Test One

Creole

Languages that have fully developed grammatical rules and native speakers

African American Vernacular English-

"Relatively uniform dialect spoken by the majority of Black youth in most parts of the United States today, especially in the inner city areas of New York, Boston, Detroit, Philly, Washington, Cleveland... and other urban centers. It is also spoken in most rural areas and used in the casual, intimate speech of many adults" - Has its own rules - Less likely to pronounce "r" than SE - Thus, has different homonyms than SE - Pronounce certain words differently than SE speakers - Phonological rules may lead AAVE speakers to omit -ed as a past-tense marker and -s as a marker of plurality - However, other speech contexts show that AAVE speakers do understand the difference between past, present, singular, and plural (Ex: they say tell and told and child and children) - SE is the prestige dialect - Upwardly mobile AAVE-speaking students learn SE

David Harrison

"When we lose a language, we lose centuries of thinking about time... seasons, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday" - His book When Languages Die -> An indigenous language goes extinct every two weeks - The world's linguistic diversity has been cut in half in the past 500 years - Half of the remeaning languages are predicted to disappear during this century - Colonial languages (English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Russian, etc) have expanded at the expense of indigenous ones

Emic Approach-

Investigates how local people think; relies on local people to explain things and to say whether something is significant or not

The American Anthropological Association (AAA), has formally acknowledged a public service role by recognizing that anthropology has two dimensions...

1) Academic Anthropology 2) Practicing/ Applied Anthropology

AAA Principles...

1) Do no harm 2) Be open and honest regarding your own work 3) Obtain informed consent and necessary permissions 4) Weigh competing ethical obligations 5) Make your results accessible 6) Protect and preserve your records 7)

Cultural Transmission-

When people talk to you and around you, and you learn - Washoe + Lucy tried to teach ASL to other animals

Productivity-

When speakers use the rules of their language to produce entirely new expressions that are comprehensible to other native speakers

Many human traits are shared with monkeys/apes (these traits developed as our ancestors adapted to life in the trees). For example, ....

1) Grasping ability and manual dexterity (esp. Opposable thumbs) 2) Depth and color vision 3) Learning ability based on a large, visually oriented, brain 4) Substantial parental investment in adaption

Subcultures-

Are different symbol-based patterns and traditions associated with particular groups in the same complex society - A variety of subcultures originate in region, ethnicity, language, class, and religion - Many anthropologists are reluctant to use the term "Subculture" because the suffix "Sub" means below + they do not want people to feel inferior

The tendency to view culture as an ____ rather than a ____ is changing

Entity rather than as a process is changing - Contemporary anthropologists now emphasize how day to day action, practice, or resistance can make and remake culture

Sociolinguistics-

Investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation - One reason for variation is geography - Linguistic and cultural anthropologists collaborate in studying links between language and many other aspects of culture

It is appropriate for NA anthropologists working in another country to...

1) Include host country colleagues in their research planning and requests for funding 2) Establish truly collaborative relationships with those colleagues and their institutions before, during, and after fieldwork 3) Include host country colleagues in dissemination, including publication, of the research results 4) Ensure that something is "given back" to host country colleagues

Sociolinguistics-

Investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation - To study variation, they must observe, define, and measure variable use of language and speakers in real-world situations

Diffusion is indirect when...

Items or traits move from Group A to Group C via Group B - Today, much international diffusion is indirect (culture is spread by the mass media and advanced information technology)

Anthropological Archaeology-

(AKA "Archaeology) reconstructs, describes, and interprets human behavior and cultural patterns through material remains - Plants, animal remains, and garbage tell about consumption and activities - Wild and domesticate grains allow researchers to tell between gathering and cultivation - Animal bones tell the ages of slaughtered animals + helps in determining whether species were wild or domesticated - Answering these types of things allow archeologist to know about ancient economies Archaeologist also have spent considerable time studying potsherds (fragments of earthenware) - More durable than other artifacts (wood and textiles) - The quantity of pottery fragments allows estimates of population size and density - The discovery that potters used materials that were not available locally suggest systems of trade - Similarities in manufacture or decoration at different sites may be proof of cultural connections - Group with similar pots may share a common history, common cultural ancestors, or they traded with each other or belonged to the same political system They also examine paleoecology

Ethno-Semantics

(AKA Cultural Linguistics) The cross-cultural study of meaning systems embedded in language - How ethnic groups perceive the world

The ways in which people divide the world reflect their experiences

Papua New Guinea cultivators and Australian hunters and gatherers, used only two basic terms, which translate as black and white or dark and light - In contrast, European and Asian languages used all the color terms

Communicate

When we transmit information about ourselves to others and receive such information from them - Our expressions, stances, gestures, and movements (even if unconscious) convey information and are a part of our communication system

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis-

(Edward Sapi and Benjamin Whorf) The grammatical categories of different languages lead their speakers to think about things in particular ways - Ex) English divides time into past, present, and future - Hopi distinguishes between events that exist or have existed - This difference leads Hopi speakers to think about time and reality in different ways than English speakers - Ex2) Portuguese employs a future subjunctive verb form, introducing a degree of uncertainty into discussions of the future - In English, we use the future tense to talk about something we think will happen (we do not hesitate even if we can not be absolutely sure an event will happen)

Etic Approach-

(scientist-oriented) Shifts the focus from local observations, categories explanations, and interpretations to those of the anthropologist - Realizes that members of a culture are too involved in what they are doing to interpret their cultures - OFC they are biased, though - Proper training can reduce, but not totally eliminate, the observer's bias

Interpretive Anthropology

- Originated in the 1960s - Post-culture and personality movement - Is involved in understanding the systematic character of cultural meaning - The same events will have a different effect on different people

The problem of representation...

- Outsider vs. insider - It is complicated to represent the other - Framing the other (2011) documentary

Mary Douglas

- Structuralism Anthropologist - Risk Culture - Mental rules of classifications and categories - "Dirt is like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder" - Classifications help define, so it reduces ambiguity - Human classifications are never absolute in reality - Cross cultural study of ritual prohibitions - How are social boundaries created, sustained, and transgressed Taboo - Ban on touching, eating, seeing, and speaking - Breaching taboo equals danger - Based on contagion theory (taboos are meant to separate people) - Taboos can be used politically and ideologically

Ruth Benedict

- Studied patterns in culture - Culture shapes personality - Fish diagram

Clifford Geertz

- The founder of interpretive anthropology - "Culture is a lived experience integrated into a coherent public system of symbols that renders the world inteligable" - "The core of culture is a set of integrated moral values that preserve the correspondence of the world "as it is" with the world "as it should be" - Said that the study of culture is not, an experimental science in search of law, but rather an interpretative science in search of meaning - He is the first man to talk about Anthropology using the term "Thick Description"

Forms of Adaption...

