Exam 4: Language

Linguistic anthropologists have discovered that the languages spoken in Europe-such as Latin, English, German, and Greek-are derived from an earlier language, which is called ________.

What does the term language continuum refer to?

The United States is home to people speaking nearly 400 languages, including ________ distinct Native American languages.

To investigate the focal vocabulary of a language in a particular community, a linguistic anthropologist would likely:

Don Kulick's study of gendered meanings of the word no demonstrates that language in the U.S. cultural context objectifies women. How can the power of culture to shape the meaning of language have implications for men as well?

What did anthropologist Laura Bohannan discover in her attempt to translate a classic text from English literature into Tiv?

While analyzing what is spoken and written is very important for linguistic anthropologists, the way that people convey messages through gestures, facial expressions, and postures is equally crucial in understanding human communication. Discuss how anthropologists can decipher the meaning of communication through examining paralanguage and what is indicated through body language. Illustrate how body language is not universal but rather depends on cultural context, and provide two examples to show how emotional information is communicated.

Which term is used to describe the extinction of languages that have very few speakers?

What did Rickford and Rickford conclude in their study of "Spoken Soul"?

Why would a study of the "N-word" most likely be done using a sociolinguistic approach?

When anthropologists emphasize how culture, society, and a person's social position shape language, what kind of anthropology are they describing?

Which of these provides archaeological evidence for the origins of human language?

What term do anthropologists use to refer to small units of sounds that make a critical difference in meaning within a language?

Deborah Tannen's research into the ways that boys and girls speak suggests that:

What would linguistic anthropologists label new words that have emerged during the digital age such as mouse, modem, download, and tweet?

Chinese, spoken by about 1.3 million people, is the most common native language in the world. At the same time, many Chinese students are sent abroad to English-speaking countries to learn English. Why do these students learn English at all?

Consider a used car salesperson who must be highly skilled at using words to persuade people to spend money. This illustrates that linguistic skills as a form of cultural capital:

The term dialect is a nonstandard variation of a language that:

What does Benjamin Whorf 's research with the Hopi, a Native American group in the southwestern United States, suggest about language?

How is the "border" between languages established?