ANTHC151 Final Exam

US Creoles: pidgin vs. creoles

Pidgin is temporary and used for trade Creoles are passed down through generations and are used in many different contexts

Volosinov's theory

Russian psychologist thinking and speaking happen at the same time- they are connected "Expression organizes experience" Individual's thought is guided by possibilities offered by his or her language. Experience does not exist before or outside its expression (language and culture)

Labov's study of NYC department stores

1964 study of 264 department store employees trying to talk to their clients. The study focused on the postvocalic /-r/ (the pronunciation of /-r/ following a vowel; eg. car, card) Absence of the /-r/ is usually stigmatized in American English Labov found that workers differed in their use of /-r/ and that this difference was linked to the employment in stores of ranked relative prestige, that is Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's and S. Klein. Use of /-r/ was the highest at Saks and the lowest at Klein. Labov concluded that workers identified with the prestige of their employer and customers and that this identification was reflected in language use. More /r/: emphatic and careful talk (more attention), expensive store, depending on your social class

Berlin and Kay's universal principles of color classification

1969 Brent Berlin and Paul Kay presented a theory of universal color categories and their sequential development. Collected color-term data from 98 languages by asking speakers to sort 329 color chips into categories that could not be subsumed within any other class. Bermin postulated 11 basic color terms: white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, and grey. They proposed an evolutionary sequence that started with white and black and subsequently added red, yellow, green, blue, brown, and then purple, pink, orange and grey. This study raised important questions concerning universal cognitive and linguistic processes. Berlin and Kay found that focal meanings of basic color terms were substantially similar in all languages suggesting a universal color system based on physical stimuli.

King Case in Ann Arbor School district (Morgan)

1977 legal case filed against the Ann Arbor School District Board that charged that school officials had placed African-American children in learning-disabled and speech-pathology classes and held them at low grade levels because of language, cultural, and class differences. The judge decided that the case would focus on the questing of the children's language as a barrier to equal opportunity. The Judge found that there is a substantial difference between AAE and AE and that to ignore the existance of AAE in the education of AA youth constituted failure on the part of the school district to provide equal education under the law. There was broad misinterpretations and distortions that surrounded the press reporting of the case. The reporting was partially responsible for the community's suspicious reaction to the final verdict. AA middle class considered the case a threat to freedom and believed it would encourage segregation

Native American languages: number of speakers and languages

250,00 native american speakers who have an indigenous language as their mother tongue. 1/2 in reservations 1/2 near reservations. some only have a few speakers while others like Navajo have more than 100,000 speakers Algonkian has 48,000 Athabaskan 17,000 Iroquoian 17,500 many native american languages are dying.

Semantic Domain

A set of words in a lexicon that share a topical feature of meaning; eg. Color words, kinship terms, body part words. Words within a domain are united by similarities and contrasts. By discovering systematic principles of similarity and contrast in a given domain, we can make inferences about how speakers experience their world. The number of distinctions made within a domain reflects the degree of cultural interest

"talking white" (Morgan)

African American attitudes towards AAE and AE is extremely complex because both are considered crucial to improve life chances. THose who continue to accommodate the demands of Non-AA society and use AE exclusively risk losing community membership and earning a pariah status that can lead to abuse. Speaking good and proper English becomes equivalent to "light skinned" and "good (straight like whites) hair" In terms of language choice, AE is the only variety that one can choose to speak, while AAE is a variety that one may choose not to speak

India: organization of linguistic and ethnic diversity and survival of linguistic minorities within states

All indian states contain linguistic minorities of people who speak neither hindi nor the official state language. Languages having large numbers of speakers are more likely to receive public recognition and be used as mediums of instruction and mass communication than are those spoken by only a few. Each state government determines which of its languages can be used in education. A state's regional language and/or hindi are always options but many people throughout india oppose instruction in hindi because native speakers of hindi have an advantage because they already command the official control. minority languages receive support for schooling in some states, but in others they do not. for the states that do provide support, minority languages are typically employed only in the early grades. minority linguistic communities are not united on issues of language choice because class or caste differences affect people's goals Mass communication also promotes marginalization of minority linguistic communities. despite obstacles, hundreds of minority languages continue to be spoken in india.

Kogals' social media hypervisibility and youth subculture consumerism

As Kogals use language, fashion, and behavior to set themselves apart from the parent culture, they increasingly entangle themselves in a culture of escalating consumerism and materialism. Their particular forms of resistance tie them to beauty work that requires increased consumption

dominant Japanese ideologies of gender language and taste

At various times in Japanese history, modernizing women and girls have been categorized and denounced in ways that attempt to deflect their efforts to attain autonomy and self-definition Contemporary public claims about the moral and linguistic deficiency of Kogals likewise suggest that a major change in women's cultural position is also under way. Each time they appear, these new types incrementally destabilize and modify normative gender ideologies In Japan, the notion of a singular women's language was a longstanding ideological construct stemming from Meiji-era social and educational reforms The role of language in identity negotiation is also a primary area of interest for linguistic anthropologists, and yet the part played by language in East Asian subcultural identity-making has received little scholarly attention

Linguistic Lag

Because cultures often change more rapidly than languages, a "linguistic lag" can account for the fact that words or contrasts may reflect previous rather than current cultural interests.

Canada: Québec before and after WWII

Before WWII: Québec is isolated and rural, only french upper class has contact with British rulers and world in Montréal, with Anglophone Québécois interested in canadian federal government After WWII: a growing french middle class was absorbed first be the expanding provincial bureaucracy. This group entered private business sectors previously monopolized by anglophones. As french prominence increased, francophone politicians championed the cause of Québec nationalism in part to strengthen their control over the political apparatus. Many of Québec's francophone residents continued to resent the fact that the province's economy was controlled by anglophones, often by corporations located in english-speaking provinces. Calls for Québec's independence from canada increased throughout the 1960's and led to urgent responses by federal authorities including passage of the official languages act in 1969, this created a bilingual government.

Canada: Québec after Bill 101 (1977)

Bill 101 recognizes french as the only official language of Québec. official documents are published in french only. french is the language of education for the francophone majority and for immigrants speaking another language. french has become the routine language of public and private employment. all job seekers must speak french as much current employees who apply for promotions.

