. But most also emphasize the need to go
beyond a formal analysis of grammatical rules. Specifically, as I have already
suggested and as I will explain further in this section and the one that follows,
linguistic anthropologists now typically emphasize the importance of studying
language use in context in order to understand how it comes to mean things and how it
draws on, reproduces, and challenges cultural beliefs, social identities, and broader
systems of power and inequality.

3.2.1 Phonology

Phonology can be considered the first component of language. As a method of

analysis, it refers to “the study of the sounds of language” (Lavenda, Schultz, and
Dods 2015: 82). This component brings us back to the discussion of phones and
phonemes in the previous section. As I explained earlier, phonemes are the minimal
units of sound that produce contrasts between words within a language. They have
both a biological basis in that they are composed of phones – the sounds that the
human organism is capable of making – and a cultural basis – in that no language uses
all of the sounds that humans can make and no two languages use exactly the same
set.

3.2.2 Morphology

Morphology refers to “the study of the minimal units of meaning (morphemes) in a

language” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 83). Recall that morphemes refer to the
smallest meaningful units of a language and are not identical to words. “Cat” is
considered a morpheme because it cannot be broken down into smaller units that still
contain meaning, but “s” is also considered a morpheme because in English it refers to
the plural. Distinguishing between words and morphemes is important for the
comparative study of language. Utterances in some indigenous languages, for
example, cannot be broken down into what English speakers would recognize as
words. To illustrate this argument, your textbook provides the example of the phrase
“nikookitepeena” in the indigenous language Shawnee, which translates into English
as I dipped his head in the water. This Shawnee utterance is composed of parts, but
these don’t possess the characteristics we attribute to words in English. Like “s” in
English, the parts of this utterance cannot stand on their own. The concept of
morphemes, or the minimal units of meaning in a language, allows linguists and
linguistic anthropologist to compare the morphology of languages.

3.2.3 Syntax
The third component of language is syntax, which your textbook defines as “the study
of sentence structure” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 83). To put this otherwise,
syntax refers to the set of rules that govern the order of words in ways that express
their relationship to one another. For instance, these rules determine whether a subject
comes before a verb or whether an object follows a verb. In English, the subject of a
sentence precedes the verb and the object follows it. All of the words in each of the
following two sentences, “The dog chased the cat” and “The cat chased the dog” are
the same, but the meaning of these sentences is different because of the differences in
word order. This example demonstrates that meaning depends on the overall structure
of the sentence in which the word is found and not on the word itself.

But the rules of syntax alone cannot always eliminate all ambiguity in a sentence.
Thus, in the example provided in your textbook - “The father of the girl and the boy
fell into the lake” - all of the basic requirements that we have seen previously have
been fulfilled. There is a subject to the sentence, which precedes the verb, which is
followed by an object. Yet the syntactical construction of the sentence makes it
unclear how many people fell into the lake: just the father, or the father and the boy.
As your textbook notes, each interpretation depends on how the person reading or
listening to this sentence groups these words together.

3.2.4 Semantics

The fourth component of language is semantics, which your textbook defines as “the
study of meaning” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 83). As your textbook notes,
the study of meaning can be a particularly tricky area. When we consider meaning, we
may be interested in what a word in a sentence means, what the sentence as a whole
means, or what I mean when I utter the sentence, which could be different from what
someone else would mean if s/he uttered the sentence. In the 1960s, the famous
linguist Noam Chomsky sparked interest in the formal study of semantics when he
argued that grammars represented all of a speaker’s linguistic knowledge as sets of
abstract rules. Taking this approach, formal semantics defined words in terms
of denotation, or “the formal meaning(s) of a word, as given in a dictionary”
(Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 83).

But words also have connotations, “additional meanings of a word that derive from
the typical contexts in which they are used and rely on personal and cultural
associations” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 83). In other cases, specific words
may be used as metaphors, or “a form of thought and language that asserts a
meaningful link between two expressions from different semantic domains” (Lavenda,
Schultz, and Dods 2015: 84). Finally, as your textbook notes, the meaning of a word
or a sentence may also depend on who utters it and the context in which it is uttered.
Whereas formal semantics attempted to eliminate these sorts of ambiguity, most
linguistic anthropologists today emphasize the role that context and previous
knowledge of signs and their uses play in how users of a language determine the
meaning that any given word, phrase, sentence, or other utterance might have in any
specific context of use. Pragmatics and ethnopragmatics are the fields that devote
most attention to the ways in which context influences language use and meaning.
Before introducing these fields of study, however, to better understand how context,
connotation, and metaphor can influence meaning, follow the instructions for the
following student exercise.