1) Technology (Cultural Adaption)- Pressurized airplane cabin with oxygen masks 2) Genetic Adaption (Occurs over generations) (Biological)- Larger "barrel chests" of native highlanders 3) Long-term Physiological Adaption (Occurs during growth and development of the individual organism) (Biological)- More efficient respiratory system, to extract oxygen from "thin air" 4) Short-term Physiological Adaption (Occurs spontaneously when the individual organism enters a new environment) (Biological)- increased hear rate, hyperventilation Humans have devised diverse ways of coping with a wide range of environments - The rate of cultural adaption and change has accelerated, particularly during the past 10,000 years - Ex) For millions of years, hunting and gathering (foraging) was the sole basis of human subsistence - However, it only took a few thousand years for Food Production to replace foraging

Five characteristics of culture ->

1. It is learned 2. It is symbolic 3. It is shared 4. It influences nature 5. It is an integrated pattern system

Three characteristics of fieldwork

1. Replication= impractical 2. Fieldwork is not experimental 3. Fieldworkers are not gathering objective data Must ask yourself if it is credible, plausible, transferable, dependent, and confirmable

Five false ideas about culture ->

1. You can either have it or not have it 2. There is a natural hierarchy between cultures and subcultures 3. There are "pure" and "mixed" cultures 4. Venues for culture are museums, theaters, and libraries 5. The existence of culture depends on the state

Language, Culture, and History

A close relationship between language does not mean their speakers are closely related biologically or culturally - Of course, cultural similarities are not limited to speakers of related languages either - Even groups whose members speak unrelated languages have contact through trade, intermarriage, and warfare

Lexicon-

A dictionary containing all its morphemes and their meanings

Emoji

A digital image or pictograph, widely available on smartphones and tablets, used to express an idea or emotion

Adaption-

Refers to the processes by which organisms cope with environmental forces and stresses, such as those posed by climate and topography or terrains - Like other animals, humans use biological means of adaption - But humans are unique in also having cultural means of adaption

Real Culture-

Refers to their actual behavior

Rapport

A good, friendly working relationship based on personal contact, with their hosts - Ethnographers try to establish rapport

Semantics-

A language's meaning system

Pidgin-

A mixed language that develops to ease communication between members of different societies in contact

Ecosystem-

A patterned arrangement of energy flows and exchanges

Bronislaw Malinowski

A prolific Polish anthropologist who spent most of his professional life in England, is generally considered the founder of ethnography - Did Salvage Ethnography in the belief that the ethnographer's job is to study and record cultural diversity threatened by Westernization - Early ethnographic accounts (ethnographies), such as Malinowksi's classic Argonauts of the Western Pacific were similar to earlier traveler and explorer accounts in describing the writer's discovery of unknown people and places - However, the scientific aims of ethnographies set them apart from books by explorers and amateurs - The style that dominated "classic" ethnographies was ethnographic realism-> the writer's goal was to present an accurate, objective scientific account of a different way of life, written by someone who knew it firsthand - Since the 1970s, interpretative anthropology has focused on describing and interpreting aspects of culture that are meaningful to natives Linked to salvage ethnography was the idea of the ethnographic present

How long do ethnographers stay and why?

Staying a bit more than a year allows the ethnographer to repeat the season of his or her arrival, when certain events and processes may have been missed because of initial unfamiliarity and culture shock

Acculturation-

A second mechanism of cultural change, is the ongoing exchange of cultural features that results when groups have continuous firsthand contact - May change either culture but they both remain distinct - Ex) Pidgin

Sample-

A small, manageable study group from a larger population - Did not select a partial sample - Instead, they tried to interview in all households in the community (have a total sample) - Also they used a interview schedule rather than a questionnaire

Phoneme-

A sound contrast that makes a difference, that differentiates meaning - We find the phonemes in a given language by comparing minimal pairs - Ex) Bit and Pit (thus /b/ and /p/ are phonemes) - Standard (American) English (the "region-free" dialect) of TV newscasters, has about 35 phonemes-- at least 11 vowels + 24 consonsants - The number of phonemes varies from language to language (averaging between 30) - The number also varies between dialects

Historically oriented linguistics suspect ->

A very remote protolanguage, spoken 50,000 years ago in Africa, gave rise to all contemporary languages

Displacement-

Absent in call systems, displacement is our ability to talk about things that are not present

Informed Consent-

Agreement to take part in the research-- after having been informed about its nature, procedures, and possible impacts

Universality, Generality, and Particularity

All human populations have equivalent capacities for culture In studying human diversity in time and space, anthropologists distinguish among the universal, the generalized, and the particular

Culture is All-Encompassing and Integrated

All people are "cultured" - Culture encompasses features that sometimes are considered trivial or unworthy of serious study, such as those of "popular" culture - EX) To understand NA, we must consider holidays, mass media, the Internet, fast-food restaurants, sports, etc.

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 sees to sprout into language - The gene, FOXP2, explains why humans speak and chimps do not - Those with the nonspeech version of this gene can not make the tongue and lip movements necessary for clear speech (this is what chimps have) - The speech-friendly form of FOXP2 took hold in humans around 150,000 years ago - We also know now that other genes and a series of anatomical changes were necessary for fully evolved human speech

Personal Space and Displays of Affection

Americans maintain a certain distance from each other - Italians and Brazilians, who need less personal space, may interpret such "standoffishness" as a sign of coldness Americans tend to be reserved about displays of physical affection and Brazilians tend to be the opposite - Brazilians approach, touch, and kiss one another much more frequently than North Americans do - Brazilians teach their kids to kiss (on the cheek, two or three times, coming and going) all their adult relatives - Women continue kissing those people throughout their lives - Until they are adolescents, boys kiss adult relatives - Thereafter, with extended family men and close male friends, they may adopt the characteristic Brazilian hug (abraco) - Men typically continue to kiss female relatives and friends, as well as their fathers and uncles, throughout their lives - In the United States, a cultural homophobia (fear of homosexuality) may deter American men from displays of affection with other men - American girls are typically encouraged to show affection; this is less true for boys However, culture is not static - American boys appear to be more likely nowadays to share non-romantic hugs, as such expressions as "bromance" and "man crush" have entered our vocab

Margaret Mead

An important cultural anthropologist of the 20th century - Famed for her work on teen sexuality in Samoa and gender roles in New Guinea - Age and gender as social constructs - Student of Boaz - How do women in Samoa deal with coming of age - Adults ignore children - Only developmental age - Trained to be humble (not aggressive) - Other cultures have smoother transitions

Similarities between humans and apes are evident in...

