Regional patterns influence the way all Americans speak.
Some dialects, like that of Midwestern Americans, have few stigmatized linguistic variants.
Language
Language is our primary means of communication.
Language (like culture in general) is transmitted through learning.
Language is based on arbitrary, learned associations between words and the things they stand for.
Only humans have the linguistic capacity to discuss the past and future, share their experiences with others, and benefit from their experiences.
Anthropologists study language in its social and cultural context.
Linguistic anthropologists also explore the role of language in colonization and globalization.
Nonhuman Primate Communication
Call Systems
Only humans can speak. No other animal has anything approaching the complexity of language.
The natural communication systems of other primates (monkeys and apes) are call systems.
These vocal systems consist of a limited number of sounds—calls—that are produced only when particular environmental stimuli are encountered.
Although wild primates use call systems, the vocal tract of apes is not suitable for speech.
Sign Language
More recent experiments have shown that apes can learn to use, if not speak, true language. Several apes have learned to converse with people through means other than speech, such as American Sign Language.
Cultural transmission of a communication system through learning is a fundamental attribute of language. Nonhuman primates trained in the laboratory have been shown to have the capacity for cultural transmission.
Apes also seem to share the linguistic ability of productivity, which refers to speakers' capacity to use the rules of their language to create new expressions that are comprehensible to other native speakers.
Apes also have demonstrated the capacity for linguistic displacement. Absent in call systems, this is a key ingredient in language. Displacement means that humans can talk about things that are not present.
The Origin of Language
Although the capacity to remember and combine linguistic symbols may be latent in the apes, human evolution was needed for this seed to flower into language.
A mutated gene known as FOXP2 helps explain why humans speak and chimps don't.
This mutation was identified in individuals with severe deficit in speech. The same variant of this gene that is found in chimps causes this disorder.
Comparing chimp and human genomes, it appears that the speech-friendly form of FOXP2 took hold in humans around 150,000 years ago, thus conferring selective advantages that allowed those who had it to spread at the expense of those who did not.
Nonverbal Communication
Kinesics is the study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and expressions.
Although our gestures, expressions, and body stance have roots in our primate heritage, and can be seen in the monkeys and the apes, they have not escaped the influence of culture.
The prevalence and meaning of body movements, expressions, and gestures vary cross-culturally.
Body movements communicate social differences.
Language, which is highly symbolic, is the domain of communication in which culture plays the strongest role.
The Structure of Language
The scientific study of a spoken language (descriptive linguistics) involves several interrelated areas of analysis: phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax.
Phonology, the study of speech sounds, considers which sounds are present and significant in a given language.
Morphology studies the forms in which sounds combine to form morphemes—words and their meaningful parts.
A language's lexicon is a dictionary containing all of its morphemes and their meanings.
Syntax refers to the arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences.
Speech Sounds
A phoneme is a sound contrast that makes a difference that differentiates meaning.
The number of phonemes varies from language to language, as well as between dialects of a given language.
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds in general, what people actually say in various languages.
Phonemics studies only the significant sound contrasts (phonemes) of a given language.
Language, Thought, and Culture
Chomsky argues that the human brain contains a limited set of rules (universal grammar) for organizing language, so that all languages have a common structural basis.
Chomsky's argument that all humans have similar linguistic abilities and thought processes is supported by the facts that people can learn foreign languages and that words and ideas translate from one language to another.
The fact that all creole languages share certain features further supports the idea that these languages are based on universal grammar.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Sapir and Whorf argued that the grammatical categories of particular languages lead their speakers to think about things in different ways.
Language may shape thought, but it does not tightly restrict it, because cultural changes can produce changes in thought and in language.
Focal Vocabulary
Lexicon (or vocabulary) influences perception.
Focal vocabulary is a specialized set of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups (those with particular foci of experience or activity).
Vocabulary is the area of language that changes most readily.
While language, culture, and thought are interrelated, it might be more accurate to argue (contrary to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) that changes in culture produce changes in language and thought than to argue the reverse.
Cultural contrasts and changes affect lexical distinctions (e.g., teal versus mauve) within semantic domains (e.g., color terminology).
Semantics refers to a language's meaning system.
The ways in which people divide up the world—the lexical contrasts they perceive as meaningful or significant—reflect their experiences.
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation.
Linguistic Diversity within Nations
Ethnic diversity in nation-states, including the United States, is mirrored by linguistic diversity.
All people style shift—that is, they vary their speech in different social contexts.
Regular shifting between dialects (e.g., "high" and "low" variants of a language) is known as diglossia.
Different dialects are equally effective as systems of communication.
Thinking of particular dialects as cruder or more sophisticated than others is a social rather than a linguistic judgment.
People rank certain speech patterns as better or worse because they are associated with groups that are also socially ranked.
Gender Speech Contrasts
Men and women tend to differ in the phonology, grammar, and vocabulary they use, as well as in the body stances and movements that accompany their speech.
American women's use of certain types of words and expressions has been associated with their traditional lesser power in society.
According to Tannen, women typically use language and associated body movements to build rapport, social connections with others.
Stratification and Symbolic Domination
People use and evaluate speech in the context of social, political, and economic forces.
The speech of low-status groups may be evaluated negatively (e.g., labeled as "uneducated speech") not because it is bad in itself but because it has come to symbolize low status.
Because speech habits help determine access to employment and other material resources, "proper language" itself becomes a strategic resource—and a path to wealth, prestige, and power.
According to Bourdieu, linguistic practices are a kind of "symbolic capital" which properly trained people may convert into economic and social capital.
As a result of what Bourdieu calls "symbolic domination," even people who do not use a prestigious dialect come to accept its authority and correctness.
Black English Vernacular (BEV)
Stigmatized speech may be linked to region, class, educational background, gender, ethnicity, or "race."
Most linguists view BEV as a dialect of American English rather than a separate language.
BEV is a complex linguistic system with its own phonology and syntax.
There are clear phonological and grammatical differences between BEV and Standard English (SE).
SE is not superior to BEV as a linguistic system, but it is the prestige dialect—the one used in the mass media, in writing, and in most public and professional contexts—and therefore has the most "symbolic capital."
Historical Linguistics
Historical linguistics studies long-term linguistic change.
Historical linguists can reconstruct many features of past languages by studying contemporary daughter languages—languages that descend from the same parent language (protolanguage) and that have been changing separately for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Historical linguists classify languages according to their degree of relationship.
Subgroups are languages within a taxonomy of related languages that are most closely related.
A close relationship between languages does not necessarily mean that their speakers are closely related biologically or culturally, because people can adopt new languages.
Anthropologists are interested in historical linguistics because cultural features sometimes correlate with the distribution of language families.
Language Loss
One aspect of linguistic history is language loss.
When languages disappear, cultural diversity is reduced as well.
The world's linguistic diversity has been cut in half (measured by number of distinct languages) in the past 500 years, and half of the remaining languages are predicted to disappear during this century.
Researchers are actively working to maintain, preserve, and revitalize endangered languages.
Anthropology Today: Linguistic Diversity and the Internet
Despite language loss, linguistic diversity is alive and well in many countries.
Despite India's colonial history, only about a tenth of the Indian population speaks English. However, even many of those English speakers prefer to read, and to seek out Internet content in their own regional language.
This story describes how local entrepreneurs and international companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are rushing to meet the demand for Web content in local languages.
This example illustrates one of the main lessons of applied anthropology, that external inputs fit in best when they are tailored properly to local settings.
