chapter 5 question and answer
Although language is one of the most rule-bound aspects of human culture, it is also one of the least conscious. true or false
true
America's pattern of gender inequality is built into our linguistic practices. true or false
true
Elaborating symbols and summarizing symbols work in opposite ways. true or false
true
The approach that compares ancient texts and documents to analyze long-term linguistic change is called ____________.
Philology
________ is the study of how sociocultural norms and contexts shape language use in society.
Sociolinguistics
According to anthropologist Sherry Ortner's analysis, the American flag is an example of:
a summarizing symbol
When anthropologists study the way people use language in real settings rather than as a set of grammatical rules, they are focusing on:
parole
When language speakers use slang or metaphor, they are engaging in which concept suggested by French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure?
parole
_____________ refers to the structure of speech sounds
phonology
Which of the following is a feature of language?
A. Generative B. Symbolic C. Verbal D. Creative
Ferdinand de Saussure made a distinction between the formal rules of language ______ and the ways people speak it _______.
Langue and parole
Countries find it relatively easy to decide what language its citizens will speak. true or false
false
1. How words fit together to make meaningful units is called:
morphology
_________ is the idea that people speaking different languages perceive the world differently.
Linguistic relativity
A stoplight is a visual example of which of the following?
Sign
Talking about sports as a battlefield is an example of
a metaphor
Linguists refer to mixed languages with a simplified grammar that people rarely learn as a mother tongue as
a pidgin language
1. The study of how people classify things in the world is called:
ethnoscience
Which of the following is a contributing factor to the development of creoles, pidgins, and other hybrid forms of language?
globalization migration all of the answers are correct colonialism commerce
If you studied speech patterns such as those analyzed in Robin Lakoff's study of gendered speech, you might find that "talking like a lady"
marginalizes women's voices in work contexts
Words that differ by only one single sound contrast, like in the case of "ban," "man," and "pan," are called _______ pairs.
minimal pairs
If Benjamin Whorf were trying to find further proof that grammar shapes the way people perceive the world, which of the following would not be a focus of his research?
the density of the population in the several communities
In evolutionary terms humans are distinct from other primates with respect to their ability to use language because
we can speak using our larynx
Anthropologist Sherry Ortner distinguished three kinds of culturally powerful symbols:
b.) key scenarios c) summarizing symbols d) elaborating symbols NOT! Narrative symbol!!
1. The set of sounds and movements that animals make to communicate is called a ________.
call system
Although all primates use some form of call system, some, such as ______ and _____, are known to be capable of more complex communication than a simple call system.
chimps and gorilla
If you were conducting a symbolic analysis of TV programs and wanted to identify a key scenario such as the Horatio Alger myth, which of the following would you focus on?
plots that are repeated in many of the programs that American viewers interpret as commonplace social experiment
Words that came from the same ancestral language and originated from the same word are called;
cognate words
Because of the widespread use of mass media today, sociolinguists have found increasing homogeneity in the use of language in the United States. true or false
false
1. If Jakob Grimm, who developed what has come to be known as Grimm's law, were analyzing the historical relationships among the so-called dialects of Chinese (such as Cantonese and Mandarin), what data would he be looking for in his linguistic fieldwork?
how the speakers of each dialect pronounce different words with similar meanings in the several dialects
The U.S. government's prohibition of Native American children speaking their indigenous languages in Indian schools has contributed most profoundly to
language death
Brent Berlin and Paul Kay found that if a language had only three color terms, they would always be black (dark), white (light), and ______.
red
On the island of Java in Indonesia, nearly every sentence marks a person's ____________ between speaker and listener.
social position
The key scenario differs from other kinds of symbols because it
A: implies how people should act.
1. Koko and Washo were two primates who had learned:
American Sign Language
***Animal call systems are:
limited in what and how much they can communicate Animals can't talk but they communicate. They have a limited range of "calls" and so a limited range of topics to communicate about.
_______ are words or objects that stand for something else.
signs
The Canadian government helps preserve the use of French by requiring all official documents to be written in both English and French. The provincial government of the Canadian province of Quebec has implemented further regulations that require that signs have French letters larger than English letters. Why is the size of letters important?
symbolically, the size of the letters suggests the importance of the language
The use of mock Spanish reinforces a common impression that Hispanic people are socially inferior. This is an example of the power of which of the following?
language ideology
If you were a linguistic anthropologist interested in language change in smaller American cities, building on William Labov's studies from the 1980s, what method would you use?
record how younger people, middle aged, and senior citizens pronounces ordinary american words
Most people are unaware of the structure of a language until someone speaking it makes a mistake. true or false
true
A language of mixed origin that developed from a complex blending of two parent languages is called:
Creole
The study of grammatical categories, such as tense and word order, is called
Morphology(syntax)
According to Edward Sapir, language is the symbolic guide to culture. true or false
true
Edward Sapir, who had been a student of Franz Boas's, saw himself as both a cultural anthropologist and a professionally trained linguist. He urged cultural anthropologists to pay close attention to language during field research because
A: we understand the material world through the language we speak language is a guide to "social reality" the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up from the language habits of a particular social group
1. Which of the following features are characteristic of language?
conventionality, productivity, and displacement
For pastoral groups such as the Dinka and the Nuer, the cow acts as which kind of symbol?
elaborating symbol
Languages change very slowly, taking generations or even centuries. true or false
false
Most mammals use some form of call system to communicate with others of their species. Dogs and chimpanzees share an additional linguistic characteristic because they can communicate simple combinations of ideas about things they are not currently seeing. true or false
false