Anatomy, brain structure, genetics, and biochemistry - Most closely related to us are the African great apes: Chimps and gorillas

In the best studies, however, the hallmark of ethnography remains:

Anthropologists enter the community and get to know the people

Paleontologists

Are scientists who study fossils

Culture-

Are traditions and customs, transmitted through learning, that form and guide the beliefs and behavior of the people exposed to them - Children learn such a tradition by growing up in a particular society, through a process called Enculturation - Cultural traditions include customs and opinions, developed over the generations, about proper and improper behavior - The most critical element of cultural traditions is their transmission through learning rather than through biological inheritance (culture is not biological!-- But it rests on certain features of human biology) - Ex) Learning, thinking symbolically, using language, and employing tools and other products in organizing their lives and adapting to their environments

Noam Chomsky

Argued that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language, so that all languages have a common structural basis (universal grammar) - The fact that words and ideas translate from one language to another support Chomsky's position that all humans have similar linguistic abilities + thought processes - Another line of support comes from creole - These languages develop from pidgins which form during acculturation, when different societies come into contact and must devise a system of communication - Supporting the idea that creoles are based on universal grammar is the fact that such languages all share certain features - All use particles to form future and past tenses + multiple negation to deny - All form questions by changing inflection

Popular Culture-

Encompasses aspects of culture that have meaning for many or most people within the same national culture - Ex) Fourth of July, Homecoming, Dinner-and-a-movie date, etc - Although popular culture is available to us all, we use it selectively, and its meaning varies from one person to the next - Ex) the World Cup and Taylor Swift mean something different to each of their fans

Variables-

Attributed that vary among members of a sample or population

Particularity: Patterns of Culture

Because of modern transportation and communication systems, traits that once were limited in their distribution have become more wide spread - Many cultural traits are shared b/c people face similar problems and thus, people in different places have to come up with similar solutions - Traits that are useful, that have the capacity to please large audiences, and that do not clash with the cultural values of potential adopters are more likely to be borrowed than are others - Nevertheless, certain cultural particularities persist (even tho they are getting rarer) - They are also getting more obvious - When cultural traits are borrowed, they are modified to fit the culture that adopts them (AKA they are reintegrated) - Patterned beliefs, customs, and practices lend distinctiveness to particular cultural traditions - Ex) Weddings may be universal, but the patterns of ceremonial observance may be dramatically different

We do not know when our ancestors acquired the ability to speak, although...

Biological Anthropologists have looked to the anatomy of the face and the sull ot speculate about the origin of language AND Primatologists have descrived the communication systems of monkeys and apes AND We do know that grammatically complex languages have existed for thousands of years

However, societies can share beliefs and customs because of...

Borrowing inheritance from a common cultural ancestor - Ex) Both Americans and Australians both speak English because both countries had English settlers

System

Can refer to various concepts, including culture, society, social relations, or social structure - Individual beings always make up the system - Within that system, however, humans also are constrained by its rules and by the actions of other individuals - Cultural rules provide guidance about what to do and how to do it, but people do not always do what the rules say should be done (people use their culture creatively and actively) - Cultures are dynamic and constantly changing-- people learn, interpret, and manipulate the same rule in different ways - Culture is contested ALSO Even when they agree about what should be done, people do not always do as their culture directs - Some anthropologists find it useful to distinguish between ideal and real culture

Universal-

Certain biological, psychological, social, and cultural features that are found in every culture

In opposition to Sapir-Whorf, however, it is probably more accurate to say that...

Changes in culture produce changes in language and thought than to say the reverse - Ex) Color terms and distinctions have increased with the growth of the fashion and cosmetic industries - Thus, cultural contrasts and changes affect lexical distinctions within semantic domains - Semantics

Anthropology is a ____ science. This means...

Comparative science that examines all societies, ancient and modern, simple and complex - A single culture simply cannot tell us everything we need to know about what it means to be human - Most other social sciences tend to focus on a single society (usually an industrial nation-USA)

Iconicity

Conceptual association between the word and the image of the word - "Noooo" "JFK" "Handshake"

Ideal Culture-

Consists of what people say they should do and what they say they do

Franz Boas (1940/1966)

Contact between neighboring tribes always has existed and has extended over enormous areas - Villagers participate in regional, national, and world events - Exposure to external forces come through education, the mass media, migration, and modern transportation - City and nation increasingly invade local communities with the arrival of teachers, tourists, development agents, government and religious officials, and political candidates - The study of such linkages and systems is part of the subject matter of modern anthropology

How We Differ From Other Primates

Cooperation and sharing are much more characteristics of humans - Until 12,000-10,000 years ago, all humans were hunter-gatherers who lived in small social groups ("Bands") - Men and women would take resources back to the camp and share them - Younger band members would nourish the older (and thus, they could live a long life) - They are cooperative in terms of food, social activities, and information MATING! - Among baboons and chimps, most mating occurs when females enter Estrus - The vaginal area swells and reddens, and receptive females form temporary bonds with males - Human females, however, lack a visible estrus cycle - Instead, they maximize their reproductive success by mating throughout the year - Also, human pair bonds are more exclusive and more durable (Marriage gives mating a reliable basis + gives exclusive sexual rights) Marriage! - Exogamy and kinship systems - Most cultures have rules of exogamy requiring marriage outside one's kin or local group - Exogamy creates ties between different kin groups (The children have relatives in two kin groups) - Other primates tend to disperse at adolescence - While humans maintain lifelong ties with sons and daughters

Team research

Coordinated research by multiple ethnographers

Fundamental to any language is ____

Cultural Transmission

Biological anthropologists and archaeologists tend to be better known than ____ because of ____

Cultural anthropologists because of what they study/discover

Diffusion-

Cultural borrowing, either directly or through intermediaries

National Culture-

Encompasses those beliefs, learned behavior patterns, values, and institutions that are shared by citizens of the same nation - Cultures can also be smaller than nations - Although people who live in the same country share a national cultural tradition, all cultures also contain diversity

Culture is instrumental, Adaptive, and Maladaptive

Culture is the main reason for human adaptability and success - Other animals rely on biological means of adaption - Humans also adapt biologically (Ex: Shivering when cold) - But, in addition, people also have cultural ways of adapting - We use tools and technology - People also use culture to fulfill psychological and emotional needs, such as friendship, companionship, approval, and sexual desirability - Formal and Informal Support - People cultivate ties with others on the basis of common experiences, political interests, aesthetic sensibilities, or personal associations

Culture and Nature

Culture takes the natural biological urges we share with other animals and teaches us how to express them in particular ways - Ex) People have to eat, but culture teaches us when/what to eat Culture also influences how we perceive nature, human nature, and "the natural" - Cultural advances have overcome many "natural" limitations - We can cure diseases such as polio and small pox - Culture, of course, does not always protect us (Hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. regularly thwart our efforts to modify the environment)

Mechanisms of Cultural Change

Cultures change because of diffusion/borrowing

Impurity

Danger, ambiguity, uncertain about social and moral meanings

Historical Linguistics-

Deals with longer-term change - Can reconstruct many features of past languages by studying contemporary

Cultural Resource Management (CRM)-

Decide what needs saving, and to preserve significant information about the past when sites cannot be saved - Work for federal, state, and county agencies + other clients - Sometimes work with public archaeologists, assessing the human problems generated by the proposed change and determining how they can be reduced

Culture is ____ than we think

Deeper - Iceberg idea of culture

Horace Minner Reading

Described body rituals among the Nacirema (AKA Americans) - Describes how their rituals revolve around the core issue of the body - Fundamental belief -> the body is ugly and its natural tendency is to debility and disease

Deborah Tannen

Differences in the linguistic strategies and behavior of men and women are examined in several of her books - Women typically use language and the body movements that accompany it to build rapport, social connections with others - Men tend to make reports, reciting information to establish a place for themselves in a hierarchy

Contested

Different groups in society struggle with one another over whose ideas, values, goals, and beliefs will prevail

And more recently, the English language has spread through...