Exercise 1: Aesop Rock and Language in Context

To better understand how previous familiarity with the sign,

metaphor, connotation, and, most importantly, the context of use
play a role in how language comes to mean things for users of
that language, take a moment to watch an example of language in
use provided by the hip hop artist, Mathias Bavitz, better known
by his stage name as Aesop Rock. As you’re watching the music
video of his song, “Pigs,” keep in mind the following questions:

1. What or who do “pigs” refer to in Aesop Rock’s song?

2. How do you know? What kinds of text-internal or text-
external information do you have to draw on to figure this
out?
3. What might the way in which Aesop Rock uses the term
“pigs” in his song imply about who he is, his identity, or
his political leanings? What might it presuppose or assume
about his audience?

The music video is available on YouTube at the following link (if

the link is broken, please search YouTube for “Aesop Rock
Pigs”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc9qJS-GG-c. To
help you answer these questions, also take a look at the lyrics to
the song. The lyrics to his song can be found at the following site
(if the link is broken, please search Google for “Aesop Rock Pigs
lyrics”): http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/aesoprock/pigs.html.

3.2.5 Pragmatics
The emphasis on the role that context plays in the meanings that language acquires
leads us to the fifth component of language: pragmatics, or “the study of language in
the context of its use” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 84). Linguistic
anthropologist Michael Silverstein is widely recognized as one of the first scholars to
insist that in order to understand the referential meaning of expressions in language
we have to go beyond the boundaries of a sentence and place the expressions in wider
contexts of use. This emphasis on context, however, raises a further question: which
contexts matter for understanding the meaning of a word, phrase, sentence, or other
utterance? Your textbook names two types of contexts that can matter to our
understanding of the meaning of utterances: linguistic context and non-linguistic
context.

To examine the meaning of a word or other utterance in its linguistic context requires
us to pay attention to how surrounding words, expressions, and sentences affect the
meaning of a given expression. Thus, in Aesop Rock’s song “Pigs,” the word “double-
breasted” used to describe “pigs” makes clear that the type of pigs to which the song
refers are not the animals who live on farms. Rather, in eliciting images of double-
breasted suits, this phrase indicates that Aesop Rock is using pigs here as a metaphor
(see the definition of metaphor above) for capitalists or businessmen and
businesswomen. In this case, our ability to understand what the singer is referring to
by “pigs” depends both on our previous familiarity with the sign, or, in other words,
cultural knowledge that the word pigs is often used in the English language to refer to
capitalists, and is then further cemented through references in the surrounding text-
internal or linguistic context that reinforce this association.

To examine an utterance in its non-linguistic requires us to pay attention to “objects

and activities that are present in the situation of speech at the time that we are
speaking,” as your textbook suggests (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 84). This
often involves paying attention to the co-presence of images or other utterances that
we might not typically think of as being part of a single text. Thus, in the example of
Aesop Rock’s song, “Pigs,” the references in the image that is drawn throughout the
video to cities that are world capitals for business such as New York further reinforce
our understanding of the meaning of the word “pigs” in the song and of the song as a
critique of capitalist exploitation of workers.

Finally, to return to the points about language, culture, and context with which we
began this unit’s section on language, this reliance on contextual and previous
knowledge of the sign in order to make sense of an utterance reminds us once again of
two crucial points. First, that communication relies on cultural knowledge about
linguistic forms and their appropriate contexts of use such that, to understand Aesop
Rock’s song, we need to know that pigs can sometimes act as a metaphor for
capitalists in the English language. Second, the way in which individuals use
linguistic communicates assumptions about and shapes social interaction and
identities. So in the case of Aesop Rock’s “Pigs,” his criticism of capitalist pigs
implies something about his political leanings. Listeners of the song who pay attention
to the lyrics or to their relationship to the image drawn in the music video will likely
conclude that he is a leftist.

Part IV: Language, Culture, and Inequality

The emphasis in pragmatics on the study of language in its context of use already
begins to point to how language both depends on and shapes cultural knowledge,
social identities, and social interactions. In Part IV of this unit, we will expand on the
question of the relationship between language, culture, and systems of power and
inequality.