Sapir-Whorf Theory

Born out of US Anthropological studies of Native American languages. language and culture and experience are connected objects or forces in the physical environment become labeled in language only if they have cultural significance. People name details when their survival depends directly on their environment. "The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached" (sapir) Mass mind of all of a language's speakers Habitual thought and habitual world different language have different vocabularies and structures vocabulary is reflective of cultural significance The influence of language can be seen both through the vocabulary and through more complex grammatical relations. Strong and Weak versions of the Hypothesis Strong: Language determines outlook/experience/culture Weak: Language influences ""

Caste vs. Class

Caste: a term associated with a social hierarchy in which people are separated according to criteria of birth and are usually unable to change their group membership. stable and absolute, not potentially fluid like class (eg. India) Class: social stratification structured in terms of economic, political and social relations. the concept of class is somewhat fuzzy. (eg. US) With social stratification comes differences in language use. Linguistic variation occurs between classes, whereas linguistic conformity tends to obtain within social networks

Comparisons between SAE and Hopi

Causes of Knowledge Time number Duration Hopi's are directed by grammatical requirements of their language to notice underlying causes of their knowledge of things. Hopi language emphasizes continuity, cyclicity and intensity in events whereas SAE emphasizes the boundedness and objectification of entities

language use in bilingual communities (Chol, Chorti, and CHontal Mayan Languages)

Chol Maya: chiapas, cash crop, marginal participation in Mexico's economy, isolated and poor, 2/3 are monolingual speakers and the entire community speaks Chol Chorti Maya: eastern Guatemala, frequent contact with Ladinos who live in towns. everyone is bilingual, spanish is essential for upward mobility. Although Chorti has little prestige it is used for religion Chontal Maya: chiapas, recent industrial development (oil refineries) Chontal predominates at home but not always. Spanish has displaced many chontal words and syntactic structures

Covert Prestige

Covert prestige: Non-standard varieties are often said to have covert prestige ascribed to them by their speakers. A specific, small group of speakers shows positive evaluation of and orientation towards a certain linguistic variety, usually without the speakers' awareness. The variety is usually not accepted in all social groups (e.g. youth language). non-standard varieties of language must have "covert prestige" or they would eventually disappear.

presentation of information in health encounters

Doctors often use the objectivity of numbers to distance themselves from personal issues. moral messages are frequently uttered by doctors in the guise of scientific objectivity. Doctors also exert their influence by providing or withholding information requested by patients who are in the process of making medical decisions. Many linguistic techniques employed by doctors have subtle rather than obvious effects and contributed to supporting their preferences switching of personal pronoun preferences confounding the distinction between self and patient.

how the media sees Kogals

Due to the presence of so much English in Kogal speech, foreign journalists (Chow 2001; Kristoff 1997) often describe it as intended to be a secret code, but this is a misunderstanding. Kogals want to linguistically distance themselves fromthe parent generation and from uncool nerd girls, but they do not care who understands them . It is difficult to separate Kogals from their media representations, since multiple processes contribute to their identity construction Media rhetoric about Kogals achieves two things. It classifies young women into manageable boxes, and it reduces their struggles to create new selves to nothing more than comic endeavors that will eventually blow over once they "grow up." Most Japanese and foreign critics reject the suggestion that Kogals are seriously challenging prescribed ways of enacting gender. They claim that Kogal is only a fashion trend of nonsensical, self-centered youth.

Racism and anthropology

Early anthropologists were founders of scientific racism as well as important pioneers of the antiracist movement. Anthropologists share a contradictory heritage. Hill argues that "racism should be as central a question for research in cultural anthropology as "race" has been in biological anthropology. "If nearly all scientists concur that human 'races' are imaginary do so many highly educated, cosmopolitan, economically secure people continue to think and act as racists?"

experiments about geographic vs. egocentric language of space

Egocentric coordinates depend on our own body with a left-right axis and a front-back axis orthogonal to it. Geographic directions do not rotate with us wherever we turn. Som there are languages that have geographic systems all across the world Colin McPhee experiment in Bali- boy was taken to a different village for dance lessons but had difficulty because he did not know the landscape and orientation of the new village. Hotel room experiment with western and aboriginal speakers. exact replica of the room but reversed north south. egocentric (same) vs. geographic (flipped)- different determinations about the room

Measuring Time (Whorf)

English tenses divide time into three distinct units of past, present, and future, whereas Hopi verbs do not indicate the time of an event as such but, rather, focus on the manner or duration of an event.

Peter Trudgill's study of UK Working Class

Found evidence for interconnections between social stratification and language. measured the use of three features: dropping of g in /ing/ replacement of t by glottal stop dropping of h Examined 5 classes of people based on occupation, education, housing, locality, father's occupation found that: higher-class speakers use more standard pronunciations and that lower classes use more nonstandard pronunciations measurements of the use of third person singular verbs without an /-s/ shows extreme contrast between classes. 0% usage for Middle middle class and 97% usage for lower working class.

AAVE spoke outside AA community

From Madison Avenue's appropriation of rap rhythms and words to sell breakfast cereal to Richard Nixon's use of ''right on'' -- and, of course, to the players and fans at just about any sporting event -- Americans of all varieties spice up their English with the argot of black America. Whether it is a separate language (linguists disagree on this), slang or just non-standard speech, the cadences, phrasing and structure of English as spoken by many black Americans has so worked its way into the mainstream as to become an invisible thread in the linguistic tapestry. The language of black America bubbles up from the streets, percolates through its music, infiltrates the entertainment industry and spills out into the language of all Americans.

US Creoles: language shift and language revival

Gullah has changed significantly in the 20th century because of increasing contact with standard english speakers and southern regional dialects. Many creole features have become attenuated Louisiana Creole: the number of creole speakers is unknown bus estimates of 80,000 have been suggested. Most speakers of creole are African American, although many whites also speak the language. Speakers of creole are often bilingual in Cajun French or multilingual speakers of Cajun, standard french and or english. Due to multilingualism and dialect mixing in Louisiana, creole has had an impact on local varieties of english. hawaiian Creole: developed first as a pidgin. itis spoken by nearly half of the 800,000 residents of the state. most speakers are bi- or multilingual, speaking variants along a creole-standard continuum

linguistic features of Hijra-speak

High pitch ! Increased volume ! Nasalization ! Elongated final vowels, often in final syllables of intonational units ! Raised pitch on final syllables of intonational units ! Use of intimate second-person verb forms and pronouns, ! Use of the intimate address term beta (boy) for men and women ! Flat-palmed claps ! Sexual insult and innuendo ! Koti-Farsi ! Exclamations associated primarily with hijras, such as ae:: hae:: ! Vocabulary associated with "uneducated" speakers of rural dialects

time cycles (whorf)