Diffusion

Murrary Gell-Mann

Direct the Evolution of Human Languages Project have reconstructed the syntax (word ordering) of this ancient protolanguage - Their study focused on how subjects, objects, and verbs are arranged in phrases and sentences in some 2,000 contemporary languages - There are six possible word orders: SOV, SVO, OSV, OVS, VSO, and VOS - All the languages that were SVO, OVS, and OSV derived from SOV languages - Any language with VSO or VOS always came from an SVO language - The fact that SVO always comes from SOV confirms SOV as the original, ancestral word order

Deborah Tannen

Discusses the differences in the communication styles of American men and women - Discusses the differences in the communication styles of American men and women - Men are more likely to look straight ahead (esp. When talking to another guy) - American men tend to relax and spawl out when in conversational groups - Manspreading - American women may relax their posture in all-female groups, but when they are with men, they tend to draw in their limbs and assume a tighter stance

Another reason for generalities is...

Domination (Colonial Rule- When a more powerful nation imposes its customs and procedures on another group) - Ex) The spread of the English language

Estrus-

During which they ovulate

Anthropology can be traced to the 19th century (more dets, pls) ->

Early anthropologists studied the history and cultures of native peoples of North America - Interest in the origins and diversity of Native Americans brought together studies of customs, social life, language, and physical traits - A unified four-field anthropology did not develop in Europe, where the subfields tend to exist separately There are also logical reasons for the unity of American anthropology - Each subfield considers variation in time and space - Cultural Anthropologists + Anthropological Archaeologists study changes in social life and customs - Archaeologists- Use studies of living societies to imagine what life might have been life in the past - Biological Anthropologists- Examine evolutionary changes in human biology - Linguistic Anthropologists- Reconstruct the basics of ancient languages by studying modern ones - The subfields influence each other

Globalization-

Encompasses a series of processes that work transnationally to promote change in a world in which nations and people are increasingly interlinked and mutually dependent - The forces= international commerce and finance, travel and tourism, transnational migration, and the media The media help propel a transnational culture of consumption Emigrants transmit information and resources transnationally (via Skype, FT, Texting, etc)

Morphology-

Studies how sounds combine to form morphemes- words and their meaningful parts

Ethnography: Anthropology's Distinctive Strategy

Ethnographers have tried to understand the whole of a particular culture (or as much as they can) - They adopt a free-ranging strategy for gathering information - They move from setting to setting, person to person, and place to place to discover the totality and interconnectedness of social life - They draw on varied techniques

Observation and Participant Observation

Ethnographers must pay attention to hundred of details of daily life, seasonal events, and unusual happenings - Record what they see as they see it - Record their impressions in a personal diary, which is kept separate from more formal field notes - Such aspects include distinctive smells, noises people make, how they cover their mouths when the eat, and how they gaze at each other - These aspects are called "The imponderabilia of native life and typical behavior" - These features of culture are so fundamental that natives take them for granted First impressions are also very valuable and should be recorded

Key Cultural Consultants/Key Informants-

Every community has people who by accident, experience, talent, or training can provide the most complete or useful information about particular aspects of life

On another level, such traits can also be maladaptive ->

Ex) Chlorofluorocarbons (found in some air conditioners) have been banned because they deplete the ozone layer Many modern cultural patterns may be maladaptive in the long run - Ex) Policies that encourage overpopulation, poor food-distribution systems, overconsumption, and environmental degradation

Sociolinguistics

Examine dialects + styles in a single language to show how speech reflects social differences

Ethnology-

Examines, compares, analyzes, and interprets the results of ethnography-- the data gathered in different societies - They look beyond the particular to the more general and they attempt to ID and explain cultural differences and similarities, to test hypotheses, and to build theory to enhance our understanding of how social and cultural systems work - Also get their data from anthropological archaeology

Linguistic Anthropologists

Explore the role of language in colonization + globalization

International Culture-

Extends beyond and across national boundaries - Can spread through borrowing or diffusion - Because of diffusion, migration, colonialism, and globalization, many cultural traits and patterns have acquired international scope

Generalities-

Features common to several but not all human groups

Particularities-

Features unique to certain cultural traditions

Quentin Atkinson

Focused on a set of vocabulary items known to be resistant to linguistic change - Pronouns, parts of the body, and family relations - Researchers compared these words with the PIE ancestral word - Cognates - When the word was a cognate, the researchers scored it 1; when it was not, it was scored a 0 - Then, the researchers could establish a family tree showing the relationships among the 103 languages - Based on those relationships + the geographic areas where the daughter languages are spoken, the computer determined the likeliest routes of movement from an origin - The calculation pointed to Anatolia

William Labov

Focused on whether r was pronounced after vowels - To get data on how this linguistic variation correlated with social class, he used a series of rapid encounters with employees in three NYC department stores, each of which had prices that attracted different socioeconomic groups - Saks, Macys, and S.Klein's - He then calculated the % of workers who pronounced r at least once during the interview - 62% at Saks, 51% at Macy's, and 20% at S. Klein's - He also found that personnel on upper floors (where more expensive items are sold) pronounced r more often - R= clearly associated with prestige (interviewers clearly used speech evaluations to make judgments) "Proper language" becomes a strategic resource-- a path to wealth, prestidge, and power

Longitudinal Studies, Team Research, and Multisited Ethnography

Geography limits anthropologists much less now than in the past - Modern transportation also allows them to return to the field repeatedly - We can even follow the people we study as they move from village to city, across the border, etc.

Culture is an attribute not of individuals per se but of individuals as members of ____

Groups - Culture is transmitted in society - Shared beliefs, values, memories, and expectations link people who grow in the same culture - Although a culture constantly changes, certain fundamental beliefs, values, worldviews, and child-rearing practices endure - Ex) American emphasis on self-reliance and independent achievement We are most likely to agree with and feel comfortable with people who are socially, economically, and culturally similar to ourselves

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)-

Has arisen in an attempt to conserve each society's cultural base-- its core beliefs, knowledge, and practices - Much traditional cultural knowledge has commercial value - Ex) Cultivated plants, foods, folklore, arts, etc.

Formal Support

Help from associations and institutions

Informal Support

Help from people who care about them

Anthropologists share certain key assumptions...

Idea that sound conclusions about "human nature" cannot be derives from studying a single population, nation, society, or cultural tradition

Cultures are integrated, patterned systems

If one part of the system (the economy) changes, other parts also change (behavior regarding marriage, family, and children) Cultures are integrated simply by their dominant economic activities and related social patterns but also by sets of values, ideas, symbols, and judgments - A set of characteristic Core Values (key, basic, central values) integrates each culture and helps distinguish it from others

An example of emic vs etic approach...

