Anthropology Chapter 5 Study Guide

T/F: Because of the widespread use of mass media today, sociolinguists have found increasing homogeneity in the use of language in the United States.

FALSE

T/F: Countries find it relatively easy to decide what language its citizens will speak.

FALSE

If you were conducting a symbolic analysis of TV programs and wanted to identify a key scenario such as the Horation Alger myth, which of the following would you focus on?

plots that are repeated in many programs american viewers interpret as commonplace social experiences

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?

symbollically, size of letters suggests the importance of the language

T/F: Languages change very slowly, taking generations or even centuries.

FALSE

T/F: 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.

FALSE

Words that differ by only one single sound contrast, like in the case of "ban," "man," and "pan" are called ___ pairs.

minimal

A stoplight is a visual example of a

sign

Which of the following features are characteristics of language?

- it developed over time - it is flexible - it is dynamic (all of the above)

Koko and Washo were two primates who had learned

American Sign Language

T/F: According to Edward Sapir, language is the symbolic guide to culture.

TRUE

T/F: Although language is one of the most rule-bound aspects of human culture, it is also one of the least concious.

TRUE

T/F: America's pattern of gender inequality is built into our linguistic practices.

TRUE

T/F: Elaborating symbols and summarizing symbols work in opposite ways.

TRUE

The set of sounds and movements that animals make to communicate is called a ___.

call system

Animal call systems are:

can only communicate in response to real-world stimuli

Words that came from the same ancestral language and originated from the same word are called

cognate words

For pastoral groups such as the Dinka and the Nuer, the cow acts as which of the following symbol?

elaborating symbol

The study of how people classify things in the world is called:

ethnoscience

Which of the following us a contributing factor to the development of creoles, pidgins, and other hybrid forms of language?

globalization, migration, colonialism, and commerce

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, what data would he be looking for in his linguistic fieldwork?

how the speakers of each dialect pronounce different words with similar meanings in several dialects

The key scenario differs from other kinds of symbols because it

implies how people should act

The U.S. government's prohibition of Native American children speaking their indigenous languages in Indian schools has contributed most profoundly to

language death

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

Ferdinand de Sassure made a distinction between the formal rules of language ___ and the ways people speak it ___.

langue ||| parole

___ is the idea that people speaking different languages percieve the world differently.

linguistic relativity

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

Talking about sports as a battlefield is an example of

metaphor

How words fit together to make meaningful units is called

morphology

The study of grammatical categories, such as tense and word order, is called

morphology

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 lingusit Ferdinand de Saussure?

parole

The approach that compares ancient texts and documents to analyze long-term linguistic change is called ___.

phylogeny

___ refers to the structure of speech sounds

phylogeny

Linguists refer to mixed languages with a simplified grammar that people rarely learn as a mother tongue as

pidgin language

According to anthropologist Sherry Ortner's analysis, the American flag is an example of:

summarizing symbol

Anthropologist Sherry Ortner distinguished three kinds of culturally powerful symbols:

summarizing, key scenarios, and elaborating

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 several communities

Which of the following is a feature of language?

used to communicate, systematic, consists of sounds organized into words according to some sort of grammar

In evolutionary terms humans are distinct from other primates with respect to their ability to use language because

we can speak using our larnyx

If you were a linguistic anthropologist interested in language change in smaller American cities, building on William Labov's studies, what method would you use?

record how younger people, middle-aged people, and senior citizens pronounce ordinary american words

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 ||| gorillas

A language of mixed origin that developed from a complex blending of two parent languages is called

creole language

On the island of Java in Indonesia, nearly every sentence marks a person's _______ between speaker and listener.

social position

___ is the study of how sociocultural norms and contexts shape language use in society.

sociolinguistics

T/F: Most people are unaware of the structure of a language until someone speaking it makes a mistake.

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

all of the above--> most non-european language organized basic things in different ways

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

___ are words or objects that stand for something else.

signs