Hopi language emphasizes continuity, cyclicity and intensity in events. Time is not a "thing" other than the experience of the perpetually getting later. Morning is not a noun, but an adverb to be glossed as "when it is morning" SAE emphasizes the boundedness and objectification of entities In SAE there are prepositions of place for time: At sunset, in the morning

Linguistic insecurity

In Labov's later studies in the LES he found that Lower middle class speakers exhibited "crossover" patterning which demonstrates that those speakers are the most sensitive about negative evaluations of their own speech and most desirous of achieving prestige norms. Lower middle class speakers are the most attentive in their own use of /-r/ and they are also most sensitive to its occurrence in the speech of others. this patterning is evidence of linguistic insecurity: a reflection of social insecurity stemming from disadvantages due to education, income, occupations etc.

physical metaphors for non-spatial situations (Whorf)

In SAE physical metaphors of space & matter refer to non-spatial situations of duration (long, short), intensity (heavy, light), and tendency (to turn,...) In Hopi, no physical metaphors at all but a very complex system of grammatical category called "tensors" to express duration, intensity and tendency

US: shifts in attitudes towards English and its role as official language

In the US linguistic policies are constantly shifting. There is no federal legislation granting enlgish as an official status. Before 1850's- learn english but you can speak anything you want After 1850's- learn standard english and do not use your own language in public 1900's English becoming more important as a sign of good citizenship and being a good american After WWI and WWII some foreign language speakers are seen as taitors.

code-switching (multiple functions)

Integration of linguistic material from both languages within the same discourse segment. when words are borrowed, lost languages adapt sound and intonation patterns to suit their native rules. in code-switching switched elements retain the sound patterns of their origin. code-switching requires a highly complex and advanced linguistic proficiency. code-switchers are comparable to a skilled monolingual author or orator Code-Switching serves to: expand vocabulary; resort to a simpler expression; overcome lapse of memory; display the prestige of one specific language; emphasize (attention-seeking devices and dramatic effects in narrative); mark discourse boundaries and express emotions or opinions and many more

Examples of English language change

Internal Changes: disappearance of inflectional case and gender markers disappearance of verbal morphology in english Northern Cities Vowel Shift Great Vowel shift 1450-1700 External Change: massive transformation of english after the Norman French-speaking invasion fricatice to affricate pronunciation of just and pleasure comparative system: old, older, oldest vs. Beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful Latin syntax and the obsession with not ending a sentence with a preposition most of contemporary english is not really english- massive amounts of loan words duplications: smell vs. odor- differences between livestock terms and food terms

Kogal as an identity counterpoint of asserting new ways of female selfhood and sexuality opposed to the japanese salaryman

It is in relation to mainstream expectations for female language use that the Kogal is set off as deviant. According to the dominant ideological model, girls' speech should reflect qualities of innocence, modesty, docility, and deference. Kogals' disdain for these societal expectations surfaces in the use of nonstandard forms, novel coinages, and explicit reference to sexual or taboo topics. Of course, young women do not materialize as prepackaged types, but select from a menu of possibilities from which they craft their own self-presentations. Age-based styles, cultures, and identities are achieved at the local level through language, interaction, and context Kogal is not just a fashion but a performance that encapsulates various forms of resistance, from language use and behavior to body display. Kogals defy contemporary demands of adolescent femininity by speaking in raw, outspoken, and unexpected ways. They usurp male privilege by exercising the freedom to use language in any way they please. Media pundits are fascinated yet disturbed by the way Kogals talk The media's metalinguistic objectification of Kogal speech reached a peak when newspapers, magazines, and television programs latched onto the term chˆoberiba ('ultra very bad'), formed with the intensifier prefix chˆo, English-derived beri ('very'), and clipped ba from baddo ('bad'). Newscaster Tetsuya Chikushi, in puzzlement, once shared the term with his audience as a perfect specimen of kogyaru-go ('Kogal speech'). Kogals are the focus of intense public concern, and media discourses reflect an ongoing obsession with locating and delimiting them.4 Of course, this sort of surveillance of women is longstanding The media exhibits an odd mixture of anxiety and voyeuristic interest in Kogals

Scripts used in Japanese

Kogals' heavy use of technology has resulted in some interesting script innovations. One is the development of novel emoticons, combinations of punctuation marks and accent marks to express affect in telephone text messages and e-mail. The emoticons, called kao moji ('face characters'), are more extensive and complex than the American "smiley-face" emoticons typically created with a colon and a closing parenthesis to resemble a sideways face, and are processed differently Kogals are also credited with creating a unique text message code for their cell phones,nowreferred to as gyaru moji ('Gal characters'). It is a basic substitution system, in which parts or combinations of characters, mathematical symbols, or Cyrillic letters are used in place of the Japanese syllabic characters; there are several alternatives commonly used for each syllable The graffiti photos also contain many instances of script mixing. Because it has four writing systems to exploit—Chinese characters, two syllabic scripts (hiragana and katakana), and the Roman alphabet—Japanese orthography permits extensive expressiveness

differences between hijras, kotis, and English speaking middle class gay and lesbian identities

Koti identity: Traditional, "starting with the Moghals" Effeminate Same-sex passive Lower caste, liminal, working & underworking Seen as Backwards; Oppressed by Indian tradition Free sexual desire Uneducated vulgar, provocative, scandalous Gay & Lesbian center Allowed: dressed like men Hijra identity: Traditional, "starting with the Moghals" Effeminate Same-sex passive Lower caste, liminal, working & underworking Seen as Backwards; Oppressed by Indian tradition Asexual & ascetic by free sexually desire Uneducated vulgar, provocative, scandalous Gay & Lesbian center Not allowed Western Gay & Lesbian identities: Recently imported Masculine & feminine Same-sex active & passive Middle-class & upper-middle class seen as Forwards, modern; Liberated & global & cosmopolitan Repressed & prudish Good standing urban citizen of the Indian state, keeping up appearances, serious face Gay & Lesbian center:HIV-AIDS globalized activitism & political struggle

hijra as the 3rd gender; koti as a 4th breed

Kotis, if discussed at all, are thus portrayed reductively as "fake," "duplicate," or "bogus" hijras, as prostitutes and sodomites, as married men with children who selfishly imitate hijras for financial gain. Real hijras, in contrast, are discussed more favorably in the same texts as a "third sex" because of hijras' own self-identification as "neither man nor woman" (see Nanda 1990). This thirdness, furthered by popular understandings of the hijra as sexually impotent, ironically authorizes their societal role as givers of procreative blessings, particularly in the context of birth and wedding celebrations where their blessing is thought to secure a long lineage of sons for the recipient. 3rd gender: hijras, a divinely sanctioned birth defect has forced them into a third-sex existence that is neither male nor female ! 4th breed: kotis, not a gender, but gender-identity shifters Kotis: intertextual impresarios of a sort, strategically building their own identities through the adoption of linguistic traits ideologically associated with first, second, and third genders ! Kotis often harbor men who later transition to hijras ! Kotis' claim to fame is their ability to imitate hijras ! Kotis do not strive for authenticity most of the time: they have fun parodying & confusing people

linguists' good intentions vs. the opinions of the African American Community (Morgan)