4.1 The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Historically speaking, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also known as the principle of

linguistic relativity, represents one of the first attempts on the part of anthropologists
to theorize how language related to culture or, to put this otherwise, how a culture’s
language might shape the ways in which its speakers interpreted the world and their
experience of it. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be understood as a theory that
language, and, more specifically, linguistic forms such as grammar and vocabulary,
shape the way in which a specific language’s users see the world. The Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis has been much debated by linguists and linguistic anthropologists over the
years. Ultimately, most conclude a language’s grammar and vocabulary do not
determine how its users interpret the world. However, the core insight of this
hypothesis, that language is closely linked to culture and may shape social identities,
social interactions, and experience, has been retained, even if most linguistic
anthropologists would now use other theories to explain these links.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is named after two influential linguistic anthropologists:

Edward Sapir, who studied with Franz Boas at Columbia University and conducted
influential studies of several indigenous languages in North America; and his student,
Benjamin Whorf. Whorf is the person most directly responsible for the hypothesis,
which came from his own varied work history. He worked for some time as an
insurance inspector, after which he went on to study linguistics under Edward Sapir
and to carry out work on the Nahuatl and Hopi languages. Interestingly, Whorf’s
background working for a fire insurance company played a crucial role in his
development of the theory of linguistic relativity.
Drawing on this work, Whorf noted that one of the greatest fire hazards were oil
barrels that had been emptied of their oil and yet still retained oil fumes. Yet the
English language can only distinguish between “empty” and “full.” It has no
expression to describe an in-between state such as that of an oil barrel that has been
emptied of its contents but still retains hazardous fumes. Whorf hypothesized that, as
a result, it would be easy for a worker to think that these so-called “empty” barrels
were safer than the “full” ones. In a day when smoking inside workplaces was
allowed, this could thus lead the worker to make the error of smoking beside a vapour
filled but otherwise empty barrel, which in turn could lead to an explosion. This
example, then, led Whorf to wonder if the English vocabulary affected the worker’s
ability to distinguish safety from hazard. The explosion that resulted from a worker
smoking near so-called “empty” oil barrels that still had fumes would, of course, be
the result of those fumes. But, he reasoned, the English language and its inability to
express a state somewhere between empty and full in the specific case of oil barrels
still containing fumes would also be at fault.

In addition to drawing on his experience as a fire inspector, Whorf also developed the
theory of linguistic relativity through his work with the Hopi language and its
grammatical constructions indicating time. Whorf noted that English and other related
languages have three major verb tenses that distinguish between the past, present, and
future. The Hopi language, by contrast, does not have these verb tenses. Rather, it
distinguishes only between two modes of thought. There are “objective” things, or
things that exist in the present, and “subjective” things, things that can be thought and
are therefore in a state of becoming. Whorf hypothesized that these grammatical
distinctions might lead to entirely different concepts, beliefs, and behaviours about
time between speakers of these different languages. Perhaps these grammatical
distinctions, Whorf and later anthropologists hypothesized, might contribute to an
emphasis on linear and quantifiable time among English speakers versus a more
cyclical notion of time among the Hopi.

As I mentioned earlier, contemporary anthropologists have largely rejected the

argument that the grammatical forms and vocabulary of a language the argument that
the grammar and vocabulary of a language shapes its speakers’ thought processes and
world views. Most contentious is the so-called “strong” version of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis, also known as linguistic determinism. This version of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis takes a deterministic approach to the relationship between the grammar
and vocabulary of languages and cultural beliefs and patterns. For example, according
to the deterministic view, if a language’s grammar classifies nouns and/or pronouns in
gender categories, then speakers of that language would be forced to think of males
and females as radically different kinds of beings. By contrast, a language that doesn’t
make grammatical distinctions on the basis of gender would presumably train its
speakers to think of males and females as the same. Finally, if this strong version of
the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or linguistic determinism is correct, then changing
pronouns should also have a direct result on behaviour and concepts. For instance,
replacing he or she in English with a new gender-neutral, third-person singular
pronoun would enable speakers of that language to acknowledge the existence of
more than two genders and/or to begin treating men and women as equals.