Illness refers to a culture's (emic) perception and explanation of bad health, whereas disease refers to the scientific (etic) explanation of poor health, involving known pathogens Ethnographers typically combine emic and etic strategies

People live multilocally....

In different places and cultures at once - Learn to play various social roles and to change depending on the situation

The effects of globalization are not always welcome...

Indigenous peoples have devised various ways to deal with threats to their autonomy, ID, and livelihood Anti-globalization activists fault those organizations (WTO, IMF, etc.) for policies that, they say, promote corporate wealth at the expense of farmers, workers, and others at the bottom of the economy Protesters also include environmentalists seeking tougher environmental regulations and trade unionists advocating global labor standard

Dan Jurafsky

In his book The Language of Food he describes a recent study based on the measurement of sociolinguistic variation - Analyzed the menus of 6,500 contemporary American restaurants - 1 Goal) See how the food vocab of upscale restaurants differed from those of cheaper establishments - The upscale restaurants paid more attention to the sources of the foods they served - Careful to mention if the season was right - Upscale menu words averaged half a letter longer than in the cheaper restaurants (every increase of one letter in the average length of words describing a dish meant an average increase of .18 in the price of that dish) - Cheaper establishments= more likely to use linguistic fillers (delicious, tasty, mouthwatering, etc.) (each positive vague word for a dish in a modest restaurant reduced its average price by 9 percent) - Downscale restaurants were also more likely to assure their diners that their offerings were "fresh" Goal 2) Analyze vocab used in 1 million online Yelp restaurant reviews, representing seven American cities - Found that the bad + good reviews differed linguistically - Reviewers used a greater variety of words, with more differentiated meanings, to express negative rather than positive opinions (negative differentiation) + this happens in other languages, too - Bad reviews were more likely to use the inclusive pronouns we and us (traumatized people seek comfort in groups by emphasizing their belonging)

Edward Taylor

In his book, "Primitive Culture", he proposed that cultures, systems of human behavior and thought, obey natural laws and therefore can be studied scientifically - "Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" - People get their culture from growing up in a certain society and not from biology Some quick facts about this man from my notes... - Father of Anthropology - Functionalist - Evolutionist - Knowledge Accumulation - Everybody has the same mental capacity - Culture is universal

Linguistic Diversity within Nations

In many multilingual nations, people use two or more languages on different occasions (one for home + one for public settings) - In Indian where some 22 languages are spoken, a person may need to use three different languages when talking - Whether bilingual or not, we all vary our speech in different contexts (Style Shifts) - In certain parts of Europe, people regularly switch dialects (Diglossia) - Applies to high and low variants of the same language (people employ the high variant at college and in writing, professions, and the mass media; people employ the low variant for ordinary convos) Just as social situations influence our speech, so do geographic, cultural, and socio-economic differences - Many dialects coexist in the United States - Different dialects are equally effective as systems of communication, which is the main job of language - Our tendency to think of some languages as cruder or more sophisticated than others is a social rather than a linguistic judgment - We rank certain speech patterns as better or worse because we recognize that they are used by groups that we also rank

Life Histories

In nonindustrial societies, individual personalities, interests, and abilities vary - Often, when they find someone unusually interesting, they collect his/her Life history

Traditional ethnographic research focused on a single community or "culture"

In recent years, ethnography has shifted toward studies of change and of contemporary flows of people, technology, images, and information Fieldwork must also be more flexible and on a larger scale - Ethnography increasingly is multitimed and multisited - Also important in contemporary ethnography is increased recognition of power differentials and how they affect cultures, and of the importance of diversity within cultures and societies Anthropologist increasingly study people in motion

Doing Anthropology Right and Wrong: Ethical Issues

In the context of international contacts and cultural diversity, different ethical codes and value systems will meet, and sometimes challenge, one another - Anthropologists must be sensitive to cultural differences and aware of procedures and standards in the host country - The researcher must inform officials and colleagues in the host country about the purpose, funding, and likely results, products, and impacts of their research - Informed Consent - Should be obtained from anyone who provides information or who might be affected by the research

Human Rights-

Invokes a realm of justice and morality beyond and superior to the laws and customs of particular countries, cultures, and religions - Such rights are seen as international and inalienable - The UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights -> describe nearly all the human rights that have been IDed nationally

Subgroups-

Languages within a taxonomy of related languages that are most closely related - Dialects of a single parent language become distinct daughter languages, especially if they are isolated from one another - Some of them split and form "granddaughter" languages - If people remain in the homeland, their speech patterns also change -The evolving speech in the ancestral homeland should be considered a daughter language like the others

Genealogical Method-

Is a well-established ethnographic technique - Early ethnographers developed notion and symbols to deal with kinship, descent, and marriage - Genealogy is a prominent building block in the social organization of nonindustrial societies, where people live and work each day with their close kin - Another term for such cultures is kin-based societies because everyone is related - Marriage is also crucial in organizing nonindustrial societies

Longitudinal Research-

Is the long-term study of an area or a population, usually based on repeated visits - Often uses team research - Periodic censuses provide basic data on population, economy, kinship, and religious behavior Ex) The study of Gwembe District (1956) by Elizabeth Colson and Thayer Scudder - Has studied four villages in different areas for 60 years - The initial focus was the impact of a large hydroelectric dam, which subjected the Gwembe people to forced resettlement - Thereafter, they examined how education provided access to new opportunities even as it also widened a social gap between people with different educational levels - They then focused on a change in brewing and drinking patterns

Enculturation-

Is the process by which a child learns his or her culture - Sometimes culture is taught directly - We also acquire culture through observation (of what is right and wrong)

Biological Anthropology-

Is the study of human biological diversity through time and as it exists in the world today - There are five specialties... 1) Human biological evolution as revealed by the fossil record (paleoanthropology) 2) Human genetics 3) Human growth and development 4) Human biological plasticity (the living body's ability to change as it copes with environmental conditions, such as heat, cold, and altitude) 5) Primatology (the study of monkeys, apes, and other nonhuman primates) They are all interested in biological variations among humans These varied interests link biological anthropology to other fields: biology, zoology, geology, anatomy, physiology, medicine, and public health Biological anthropology also investigates the influence of environment on the body as it grows and matures - Some environmental factors are nutrition, altitude, temperature, and disease Biological anthropology (along with zoology) also includes primatology - Primatologists study apes and monkeys biology, evolution, behavior, and social life, often in their natural environments - Primatology assists paleoanthropology, because primate behavior and social organization may shed light on early human behavior and human nature

Ethnocentrism-

Is the tendency to view one's own culture as superior and to apply one's own cultural values in judging the behavior and beliefs of people raised in other cultures - Contributes to social solidarity- a sense of value and community, among people who share a cultural tradition - People everywhere think that familiar explanations, opinions, and customs are true, right, proper, and moral (and VV) - Often, other societies are not considered fully human