Language plans and policies that may be theoretically sound from a linguistic perspective do not necessarily address the speech community's notion of a language as a reflection of social reality, especially theories concerning language and identity, power and loyalty. Such shortcomings often lead to the reconstitution of hegemonic theories that marginalize culturally different speech communities. Once sociolinguistic theories privilege the standard variety as the "norm" in relation to competing varieties, the intent of both language plans and planners becomes suspect, and speakers sense that linguistics may be dangerous to the health of their speech community

Pinker's Theory

Language thought and experience are not related because language is universal and biological- it is not tied to culture (not all humans have the same culture) Language is a closed system

Race prejudice and fascination

Many black (and white) American writers draw on the syntax and inflections of black English, as do blues, rock, pop and rap performers of European, Asian, African and Latin American origin, along with upper- and middle-class teen-agers of every conceivable race, religion and ethnicity. So long as it's a fad, a pose or a clearly calculated style, black English can earn its practitioners money, power and respect as artistic innovators or popularizers. Race prejudice is obviously part of the package; so is race fascination. Black English is a hybrid that, like the standardized American English it both mirrors and alters, can be spoken with beauty and power or with utter banality

political opponents behind Arizona candidate controversy

Mayor Juan Carlos Escamilla, who filed a legal challenge of Mrs. Cabrera's English ability. He acknowledged on local television that his own English was far from perfect. "I feel I don't dominate 100 percent, but I can still get by," said Mr. Escamilla, who graduated from the same Arizona high school as Mrs. Cabrera. "I can write, read and understand it very well." It was Guillermina Fuentes, a former San Luis mayor, who first raised Mrs. Cabrera's English skills as an issue last month. Former friends, the two women had a political falling out Glenn Gimbut, the city attorney, acknowledged wearing the headphones when the conversation shifts to Spanish. He had been leading the legal challenge of Mrs. Cabrera's candidacy. But Mrs. Cabrera's lawyers forced him from the case for conflict of interest because he was both representing the city and suing it. "This is the law," Mr. Gimbut said, arguing that the 1910 act granting Arizona statehood required officeholders to perform their duties in English without the aid of a translator. "It's been on the books since statehood."

Arguments in favor of and against cabrera being on the ballot (voters vs. court decide, how much knowledge is sufficient, who decides who is on the ballot, Kissinger & Schwarzenegger vs. non- White politicians with an accent)

Mrs. Cabrera may be able to get her point across in English, but whether she is proficient enough in the language to serve on the governing board of this bilingual border city has deeply divided the 25,000 residents. discussion of just how fluent Arizona officeholders need to be. Like many other states, Arizona has long required politicians at all levels to speak, read and write English, but the law fails to spell out just what that means. Is grade-school knowledge enough? Must one speak flawlessly? Who is to decide? "I admire Ms. Cabrera for her courage and ambition, and wish her well," Professor Eggington wrote. "However, in my studied opinion, based upon the results of the range of tests and analyses described above, she does not yet have sufficient English language proficiency to function adequately as an elected City Council member."

Native American Languages: major languages still used

Navajo 148,530 use it as their most frequent language at home (1990) Dakota/Lakhota, Yupik, Apache, Cherokee, and Pima and Pagago,

subsidized companionship controversy

Onereason for their appeal is that they are frequently associated with a practiceknown as enjo kˆosai ('subsidized companionship'). This is the label used for young women who agree to meet strange men for dates, sometimes involving sex, in exchange for money or gifts. In the majority of cases, the pattern is that a group of Kogals go with a few dusty salarymen to a karaoke box for several hours and are paid for their time. They essentially replace the much more expensive bar hostess, who likewise puts up with fumbled gropes and juvenile utterances but for a much higher price. What the media finds most irritating about the phenomenon is that the young women involved feel no shame or remorse at all. These days, many older male Japanese writers simply translate Kogal into English as "prostitute," a practice mimicked by Western journalists such as Richard Havis (1998). Kogals often complain that men on the street walk up to them and offer money for sex, assuming that they have no agenda other than prostituting themselves

white public space

Puerto ricans experience the "outer sphere" as an important site of their racialization, since they are always found wanting by this sphere's standards of linguistic orderliness. Hill argues that precisely the opposite is true for whites. whites permit themselves a considerable amount of disorder precisely at the language boundary that is a site of discipline for puerto ricans, that is, the boundary between spanish and english in public discourse. White uses of spanish create a desirable "colloquial" presence for whites, but uses of spanish by puerto ricans are disorderly and dangerous is one of the ways in which this arena of usage is constituted as part of white public space. White public space: a morally significant set of contexts that are the most important sites of the practices of a racializing hegemony in which whites are invisibly normal, and in which racialized populations are visibly marginal and the objects of monitoring ranging from individual judgment to official english legislation. It is through indirect indexicality that using mock spanish constructs white public space, an area in which linguistic disorder on the part of the whites is rendered invisible and normative while the linguistic behavior of members of historically spanish speaking populations is highly visible and the object of constant monitoring.

