Language, Thought and

Culture
March 7, 2005
 What do we know?
• Voice No. 1
• Voice No. 2
• Voice No. 3
• Voice No. 4
• Voice No. 5
• Voice No. 6
 How do we know?
• Code (structure)

• Performance
 Linguistics
• Descriptive Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Historical Linguistics
Linguistics
 Descriptive Linguistics
(Grammar)
• Phonology (Sound)
– Phoneme
• Morphology (unit of meaning)
– Morpheme
• Lexicon
– Dictionary, vocabulary
• Syntax
– Structure, word order
 Descriptive Linguistics
• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• Furious idealess color greenly sleeps.

– Syntax
– Morphology
• Semantics
– System for conveying meaning.
Historical Linguistics
 Historical Linguistics
• English
– Germanic (Angles, Saxons, Jutes)
– Celtic
– Latin, Greek
– Old Norse
– French
 Historical Linguistics
• American English
– American Indian languages
– African languages
– Spanish
• Barbeque (Guiana)
 Sociolinguistics
• Performance
• Conveys different meanings using the
same code:
– Class
– Race
– Gender
– Politics
 Language, Thought and
Culture
• Language structures thought and
knowledge
• Epistemology
• Does language:
– Describe reality?
Or…
– Create reality?
 Language, Thought and
Culture
• Structuralism • Noam Chomsky
– Basic structures in
the human brain
– Limited number of
structures
– Infinite number of
possibilities
• “Generative
Transformational
Grammar”
 Language, Thought and
Culture
• Evidence • Noam Chomsky
– People can learn
other languages
– Children learn new
languages easier
than adults
– Words can be
translated between
languages
 Language, Thought and
Culture
• Sapir-Worf • Edward Sapir
Hypothesis:
Languages produce
different ways of
thinking that affect
perception of reality
 Language, Thought and
Culture
• Evidence: • Edward Sapir
– Gender
• Palaung
• English
• Spanish, French
– Time
• English
• Hopi
Dude, what does this have to
do with ink?
What do these tell us?
What about these?
 Where does meaning come
from?
• All communication is symbolic

• Meaning of symbols is arbitrary

• Because language is generative, we

can make new meanings . . . Fo shizzle.
 Language, Thought and
Culture
• Communication requires that we
understand the code and the
performance.
 Language, Thought and
Culture
• People perform the code in creative
ways to make a statement.