Your textbook raises several objections to such a deterministic view. First, the authors
note that there are existing languages, such as Fulfulde, which is spoken in West
Africa, in which one third-person pronoun is used to indicate both males and females,
yet gender inequality persists among the speakers of this language. The fact that we
can translate between different languages provides a second objection to a strong
version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. If language determined thought in an absolute
way it would be impossible to translate between two or more languages. Yet humans
do often translate ideas from one language to another and can learn other languages.
The textbook’s third objection to a strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
resonates with earlier arguments we have seen that insist on the fact that there is
always diversity within any given cultural group. Far from directly determining one
specific way of thinking about and viewing the world, they argue, every language
provides its speakers with multiple and varied ways of describing the world and
human experience. The existence of bilingual individuals including children provides
a final argument against a strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. As your
textbook notes, individuals who are bilingual do not grow up struggling to reconcile
radically different world views. This in turn refutes a deterministic notion that the
grammatical forms and vocabulary of a language directly determines a speaker’s
world view in a way that would divorce their experience from that of speakers of a
different language.

These objections to linguistic determinism or a strong version of the Sapir-Whorf

hypothesis have led to the development of a “weak” version of this theory. Some
researchers argue that while the grammar and vocabulary of a language don’t
determine thought and behaviour it may influence them. In this view, the existence of
a binary gender pronoun system wouldn’t entirely determine values and ideas about
gender, but it might contribute to making such a binary system seem natural.
Nonetheless, other researchers have raised objections even to this weak version of the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. They note that many speakers of English have actively
promoted gender equality and, in fact, question the idea of two genders in the first
place, even though English has historically been dominated by a binary gender
pronoun system.

4.2 Ethnopragmatics
These arguments over the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis have led to the development of
other theories that attempt to acknowledge how language both reflects cultural
knowledge and shapes social interactions, identities, and systems of power and
inequality without reducing such dynamics to a deterministic relationship between the
grammatical forms and vocabulary of a language and individuals’ understandings of
the world. One of the most common approaches to the study of language in use and its
relationship to culture is what is known as ethnopragmatics. Your textbook defines
as “the study of language use in a specific culture, grounded in an ethnographic
approach, with close attention to the relationships among language, communication,
and social interaction” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 85). As its name already
suggests, ethnopragmatics builds on the insights developed through pragmatics’
emphasis on the importance of context to how language produces meaning.
Ethnopragmatics takes into account both the formal dimensions of language
(phonemes, morphemes, syntax) and the influence of context on how language
produces meaning and shapes social interactions. Like all cultural anthropologists,
linguistic anthropologists who take an ethnopragmatic approach to the study of
language also rely on fieldwork. They are interested in examining the everyday ways
in which social interactions are both constitutive of and shaped by language use.

Among other issues, linguistic anthropologists who take an ethnopragmatic view of

language are often interested in how heteroglossia and genres shape the social
meanings communicated by language in use. Linguistic anthropologists typically
define genres as “the historically specific conventions and ideals according to which
authors . . . compose discourse and audiences receive it” (Hanks 1987: 681; see also
Briggs and Bauman 1992). This concept of genre includes but is not limited to more
standard definitions of this term, such as classifications of novels or films as romance
or science fiction. Rather, genre can also refer to the difference between the sorts of
communicative habits and expectations we put into play when we’re having a
conversation with our family at the dinner table versus those required when
performing a professional role as a lawyer or a judge in a court of law. Each of these
contexts are governed by social expectations about the types of utterances appropriate
to that context and the social role of the person speaking. As such, specific spheres of
activity and even types of individuals are often associated with particular genres.
Every language and every society makes use of multiple different
genres. Heteroglossia refers to the co-existence of different genres and styles of
speech.

Knowing when and how to use the genre deemed appropriate to a specific context can
have important consequences for an individual’s social status. For instance, being able
to distinguish between the genre or communicative habits appropriate to use while
texting a friend and those appropriate for writing an essay for university could have a
very important impact on your final grades, whether or not you graduate from
university, and what kind of job you get when you graduate. An emphasis on more
flexible concepts such as genres and heteroglossia allow linguistic anthropologists to
analyze the way in which language draws on cultural knowledge and can influence
social interactions while avoiding linguistic determinism.

4.3 Language and Inequality

So far we have discussed the role that context plays in language use and its relation to
social interaction and culture. We have noted, for instance, how every individual
masters a range of genres and other linguistic forms suitable to different contexts, all
of which presuppose and communicate assumptions about the type of social
interaction and the social roles of those involved in any particular event of
communication. This emphasis on context already begins to suggest ways in which
language can be tied to power. An individual who enters a court of law, for instance,
but because of his or her education and class background is unable to master the
speech genres and styles associated with that context, will likely find him or herself at
a relative disadvantage. Even the relatively simple question of using “tu” versus
“vous” in French, as we have seen, can also signal a whole range of assumptions
about the relative social statuses and relationships of the individuals speaking to one
another.