Plurality and Numeration (Whorf)

Real plurals (ten men) and imaginary plurals (ten days) in Hopi, time an cyclicity cannot be objectified and counted: time becomes later and later. In SAE length of time, time = distance Hopi: time, two events related in terms on lateness, one after the other Nouns in SAE: individual nouns (tree, stick, man, hill) vs. mass nouns (water, milk, wood, granit, sand, flour) Nouns in Hopi: because mass nouns are seen as individual nouns already, the do not take containers

educational experts and communication with parents

Real purpose of group meetings was to publicly ratify decisions made by authorities rather than to make decisions. Introduction of participants followed by lengthy presentations of information about the child with data presented in objective terms with dispassionate, global and categorical words creating a sense of mystification (technocratic consciousness). Psychologists often spoke in platitudes. High-status participants often interrupt parents and teachers in their turns. Authorities use specific linguistic devices to create a false impression of solidarity and reciprocity: use of we and us, share, consensus. Decisions are often presented with little room for disagreement. Children and their experiences are abstracted until the child becomes an object in an official version of their life experiences and coping strategies. discourse is decontextualized and recontextualized in other settings. Labeling has far reaching consequences

New Englishes

Societies at large have taken up English as a language through education. new englishes are not creoles or pidgins but rather a form of english disseminated through formal education. They are seen as high prestige, high status, neutral languages. There is usually grammatical simplification (fewer distinctions and omissions) there are new developments from contact with background languages (loanwords, meaning shifts)

Social class in the African American speech community (Morgan)

Sociolinguistics has reinscribed society's prejudice that AAE is a sign of poverty and oppression through their constitution of speech community membership and style. 1960's pronouncement that "eighty percent of all black people speak Black english" because of the notion that AAE is spoken by the working class and at least 80 % of all African Americans are working class African Americans considered education more important in determining class and status than income and occupation. Though the representation of class may be changing in the african american community--and quite likely the significance of education as an indicator of social class--racial consciousness continues to be an important indicator of community membership there is a developing trend among upper middle-class AA students attending elite college campuses to use lexical phonological and grammatical features of AAE in both informal and formal contexts Middle-class AA continue to have a positive attitude toward the lower class and continue to feel an obligation to their race due to their more privileged position. This research is based on male informants not female. none of the middle class AA equated being middle class with an absence of AA culture and values language use among working- and middle-class African-American adults, both AAE and AE are used in informal mixed-class conversations, regardless of the class of the speaker

identity as a locally constructed embodied performance

Speakers' identities emerge from discourse (social constructivism) Identity as a local production rather than an enduring category Identity as a practice that give cultural and social meanings Identity as a semiotic activity whereby individuals are made to make cultural 'sense' Identity as an actively constructed performance, between individual agency and structural inequality Gender as something you do, something you practice doing, not as something you are. Emphasis on community of practice, action, and performance Selfhood manufactured through language Questioning the assumed universality of the experience of white Western heterosexual women of middle class Questioning the assumed essential difference between women and men Identity is far less static than previously thought authenticity would be better studied as an outcome of sociolinguistic practice, rather than as an orientation that somehow precedes and predicts the use of particular linguistic variables. We thus prefer the term authentication as an alternative, which highlights the fact that authenticity is not a given but a socially achieved act, produced in part through the appropriation of linguistic variables ideologically associated with particular identity positions

Canada: linguistic accommodation/convergence

Speech accommodation theory suggests that when speakers have positive attitudes towards interlocutors, the accommodate or converge to the latter's speech styles. In contrast, they maintain their own style, and possibly exaggerate it if they have negative opinions about co-participants. English Subjects evaluated the speaker more positively when they assumed they were hearing a francophone trying to speak english and would respond in french to help the speaker. French speakers evaluated the speaker more positively when they assumed that the use of french was voluntary. Post Bill 101 studies: anglophones claimed that they were more likely to change to french with francophone clerks post-bill. they also said that francopone clerks were less likely to switch to english Both anglophone and francophone respondents rated ingroup speakers more positively than outgroup speakers. Francophone subjects were impressed by anglophones who made the switch to french. All respondents reacted negatively to a clerk who failed to switch to english for a customer. With an english speaking clerk respondents reacted more favorably towards anglophone convergence to french than the other way around. Young people were more willing to converging to either language than older people.

Habitual World

The "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. we see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation

grammatical gender

The grammars of some languages oblige that their speakers account for the gender of things when they use the language. La casa, la mesa, el clima... In English we no longer have that Experiments have shown that grammatical genders can shape the feelings and associations of speakers toward objects around them.

features of Kogal aesthetic "ugly" hybridity

The label Kogal is most often elicited because of a girl's appearance and consumption patterns, which may overshadow her linguistic construction of a subcultural identity. The Kogal aesthetic (see Figure 1) is not straightforward, for it often combines elements of calculated cuteness and studied ugliness. The style began in the early 1990s when high-school girls developed a look made up of "loose socks" (knee-length socks worn hanging around the ankles), bleached hair, distinct makeup, and short school-uniform skirts. Kogal fashion emphasizes fakeness and kitsch through playful appropriation of the elegant and the awful. Kogal tackiness is also egalitarian because girls from any economic background or with any natural endowment may acquire the look, which is not true of the conservative, cute style favored by girls who conform to normative femininity. Kogal taken to an extravagant limit yields the ganguro ('blackface') style. The deeper saddle-brown tan of this style accentuates the use of thick, garish white lipstick and eye shadow Most Kogals and ganguro, however, are not trying to look African American, or like anything ever seen before. They have created their own suprahistorical syncretisms, using retro and borrowed styles to assemble a unique look. Kogals are adept at stylistic sampling in order to achieve an aesthetic of mukokuseki ('stateless globalism particularly distinctive Kogal behavior that goes against the cultural model of women as cute and dainty, a sort of self-parody in which Kogals make ugly, screwed-up faces for the camera

US Creoles: common features of all three creoles in the US (Gullah, Louisiana, Hawaiian)

They are creoles (mixes of two languages) Simplified grammar Vocabulary from multiple languages different verb options All creoles have: Minimal morphological complexities: absences of noun plurals, gendered pronouns and verb tenses. Complex aspectual distinction for verbs Creole speakers are rarely monolingual. instead they speak various dialects and/or languages ona continuum they are the poorest less educated and more stigmatized the needs of their children are denigrated in school because of negative sterotypes

US: transitional vs. maintenance bilingual school programs

US bilingual education model is transitional- it starts off predominantly in the native language and progressively shifts towards english- it pushes for speaker assimilation. THe goal is encourage speakers' shift to english, eliminating reliance on their native tongue. In Maintenance model students learn the new language and keep the old. seen in india and other countries.

