Exam 4: Language

According to your textbook, a particular language variation is associated with wealth, success, education, and power. These language variations with elevated status are known as prestige languages. Using the concepts of cultural capital and prestige language, discuss two examples of how nonstandard variations of languages can be linked to particular positions with a culture. How are linguistic standards established or reinforced? Explain why it has been said that a dialect is a language without a navy or an army.

Worldwide, which language is most commonly spoken by native speakers today?

Why do linguistic anthropologists study the patterns and important sounds spoken by a group of people?

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

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.

Explain some of the theories used in describing the relationship between language and thought. What do these theories suggest about the human brain and our use of language? How does Laura Bohannan's example of trying to translate Shakespeare for the Tiv tell us about how language informs our worldview, or vice versa?

Imagine you are on a trip throughout South America. You speak Spanish pretty well, but have a hard time understanding Portuguese. However, as you reach the border of Colombia and begin to cross into Brazil, you realize that you are still able to understand many of the native speakers better than you expected. What linguistic phenomenon are you experiencing?

Chantek the orangutan is one of many nonhuman primates that scholars have used to draw conclusions about the origins of human language because they seem to be able to learn how to do what?

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

In 2009, newly elected president Barack Obama visited a famous eatery in Washington, DC, and, after paying his tab, was asked by the cashier if he wanted his change. The president's reply was, "Nah, we straight." Which of the following was the president doing?

What term do anthropologists use to refer to small units of sounds that can make a critical difference in meaning within a language, but do not have any meaning on their own?

What do anthropologists call a nonstandard variation of a language?

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:

While anthropologists have gone to lengths to show that languages are linguistically equal, languages often exist in a hierarchical manner within a given place. Compare how language and power intersect by discussing how nonprestige languages may be marginalized. How are boundaries between language policed, and what happens when speakers "code switch" in different cultural contexts?

What do linguistic anthropologists think about how women and men use language in different ways? What are the two models that explain why language is used in gendered ways, and what are examples that illustrate their hypotheses? Which one of these two models is more compelling to you, and why?

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 ________.

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

A historical linguist would be most likely to study:

What has the effort to preserve the Native American Lakota language, spoken by about 50,000 people in the United States, led to?

Gender differences in communication often give rise to stereotypes. A common stereotype in the United States suggests that women never seem to stop talking. What research finding about men seems to contradict this stereotype?