Problem-Oriented Ethnography

It is impossible to study everything - Contemporary ethnographic fieldwork generally is aimed at investigating one or more specific topics of problems - Ex) Marriage practices, gender roles, religion, or economic change - In researching a specific problem, they often need to look beyond local people for relevant data - Government agencies or international organizations may have gathered information on such matters - Often, however, depending on the problem they are investigating, anthropologists have to do their own measurements of such variables as field size, yields, dietary quantities, or time allocation

Penelope Eckert

Leads an ongoing research project called Voice of California - Depression-era migrants from Oklahoma's Dust Bowl have left their mark on inland California speech - Another factor contributing to diversity is how people feel about their home community vs. the outside world - When people want to stay involved in their home community, they tend to talk like locals - A desire not to be perceived as being from a particular place can motivate people to change their speech - Ethnicity also influences speech patterns - Spanish-like vowels influence the way English is spoken even by Hispancis who learn English first

William Rathje

Learned a great deal about contemporary life by studying modern garbage - It provides evidence of what people did, not what they think they did or what they should have done

Focal Vocabulary

Lexicon influences perception - Ex) Eskimos have several words for different types of snow (in English we only have one word) - Thus, Eskimos recognize and think about differences in snow that English speakers do not see

Social Universals...

Life in groups

Biologically Based Universals...

Long period of infant dependency, year-round sexuality, and a complex brain that enables us to use symbols, languages, and tools

Paleoecology

Looks at the ecosystems of the past Archaeologists may infer cultural transformations by observing changes in the size and type of site and the distance between them - The number of settlement levels (city, town, village, hamlet) in a society is a measure of social complexity - Buildings offer clues about political and religious features - The presence/absence of certain structures reveal differences in function between settlements Archaeologists also reconstruct behavior patterns and lifestyles of the past by excavating - Involves digging through levels at a particular site - Can document changes in economic, social, and political activities

Sign Language:

More recent experiments have shown that apes can learn to use, if not speak, true language The first chimp to learn ASL= Washoe - She gradually acquired a vocab of more than 100 signs representing English words - She even began to combine as many as five signs into sentences The second chimp to learn ASL= Lucy - After acquiring language, Washoe and Lucy exhibited several human traits: swearing, joking, telling lies, and trying to teach each other language - Washoe called her neighbors "dirty monkeys" (when she was angry) - Lucy called her neighbors "dirty cats" (when she was angry) Because of their size + strength as adults -> gorillas are

Inalienable

Nations can not abridge or terminate them

Call Systems:

No other animal has anything approaching the complexity of language - So they use Call Systems

Anthropology originated in...

Non-Western, non-industrial societies - "Ethnography" was developed to deal with small populations - Today, even when working with modern nations, anthropologists still consider ethnography with small groups to be an excellent way of learning

Generalities occur in certain times and places but not in all cultures. Culture generality...

Nuclear family

Diffusion is forced when...

One culture subjugates another and imposes its customs on the dominated group

Local Beliefs and Perceptions, and the Ethnographer's

One goal of ethnography is to discover local views, beliefs, and perceptions, which may be compared with the ethnographer's own observations and conclusions - Ethnographers typically combine two research strategies - The emic (local-oriented) and the etic (scientist-oriented)

Although other animals, esp. Apes, have rudimentary cultural abilities...

Only humans have fully elaborated cultures-- distinctive traditions and customs transmitted over the generations through learning and through language

General Anthropology-

Or the "Four-Field" anthropology, includes four main subdisciplines, or subfields - Sociocultural anthropology (AKA cultural anthropology), anthropological archaeology, biological anthropology, and linguistic anthropology - Cultural Anthropology has the biggest membership

Society-

Organized life in groups - Humans share this with animals - Culture, however, is more distinctly human

The ease with which children absorb any cultural tradition rests on the uniquely elaborated human capacity to learn

Other animals may learn from experience - Social animals (wolves, apes, etc.) learn from other members of their group - But our own cultural learning depends on the uniquely developed human capacity to use Symbols

Conversation, Interviewing, and Interview Schedules

Participating in local life means that ethnographers continually talk to people and ask questions - As their knowledge of the local language and culture increases, they understand more - There are serval stages in learning a field language 1) Naming phase-- asking name after name of the objects around us - We begin to understand simple convo between two villagers - If our language expertise proceeds far enough, we eventually become able to comprehend rapid-fire public discussions

Techniques used to date fossils and artifacts have come to anthropology from ...

Physics, chemistry, and geology

National Geographic's Enduring Voices

Project that strives to preserve endangered languages by IDing the geographic areas with unique, poorly understood, or threatened languages + by documenting those languages + cultures - The endangerment rate is high in an area encompassing Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico - The top hot spot is northern Australia - Other hot spots are in Central South America, the Pacific Northwest of North America, and eastern Siberia

Ethnography-

Provides an account of a particular culture, society, or cumming - The ethnographer gathers data that she organizes, analyzes, and interprets to develop that account, which may be in the form of a book, an article, or a film - Traditionally, they lived in small communities and studied local behavior, beliefs, customs, social life, economic activities, politics, and religion - Their perspective differs radically from that of economics or political science (these fields focus on national and official organizations and policies and often on elites) - The groups that anthropologists traditionally have studies usually have been poor and powerless

Culture is both ____ and ____

Public and individual (how people think, feel, and act) The individual and culture are linked because human social life is a process in which individuals internalize the meanings of public messages - Then, people influence culture by converting their private understandings into public expressions

Psychologist Francine "Penny" Patterson

Raised the full-grown female gorilla Koko - Koko's vocab surpasses that of any chimp (more than 1,000 signs + regularly uses 800 of those signs) - Also recognizes 2,000 spoken words - Koko + the chimps also show that apes share still another linguistic ability with humans: Productivity - Ex) Lucy used gestures she already knew to create "drinkfruit" for "watermelon" - Apes have also demonstrated linguistic Displacement- - Ex) Koko displayed sorrow about having bitten Patterson three days earlier

Life history-

Recollection of a lifetime of experiences provides a more intimate and personal cultural portrait than would be possible otherwise - May be audio or video recorded for later review-- reveal how specific people perceive, react to, and contribute to changes that affect their lives

Cultural Consultant-

Refers to individuals the ethnographer gets to know in the field, the people who teach him or her about their culture, who provide the emic perspective

Syntax-

Refers to the arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences - Ex) Do nouns or verbs usually come first

Biocultural-

Refers to using and combining both biological and cultural perspectives and approaches to analyze and understand a particular issue or problem - recognizes that cultural forces constantly mold human biology - Culture is a key environmental force in determining how human bodies grow and develop - Cultural traditions promote certain activities and abilities, discourage others, and set standards of physical well-being and attractiveness - Ex) Cultural standards of attractiveness and propriety influence participation and achievement in sports AKA Although our genetic attributes provide a foundation for growth and development, human biology is fairly plastic - Culture affects our development as much as do nutrition, heat, cold, and altitude - Culture also guides our emotional and cognitive growth and helps determine the kinds of personalities we have as adults

Among the many topics studied by contemporary cultural anthropologists are...