Urciuoli's study of Puerto Rican linguistic marginalization

Uriuoli argues that her consultants experience language as differentiated into two spheres "an inner sphere" of talk among intimate sin the household and neighborhood in which the boundaries between spanish and english are blurred and ambiguous both formally and functionally. In an "outer sphere" of talk with strangers and gatekeepers, the difference between spanish and english is sharply objectified and boundaries are drawn and enforced. The pressure to keep the two languages in order is so severe that people who function as fluent bilinguals in the inner sphere become so anxious about their competence that sometimes they cannot speak at all. Urciuoli observes that a carefully managed spanish is licensed in the outer sphere in such contexts as folk-life festivals as part of the processes of ethnification that work to make difference cultural, neat and safe. But Whites hear other public spanish as impolite and even dangerous

Language death or obsolescence (Native American languages, Gaelic)

When an entire language community abandons their native language in favor of their second language, the native language dies as an effective means of communication- this process is known as language death or language obsolescence. about 1/2 of the world's 6000 languages will die by the end of the 21st century and 90% are on their way to extinction. Many languages spoken today are moribund- they are spoken by adults but are no longer being learned as the mother tongue by children and are therefore no longer viable. of the 187 languages still spoken by Native americans in the US and Canada, 149 are no longer learned by children. in Australia- 90% of the 250 aboriginal languages are moribund. education in one's language is vital to language vitality. there is a slow death of gaelic in scotland and ireland. It is still the official language in ireland but is still dying partially due to the influx of english speaking people and the association of gaelic with an uneducated poor rural population

Language ideology

a system of beliefs about the world, including ideas about human beings, their abilities and rights, and the ways they interact with each other, that helps to legitimize social orders and constructions of reality, who is superior and should be in charge, who is inferior and should be taken care of (or exploited) Words and the beliefs they express form a coherent cultural system Speech communities, whether small homogeneous villages or large heterogeneous state societies, develop ideologies about language, what constitutes a language, about what is acceptable or appropriate language use. these ideologies are transmitted through communicative behavior and through how people talk about language and linguistic activities. In most modern nations, language ideologies entail practices that select and promulgate a standard or "legitimate" language for use in public contexts. Other varieties are stigmatized.

Metaphor

an extended meaning. adding to the meaning by increasing the semantic range through comparison with other entities, no relationship between the two items. English examples: Time is money, spend time, use time up and down orientational images: being high/low Container images: being in love Metaphors of kinship Metaphors of the body

Componential analysis

analyzes the underlying systemic principles of similarity and contrast. Example: componential analysis of American kinterms

borrowing/loanword

borrowing foreign words is the most widespread result of linguistic and cultural contact. although rates of borrowing vary, all languages incorporate words of foreigh origin.

Why people choose to use farsi speech

both kotis and hijras employ Farsi as a tool for speaking back against the anti- Hindi sentiment embedded in the upper-class perception of English as sexually progressive. Yet in spite of frequent interchange between these two communities, kotis are keen to assert themselves as having an independent identity that predates that of hijras. This stance is encapsulated in their claim that the Farsi term koti precedes the Hindi term hijra in the historical record

Controversies surrounding AAVE and School

children who speak AAVE are faced with multiple conflicts stemming from numerous factors, including teacher's negative judgements of a child's speech, children's desire to succeed in school, and their sometimes incompatible desire to be accepted by their own peers. Because of the distinct grammatical rule of AAVE that differ from standard English, teachers are often not able to comprehend fully what the children say, or they may misinterpret a child's speech 1977 Ann Arbor Michigan federal court case found that the school board needed to institute procedures to correct teacher's misconceptions about AAVE and to help students better learn the standard language. the judge stated that a language barrier did exist in the form of unconscious negative attitudes formed by teachers to children who spoke AAVE and the children's reactions. 1996 Ebonics controversy in Oakland California- school board implemented a program to inform and train teachers in the legitimacy of AAVE and that would enable speakers of the vernacular to acquire standard english. Bridge reading program. Because of the wording of the initial proposal stated that ebonics was genetically based and not a dialect of english. there was a lot of backlash from the community

use of questions in education

communicative behavior in classrooms in the US is typified by question-answer sequences. individual children are either chosen to respond or compete with each other through calling out or raising their hands for the right to respond. In most american classrooms, questions are used explicitly to measure pupil's attentiveness and absorption of knowledge Chaining: 1. Initial question 2. Response/answer 3. confirmation/question Arching: 1. Initial question 2. Response/question 3. Confirmation/response Adults employ two methods of control: when initiating a discourse series, they use chaining (asking further questions) to regain control after a child's response; when children initiate a series, adults use arching (responding to questions with own questions) to make a countermove, taking control from the child.

Examples of Kogalisms and English hybrids

dasai, along with its variations dassˆe and dashˆa, has been in steady use since the 1970s with the meaning 'uncool', 'frumpy', or 'decidedly nerdy' (Yonekawa 1996:1051). A word from 1979, wanpatˆan ('one pattern'), meaning 'repetitive' or 'boring', as in kare wa wanpatˆan da ne ('He's a real drag'), A characteristic feature of Kogal speech is the liberal use of emphatic prefixes and other intensifiers. One is maji, the clipped form of majime ('serious'), to mean 'really', 'honestly', or 'no shit', in circulation since 1983. Another is the prefix meccha, used in constructions such as mecha kyˆ uto na ('awesomely cute'). There is also the unavoidable chˆo, anemphatic prefix used since 1988 to mean 'super' or 'ultra', found in phrases like honto chˆo yabai ('really ultra-idiotic'), chˆo maji de mukatsuku ('really super nauseating'), and chˆo gyaru shita ko ('a girl really into the Girl thing'). When chˆo is combined with abbreviations, it becomes especially opaque to older Japanese. An example is the expression chˆoSW ('super bad personality'), formed with the initial Roman letters for the words seikaku ('personality') and warui ('bad'). The English loanwords ˆupˆa ('super') used as a prefix is also quite common, but the infectious chˆo remains the preeminent Kogal intensifier Kogals and others also create new words through affixation of the Japanese verbclass suffix -ru. Everyday nouns are changed into verbs by attaching -ru, found at the end of the dictionary form of many verbs A new derivation process in Japanese is to attach the suffix -ˆa, transliterated from the English morpheme -er 'doer of x', as in player or drinker, in order to create new words for types of people. Another new type of affixation is to attach the English suffix -ing, rendered as -ingu, to the base form of a Japanese verb, creating a new hybrid verb. Kogals are not using English because of a lexical gap or for social prestige. Instead, they are exploiting the linguistic resources at hand for their own aesthetic, humorous, visual, and affective projects. The English found in Kogal speech is often a combination of two or more English words that were formed in Japan with new meanings, with novel blends that have unique semantic and phonological histories