In this final section of this unit, we will expand on this question of how language
relates to larger questions of power and inequality by discussing contemporary
linguistic research on the relationship between gender, colonization, and race and
language use.

4.3.1 Language and Gender

In recent years, a number of researchers have conducted studies that demonstrate

differences in the linguistic habits of different culturally identified genders.
Sociolinguist Deborah Tannen, for instance, has produced a number of popular and
compelling studies demonstrating differences in the typical styles of speech used by
men and women in North America.

In her 1995 book on gendered uses of language in the workplace, Talking from 9 to 5,
for instance, Tannen argues that men use language as a competitive weapon and
attempt to avoid being placed in a subordinate or “one down” position. Women, by
contrast, often use language to establish intimacy and the appearance of equality, even
when they are in positions of authority. She explains that while each of this linguistic
styles are perfectly valid, when their forms and conventions are not understood or
mastered by both parties in an exchange they can sometimes lead to conflicts and
misunderstandings.

For example, Tannen describes how gendered differences in linguistic style led to a
conflict that arose between “Amy,” a woman manager in a workplace, and “Donald,”
an employee who was her subordinate. At some point in their work relationship, Amy
found herself facing the daunting task of informing Donald that a report he had
produced was inadequate. To handle this task, Amy began the conversation by
praising Donald for what had been done well in the report, then she continued on to
inform him about what was lacking in it and needed to be redone. But when Donald
submitted the revised report, she was shocked to find that he had made only
superficial changes and none of the revisions that she deemed necessary. When Amy
called Donald in to discuss this problem, he was furious, insisting that Amy had
previously told him that the report was fine.

Tannen argues that this conflict was produced by gendered differences in how Amy
and Donald use language. For Amy, beginning with praise and following with
criticism was a way of taking Donald’s feelings into consideration, making sure that
he knew that her negative assessment of the report didn’t mean that she felt he was
incapable. In other words, she downplayed her authoritative status and negative
assessment of his work in the interest of establishing equality. Donald, however, heard
the praise as the core of the message Amy was attempting to deliver to him and then
felt deceived when he was informed that he had misinterpreted the conversation.

Tannen’s work has been criticized by other sociolinguists, such as Alice Freed (1992),
who argue that she too often interprets such conflicts as mere gendered difference
rather than pointing out how they also reflect and reproduce inequalities between the
genders. Her work has additionally been criticized for overgeneralizing differences
between men and women and not paying sufficient attention to the ways in which
class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other dimensions intersect with gender to
affect how individuals use language. Perhaps the essential point to take from this
debate is that many researchers believe that there are often patterned differences to
how individuals within the same society use language, and that these differences can
lead not only to conflicts but also to broader social inequalities and stratification.

4.3.2 Pidgin and Creole Languages

The relationship between what linguists refer to as pidgin and creole languages and
colonizers provides an even more compelling example of how language can reflect
and contribute to systematic forms of discrimination and inequality. Recall your
textbook’s insistence that every language is adequate to its speakers’ needs, given
their particular way of life. Unfortunately, this egalitarian view of language adopted
by linguists is not always at work in all social situations. Indeed, as your textbook
points out, the interactions between different social groups is often characterized
by linguistic ethnocentrism, in which one language is taken as the standard against
which all others are measured and often deemed inadequate. We have already seen an
example of this sort of linguistic ethnocentrism at work in the relationship between
colonizers and indigenous peoples in North America. As your textbook points out,
administrators who worked in the residential school system in Canada deemed the
languages of First Nations people inferior and therefore forcefully prevented children
from speaking their original languages. This led to significant cultural loss and, in
many cases, to growing gaps between children and their parents who found
themselves without a language in common.

Similar forms of linguistic ethnocentrism often accompany the development of pidgin

and creole languages. Your textbook defines pidgin as “a fairly simple language with
no native speakers that develops in a single generation between members of
communities that possess distinct native languages.” Creole is a further development
of pidgin and can be defined as “a complex language with native speakers that has
developed over one or more past generations from two or more distinct languages”
(Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 88). Pidgin often develops in a single generation
when two different linguistic groups come into contact. In many cases, the vocabulary
of the pidgin language will be taken from the dominant group. But the syntax and
phonology may be similar to that of the language of the subordinated group, making it
easier for that group to acquire the language.