Rural-urban and transnational migration, urban adaption, inner-city life, ethnic diversity and conflict, crime, and warfare

Key differences between anthropology and sociology eventually emerged ->

S -> industrial West A -> Nonindustrial societies Different methods of data collection and analysis were developed to deal with these different kinds of societies S -> questionnaires (sampling and stats) A -> Ethnography

Symbols-

Signs that have no necessary or natural connection to the things they stand for, or signify - People create, remember, and deal with ideas - There need be no obvious, natural, or necessary connection between a symbol and the thing that it symbolizes - No other animal has developed anything approaching the complexity of language, with its multitude of symbols There is also a rich array of nonverbal symbols - Ex) Flags stand for various countries - What something stands for is arbitrary and conventional

Purity

Social harmony, coherence, logic, etc.

Closest discipline to cultural anthropology =

Sociology (Sociologists study society) - Differences between CA and S = the kinds of societies traditionally studied by each discipline - S -> contemporary Western, industrial societies - CA -> Non-industrial and non-western societies - They also use different techniques to study their societies - Contemporary Western societies (which tend to be large-scale and complex) sociologists rely on surveys and other means of fathering quantifiable data - Statistical training has been fundamental in sociology - Working in smaller societies, anthropologists can get to know almost everyone and have less need for sampling + stats - Anthropology, we might say, is more personal and less formal than sociology - However, because anthropologists are working increasingly in modern nations, use of sampling and stats is becoming more common

Social and Linguistic Variation:

Some stereotypes (about how people in other regions talk) spread by the media, are more generalized than others are - Side note-- many people do not think midwesterners have accents - But, they have many different pronunciations of the e vowel sound

Linguistics and anthropologists are interested in what people do say, rather than what they should say

Speech differences are associated with, and tell us a lot about, social variation, such as region, education, ethnic background, and gender - Men and women talk differently - Women peripheralize their vowels, whereas men tend to centralize them - Men are more likely to speak "ungrammatically" - Men + women differ in their use of color terms - Men make more distinctions in the domain of sports - No language is a uniform system in which everyone talks just like everyone else

Linguistic Anthropology-

Studies language in its social and cultural context,throughout the world and over time -Some make inferences about universal features, perhaps linked to uniformities in the brain - Others reconstruct ancient languages - Others study linguistic differences to discover varied perceptions and patterns of thought in different cultures - Historical linguistics considers variations in time, such as the changes in sounds, grammar, and vocab between Middle English and Modern English

Phonemics-

Studies only the significant sound contrasts (phonemes) of a given language - Ex) In SPanish the contrast between [b] and [v] does not distinguish meaning, and they therefore are not phonemes - In any language, a given phoneme extends over a phonetic range - In English the phoneme /p/ ignores the phonetic contrast between the [p] in pin and the [p] in spin

Sociolinguistics

Study contemporary variation in speech

Paleoanthropologists

Study the fossil record of human evolution - Paleoanthropologists often collaborate with archaeologists in reconstructing biological and cultural aspects of human evolution - Fossils and tools are often found together - Different types of tools provide information about the habits, customs, and lifestyles of the ancestral humans who used them

Focal Vocabulary-

Such specialized sets of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups Vocabulary is the area of language that changes most readily - Names for items get simpler as they become common and important - Ex) A television has become a TV

Participant Observation-

Taking part in the events one is observing, describing, and analyzing - By participating, we may learn why people find such events meaningful as we see how they are organized and conducted

Anthropologists and the Military

The AAA has deemed it of "paramount importance" that anthropoligsts study the causes of terrorism and violence

The Code of Ethics

The AAA offers a Code of Ethics to guide its members in making decisions - Its first concern is to not harm the people, animals, or artifacts being studied - The stated aim of the AAA code is to offer guidelines and to promote discussion and education, rather than to investigate possible misconduct - Some of their main points are... - Anthropologists should be open and honest about their research will all people affected (they should be informed about the nature, procedures, purposes, potential impacts, and sources of support for the research) - Researchers should pay attention to proper relations between themselves as guests - The AAA does not advise anthropologists to avoid taking stands on issues

Abilities on which culture rests ->

The abilities to learn, to think symbolically, to manipulate language, and to use tools and other cultural products in organizing their lives and coping with their environments - Every contemporary human population has these abilities - Our nearest relatives (chimps and gorillas) have rudimentary cultural abilities - However, no other animal has elaborated cultural abilities

What We Share With Other Primates

The ability to learn from experience and change behavior as a result - Monkeys (esp. apes) learn throughout their lives - Ex) Washing sweet potatoes - Tools! (Among birds, beavers, sea otters, and apes) - Ex) Chimps make and use stone tools to break open nuts - Hunting! - Chimps form large hunting parties (about 26 (almost all men) in the group) and they like to hunt the "red colobus monkey" - Likely that human ancestors were doing some hunting by at least 3 million years ago (based on the existence of early stone tools designed to cut meat) - But maybe we have been hunting even before then - Because chimps typically devour the monkeys they kill, leaving few remains, we may never find evidence for the first hunt The ability to benefit from experience confers a tremendous adaptive advantage, permitting the avoidance of fatal mistakes - Faced with environmental change, humans/other primates do not have to wait for a genetic/physiological response

Agency

The actions that individuals take, both along and in groups, in forming and transforming cultural IDs

Applied Anthropology-

The application of anthropological data,perspectives, theory, and methods to ID, assess, and solve contemporary social problems - "Applied Areas" such as public health, family planning, business, market research, economic development, and cultural resource management Applied Archaeology (AKA public archaeology) includes activities as cultural resource management, public educational programs, and historic preservation - Ex) Legislation requiring evaluation of sites threatened by dams, highways, etc has created an important role for public archaeology

Practice Theory

The approach to culture that recognizes that individuals within a society or culture have diverse motives and intentions and different degrees of power and influence - Such contrasts may be associated with gender, age, ethnicity, class, and other social variables - Focuses on how varied individuals manage to influence, create, and transform the world they live in - Recognizes a reciprocal relation between culture (the system) and the individual - Recognizes both constraints on individuals and the flexibility and changeability of cultures and social systems

Food Production-

The cultivation of plants and domestication of animals, which originated some 12,000-10,000 years ago, to replace foraging in most areas

Interview Schedule-

The ethnographer talks face to face with people, asks the questions, and writes down the answers - Questionnaires are much more impersonal - Interview Schedule allows ethnographers to be both quantitative and qualitative - Qualitative information came from follow-up questions, open-ended discussions, pauses for gossip, and work with key consultants

Ethnography-

The firsthand personal study of local settings - Usually entails spending a year+ in another society, living with the local people and learning about their way of life - No matter how much the anthropologists learns about the culture they are living in, they remain an alien there

Hominins-

The group that leads to humans but not chimps/gorillas and that encompasses all the human species that have ever existed

Culture's Evolutionary Basis

The human capacity for culture has an evolutionary basis that extends back 3 million years-- the date of the earliest evidence of tool manufacture (may actually extend further back if we consider tool making by chimps)

Independent Invention-

The process by which humans innovate, creatively finding solutions to problems - Faced with similar problems, different cultures come up with similar solutions - Ex) Agriculture in Mexico and the Middle East - Often a major invention triggers a series of interrelated changes - Thus, in both Mexico and the Middle East -> agriculture led to many social, political, and legal changes

Thick Description-

The process of interpreting culture as a text

Sociolinguistics-

The relationship between variations in the use of the same language among different groups (gender, class, age) and the social context in which the variation takes place It is not what you say, it is how you say it

There is an idea that people in other countries have...