US: bilingual education and cognitive and linguistic abilities of bilingual children

debates continue among professionals and the public about the effectiveness of bilingual education. research has found that students in bilingual classes learned english vocabulary at a much faster rate than did the children educated monolingually in english. Having a bilingal is helpful for students and the classroom environment because it supports active learning, rephrasing etc. bilingual children surpassed monolingual children in a study on hypothesis development. bilingual children have a cognitive flexibility and a more diversified set of mental abilities than monolinguals. In learning to manipulate language structures, the child may develop a general cognitive skill useful in other domains. The switch away from the mother tongue can be detrimental to learning math

diglossia (Paraguay)

diglossia refers to situations where each language is systematically employed in certain domains or events. In this case there is a high language- used in public arenas such as school, church, and government; and a low language- used in private or informal domains with family and friends- may have less social prestige but it often is associated with strong emotional loyalty and can be used to signal in-group membership. 1967 constitution recognizes guarani and spanish as national languages but spanish is given status as the official language. Guarani is the low language

use of questions in physician-patient encounters

doctors direct encounters through use of questioning, establishing relevant topics and their development. their reactions to patient contributions validate or invalidate responses and thereby reassert control. they dismiss, by ignoring or redirecting patients' talk if it is not consistent with the scientific medical model upheld by the doctor. By controlling and interpreting information dispensed to patients, doctors influence decisions that patients ostensibly have a right to make for themselves. While the patient is the ultimate initiator, once they enter the medical establishment, it is the doctor who decides when to see the patient, thus effectively asserting interactional primacy. the doctor take the active role as questioner and evaluator while the patient's role is generally as the responder. Doctors use chaining to maintain control. Medical interviews often begin with open ended questions to set boundaries of the encounter by providing frames of relevance.

Mass Mind

encapsulates the thinking of all speakers of a language to understand how language organizes the thinking Language represents the mass mind. it is affected by inventions and innovations, but affected little and slowly whereas to inventors and innovators it legislates with the decree immegiate.

spanish accents

even bilignual speakers who always speak english "in public" worry about their "accents". while accent is a cultural dimension of speech and therefore lives largely in the realm of the imaginary, this construct is to some degree anchored in a core of objective phonetic practices that are difficult to monitor, especially when people are nervous and frightened. furthermore, it is well known that whites will hear accent even when objectively, none is present, if they can detect any other signs of a racialized identity. Heavy english accents in spanish are perfectly acceptable for whites even when spanish speakers experience them as like a fingernail on the chalkboard.

Van de Broeck's study in Maaseik, Belgium

examined the relationship between social stratification and degrees of syntactic complexity. Middle class and working class participants exhibited no significant differences in sentence complexity in informal situations but there was a marked distinction between the classes in formal contexts. WC formal syntax was less complex than WC informal style while MC formal syntax was more complex than MC informal. Van de Broeck concluded that WC react in the opposite was as MC in formal situations by underperforming, by appearing to a certain extent less verbally skilled than they actually are.

Canada: Governmental vs individual bilingualism

federal government has to use both languages but it leaves it up to the citizen to choose what language to use Individual bilingualism- a person speaks two languages

Classificatory word systems

in some domains distinctions are clear and unequivocal whereas in others, components and categories are more complex. In order to classify words, speakers need to know defining characteristics of each class. Certain traits are considered by speakers to be more important than others. Category membership is not always absolute but frequently involves questions of degree or fuzziness. Fuzzy category membership is often signaled linguistically in english by use of hedges, eg. "sort of, loosely speaking..." Criteria used for classification are different in different languages. There is often a degree of western bias of exclusive dichotomies masc/fem and animate/inanimate criteria.

Afro-Caribbean in the UK

increases in caribbean migration to Great britain in the 1940's and 50's as a result of post war growth in britain. During this period many British employer organizations actively recruited west indian workers. Changes in immigration acts in 1961 and 1962 severely restricted further immigration from the caribbean. People of caribbean ancestry living in london use at least two, often three varieties of english: Afro-Caribbean English, London Jamaican, and Jamaican English or creole. Afro-Caribbean London english differs from white london english in a number of sound (differences in pronunciations), prosodic features (creation of a 'black accent' through pitch, volume, vowel length, nasality, aspiration and breathiness) grammatical features (inclusion of the particle se (that) ) and vocabulary London Jamaican contains several distinctive sounds that differ from other varieties of english and are derived from Jamaican creole. Patois is spoken by teenagers and young adults of Jamaican ancestry living in Dudley and contains several distinct traits: third-person singular present-tense verbs, simple past tense, ... Code switching between standard English and patois Similar controversies on proposals to incorporate vernacular speech in schools: assumptions about the intelligence and worthiness based on misconceptions of children's speech

'What language habitually obliges us to think about'

is dependent on the grammar of the language. When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience that speakers of other languages may not be required to think about all the time

Internal vs. external language change

language change from processes internal to a language itself (elimination of case markers on nouns or reordering words within phrases) languages also change as a result of influences from other linguistic systems. No language is a completely closed system

legalese in legal settings

legalese- language used in legal proceedings, in both written and oral form. maintains prestige because of its dissimilarities with colloquial english. Because it is not well understood by laypeople it enhances the authority or attorneys and judges, as they are familiar with the code of encounters. Lawyers frequently become interpreters or translators of legal proceedings for their clients, a role that both adds to their status and renders clients dependent. Legalese includes some distinctive characteristics: common words used with specialized meanings; rare words from old and middle english; latin words and phrases; french words not in the general lexicon; and legalistic jargon

lingua franca (Swahili, English, Tanzania vs. Kenya)

lingua franca- a language that is used by nonnative speakers when interacting with speakers of different codes. it enables members of diverse ethnic and linguistic groups to communicate with one another. in many parts of africa Swahili has functioned for centuries as a lingua franca. during the era of colonization, european languages primarily english and french, assumed roles as international and interethnic languages. Even today english and french continue to function as codes for administration, business, advanced education and elite discourse Tanzania recognizes swahili as its official code and is used in all public domains. Swahili is a member of the Bantu linguistic family as are the native codes of 90% of the population. Kenya also acknowledges Swahili as an official language but in practice english is employed in many societal domains. in west african english and/or pidgin predominants as a neutral code.