When speakers pass a pidgin language on to a next generation, linguists usually refer
to the language of the new generations as creole. Examples of creole languages can be
seen in Jamaican patois or creole English and Haitian Creole, which developed out of
the encounter between African slaves from diverse linguistic groups and, in the case
of Jamaica, English-speaking colonizers, and in the case of Haiti, French-speaking
colonizers. Speakers of pidgin and creole languages are often subjected to inequality
in a variety of ways. Not only do these languages often emerge in situations of
colonization in which one group is distinctly subordinated to another, but they are also
frequently viewed as defective and inferior. Linguists, however, defend pidgin and
creole as languages that have their own sets of rules and are adequate to their
speakers’ needs.

4.3.3 African American English

The controversies surrounding African American English (AAE) provide a final

salient example of how language can be linked to broader systems of inequality. As
your textbook recounts, studies by some psychologists conducted in the 1960s
concluded that African American children living in urban areas of the northern United
States suffered from an inadequate understanding and mastery over the English
language. These psychologists argued that African American children had a limited
vocabulary and inadequate understandings of English grammar. As a result, the
psychologists concluded, African American children would not perform as well as
Euro-American children in school. As your textbook puts it, these psychologists
concluded that the language of African American children was inadequate for
effective communication.

But a group of sociolinguists, including William Labov, found these conclusions

doubtful and so decided to conduct their own research with African American
children. They began by arguing that the context in which the psychologists had
conducted their research had itself affected the results. Specifically, the earlier group
of psychologists, themselves all Euro-American, had interviewed African American
children in classroom settings. Labov argued that the children’s minimal responses to
the questions posed by Euro-American researchers in this setting did not reflect the
children’s impoverished linguistic resources. Rather, he suggested that it was a
defensive reaction against a setting that for them was part of a broader racist context.
Indeed, when Labov and his researchers interviewed African American children in
settings in which they were more at ease – in their homes and on the streets in their
own neighbourhoods – they recorded enormous amounts of speech. Labov and his
team further demonstrated that rather than being deficient in grammar and vocabulary,
the children were speaking a variety of English, namely, African American English or
AAE, that had its own complex set of rules that were distinct from those that govern
Standard English. Labov and its researchers demonstrated that AAE was not
“defective” but rather simply different from Standard English.

African American English has continued to be at the heart of controversies over

language in recent decades. In 1996, for instance, the Oakland California school board
passed a controversial recognizing the legitimacy of AAE. At the core of this decision
and the debate that followed was the question of how best to educate children who
might be learning AAE at home. For many, the goal of recognizing AAE was to
encourage educators to become trained in it so that they would be better equipped to
help children make the bridge between AAE and Standard English. In sum,
controversies such as these demonstrate how social views that consider some
languages or variants of languages superior to others both reflect and contribute to
broader systems of power, perpetuating inequality along the lines of gender, ethnicity,
and race.

Review Questions
1) Define the anthropological concepts of enculturation and socialization. Why are
anthropologists interested in these concepts?

2) Define language. According to your textbook, what are some of the reasons for
which cultural anthropologists are interested in the study of language?

3) What are the design features of language? How do these features separate human
language from communication systems used by other animals?

4) Explain the five different components of language identified by your textbook and
in the unit notes. What are some of the key differences between a pragmatic or an
ethnopragmatic approach to the study of language and an analysis of language that
focuses solely on grammar?

5) What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? On what grounds have linguistic

anthropologists questioned the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

6) What are some of the ways in which language reflect and sometimes perpetuates
inequality?

References
Briggs, Charles L, and Richard Bauman. 1992. “Genre, Intertextuality, and Social
Power,” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2, no. 2 (1992): 131–72.

Freed, Alice. 1992. “We Understand Perfectly: A Critique of Tannen’s View of

Cross-Sex Communication.” In Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second Berkeley
Language and Women Conference. Eds. Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz, and Birch
Moonwomon. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group.

Hanks, William F. 1987. “Discourse Genres in a Theory of Practice,” American

Ethnologist 14.4: 668–692.

Lavenda, Robert H., Emily A. Schultz, and Roberta Robin Dods. 2015. Cultural
Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition, 3rd Canadian Edition.
Oxford: Oxford UP.

Paoletti, Jo Barraclough. 2012. Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in
America. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Tannen, Deborah. 1995. Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work. New York:
Harper Collins.
Thomson, David S. 2003. Thomson David S Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis.pdf In Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology,
11th Edition. Boston: Pearson.