mock spanish features

mock spanish incorporates spanish-language materials into english in order to create a jocular or pejorative key. semantic pejoration of spanish loans: the use of positive or neutral spanish words in humorous or negative senses (macho)

direct and indirect indexicality

mock spanish is a covert racist discourse because it accomplishes racialization of its subordinate group targets through indirect indexicality, messages that must be available for comprehension but are never acknowledged by speakers. vulgar racist discourse, which uses the direct referential function in statements like "mexicans just dont know how to work" or hate speech which seems to operate through the performative function as a direct verbal assalt because of mock spanish's covert and indirect properties, mock-spanish may be an exceptionally powerful site for the reproduction of white racist attitudes. indexicality- social pointing to social meaning telling people things about yourself. categorizing the speaker direct- what it is saying about the other indirect- what it is saying about you

standard language

most nations pick one and only one standard language, usually the dialect of those in power. All other languages become non-standard and are usually stigmatized It has a cultural industry to support, control and police its use and evolution. the educational system is one of the prime arenas for the promulgation of standard languages and standard language ideologies

patients' ways to reclaim agency

patients can introduce or shift to topic of concern to themselves through statements and questions posed to doctors. They can also suggest diagnoses for their own conditions or challenge diagnoses offered by physicians by citing evidence from their own experiences. Patients can propose treatments through declarative statements or questions and use narratives and personal interpretations to work with their physicians in co-constructing diagnoses and treatments

India: attitudes towards and use of English and hindi (education, media, government, everyday life)

prior to Indian independence in 1947, english was the country's governamental language. It was the language of the colonizers and became a second language of indigenous elite classes. India recognizes 15 national languages including Hindi, and each state can choose its own regional language. 6 have chosen hindi as their sole language English is the regional language of 3 indian states. English remains an optional language in several societal domains throughout most of india. it is the mother tongue of only 200,000 people in india but is known to some degree by approx. 25 million. Either hindi or english is used in the Indian parliament and in communication between states and with the central government. English is sometimes used as a medium of instruction in schools, particularly in universities. Courts function primarily in english especially at higher levels of adjudication. in town courts, proceedings are often conducted in local languages although official records are maintained in english. Although speakers of hindi constitute the single largest linguistic group (~40% of pop), and hindi is strongly endorsed by the central government, several sectors of the Indian populace oppose its use as the official language and instead advocate english. Rivalry among the numerous and diverse ethnic and linguistic groups in india has blocked the smooth adoption of endi.

Linguistic features of AAVE

reduction of word-final consonant clusters variation of /r/ contraction and deletion of the copula wherever SE can delete is and are complex aspectual system in verbs (examples: invariant be; perfective done; future perfective be done; stressed been; aspectual steady; multiple negation)

non-referential meanings

social meanings associated with something. different from a dictionary definition

Linguistic-Cultural relativism

some investigate how cultural values are encoded in words or expressions and are used by speakers to transmit emotional attitudinal, and symbolic meaning. eg. Semantic domains and lexical classifications, Taxonomic word systems, ethnoscience, componential analysis

Native American Languages: reversing linguistic and cultural genocide after real genocide

some native american communities adopt maintenance models of bilingual education. For groups whose native language is no longer spoken as a first language, linguistic programs aim at revival, usually in conjunction with instruction in other aspects of traditional culture. 1990 Native american Act provides some protection for Native american languages and cultures after centuries of US policy to destroy systematically NA cultures and Languages

perceptions of witness testimony

stylistic attributes of witnesses and lawyers influence the ways that their statements are assessed. Bonnie Erickson and her colleagues identified two styles of speaking referred to as powerful and powerless. Powerless speech, usef by low-status witnesses is characterized by frequent use of intensifiers, hedges, and polite forms. Powerful speech used by high-status witnesses tends to be free of these markers and results in a more straightforward manner. Witnesses who use powerful speech are perceived to be more credible and attractive than those speaking in a powerless style. the fact that powerful witnesses are often professionals with scientific of other technocratic expertise adds to their credibility. the comparative lower social status of most members of juries makes them vulnerable to the influence of authorities. powerful speech with its use of technical terminology and direct formulations, implies the speaker's certainty and self-assurance. When witnesses give fragmented testimony, the result of frequent, direct, and limiting questions, they are evaluated as less competent than when giving narrative testimony class and race also play a role in the way in which witnesses and defendants are perceived

Canada: Lambert's matched-guise technique experiments

subjects listened to tape-recorded speech in two versions of the same content, both spoken by the same fluent bilingual person. in one version french, the other english. Subjects are asked to rate the speakers according to various dimensions of personality, intelligence, competence and sociability. Anglophone subjects rated guises more favorable when they spoke english rather than french. Francophone subjects expressed similar preferences for english speakers except on ratings for kindness and religiousness. standard Canadian French and a rural form of the language were rated more negatively than parisian french doing these experiments with children found that the socially derived stereotyping began between the ages of 10 and 12.

neutralistic fallacy in the media

the media (and other instruments of public knowledge) operate on the basis of shared cultural myths, central among them the myth of neutrality. (mis-)perceptions of the neutrality of the news reports are furthered by the manner in which they are offered. you cannot report on anything in a neutral way. Any description represents a specific point of view. Word choice, sentence structure, etc. are choice that present a specific view. specific linguistic devices are used to create and sustain points of views. Some of this work is systematic Objectivity never exists

Metonymy

transferred meaning. metonymy focus narrowly focuses the semantic focus by highlighting only one aspect of an entity and ignoring its other attributes: This business needs some blood she likes to read Thomas Hardy The '54 Chevy lives around the corner

Taxonomic word systems

used as a methodology of ethnoscience (classification system that people construct to organize knowledge of their universe) Hierarchical taxonomies: eg. a spaniel is a kind of dog; a navalate, mandarin, tangerine, blood, satsuma, are kinds of orange Contrastive taxonomies: eg. dog vs cat, man vs woman, human vs animal the goal is to establish the underlying assumptions that people use to group entities

Habitual Thought

what you think by default whorf believes that the mechanism of this linguistic influence lies in the subtle shaping of "habitual thought" by the usage over time of certain linguistic patterns and structures. Names and labels trick speakers, misleading and blinding their understanding (behavioral compulsiveness, taken for granted, undisputed and unquestioned as we go on with our daily lives)