The same desires, feelings, values, and aspirations that we do - Often this assumption turns out to be wrong

Descriptive Linguistics-

The scientific study of spoken language - Involves several interrelated areas of analysis: phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax

Linguistic Diversity in California

The stereotype of surfer guys + valley girls= has some accuracy - The "Valley girl accent" has been developing since the 1940s - This accent is most evident in vowles - California is even more notable, however, for its linguistic diversity

Osteology

The study of bones

Kinesics-

The study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and expressions - Linguistics pay attention to how things were said - A speaker's enthusiasm is conveyed not only through words, but also through facial expressions, gestures, etc. - Ex) We use gestures of the hand to show emphasis - A communication strategy may include altering pitch, voice level, and grammatical forms - Much of what we communicate is nonverbal + this can create problems when text - But, people can use emojis and abbreviations to fill in what would otherwise be communicated by tone of voice, laughter, and facial expressions Culture always plays a role in shaping the "natural" - Ex) Cross-culturally, nodding does not always mean affirmative - Body movements communicate social differences - Ex) Japan -> bowing is a regular part of social interaction - But in Madagascar + Polynesia -> people of lower status should not hold their heads above those of people of higher status

Cultural Anthropology-

The study of human society and culture - Describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social and cultural similarities and differences - Engage in two types of activity: ethnography (based on fieldwork) and ethnology (based on cultural comparison)

Anthropology-

The study of humans around the world and through time - Is uniquely comparative + holistic

Ecology

The study of interrelations among living things in an environment - The organisms + environment = an ecosystem

Phonetics-

The study of speech sounds in general, what people actually say in various languages or dialects

Phonology-

The study of speech sounds, considers which sounds are present and meaningful in a given language

Cognitive Linguistics

The study of the biological capacity for language and how it evolved

Holistic-

The study of the whole of the human condition

Manspreading-

The tendency for men using public transportation to open their legs and thus take up more than one place

Historical Linguistics

The tracing of the evolution of specific languages

Robin Lakoff

The use of certain types of words and expressions has been associated with women's traditional lesser power in American society - Ex) "Oh dear" = less forceful than "Damn" - Ex2) Women are more likely to use such adjectives as adorable, charming, sweet, cute, lovely, and divine than men are

Cultural Relativism-

The viewpoint that behavior in one culture should not be judged by the standards of another culture - This view also has its flaws - Argues that there is no superior, international, or universal morality (Nazi Germany would be oooki) - Some would argue that the problems with relativism can be solved by distinguishing between methodological and moral relativism - CR is a methodological position - Such an approach does not preclude making moral judgments or taking acton

Hominidae

The zoological family that includes fossil and living humans, as well as chimps and gorillas - We refer to members of this family as Hominids

Call Systems-

These vocal systems consist of a limited number of sounds--calls-- that are produced only when particular environmental stimuli are encountered - Are automatic + can not be combined (so-> less flexible than language) - Our ancestors, however, began to combine calls - The number of calls= so great that we have to rely totally on learning them (they can not all be passed from generation to generation) - Wild primates use call systems, but the vocal tract of apes is not suitable for speech - Viki (an ape that they attempted to teach to speak) learned only four words

Although archaeologists are best known for studying prehistory (the period before the invention of writing)...

They also study the cultures of historical and even living peoples

On one level, cultural traits (air conditioning) may be called adaptive if...

They help individuals cope with environmental stresses

Anthropologists study human beings ____

Wherever they find them - Anthropology is the exploration of human diversity in time and space - Anthropology studies the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future: biology, society, language, and culture - V interested in the diversity that comes through human adaptability

Respondents

Those who respond to questions during a survey

Colin Renfrew

Traced the origin of PIE to a farming population living in Anatolia (now Turkey) about 9,000 years ago

Diffusion is direct when...

Two cultures trade with, intermarry among, or wage war on one another

Cultural Rights-

Vested not in individuals but in groups, such as religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies - Ex) The right for a certain group to continue its language - What does one do about cultural rights that interfere with human rights?? - Anthropology's main job is to present accurate accounts and explanations of cultural phenomena - They do not have to approve of certain things to record their existence

Pierre Bourdieu

Views linguistic practices as symbolic capital that properly trained people may convert into economic and social capital

Emile Durkheim

Was among the founders of both sociology and anthropology - Studied the religions of Native Australians as well as mass phenomena (such as suicde rates) in modern nations

Lee Reading

We have something similar with the culture he describes in this story -> we make fun of people outside the cultural norm

Stratification and Symbolic Domination

We use and evaluate speech in the context of extralinguistic forces- social, political, and economic - Mainstream Ameicans evaluate the speech of low-status groups negatively, calling it "uneducated" - This is not because the ways of speaking are bad but because they have come to symbolize low status - Ex) Originally, American rless speech was modeled on the fashionable speech of England - New Yorkers sought prestige by dropping their r's in the 19th century - However, contemporary New Yorkers are going back to the pattern of pronouncing r's

Language

Whether written (has existed for less than 6,000 years) or spoken is our primary means of communication - Part of culture - Transmitted through learning - Based on arbitrary, learned associations between words and the things that they stand for - Allows us to discuss the past and future, share our experiences with others, and benefit from their experiences - It is study in its social and cultural context - Some reconstruct ancient languages by comparing their contemporary descendants - Others study languages to discover the varied worldviews + patterns of thought in different cultures - Sociolinguistics - Linguistic Anthropologists

Cognates

Words that clearly descend from the same ancestral word (Example: Mother and Mether)

Minimal pairs

Words that resemble each other in all but one sound (they have different meanings)

Survey Research

Working increasingly in large-scale societies, anthropologists have developed innovative ways of blending ethnography and survey research

The Hermeneutic Circle/Spiral

You have a theory + then you test it out + then you have another theory + then you test it out, cont., cont.

Science-

a "systematic field of study or body of knowledge that aims, through experiment, observation, and deduction, to produce reliable explanations of phenomena, with references to the material and physical world" - Besides its links to the natural sciences and social sciences, anthropology also has strong links to the humanities (English, lit, etc) - Cultural anthropology and linguistic anthropology in particular bring a comparative and nonelitist perspective to forms of creative expression, including language, art, narratives, music, and dance, viewed in their social and cultural context

Survey Research-

involves sampling, impersonal data collection, and statistical analysis - Draws a sample from a much larger population - Very impersonal -> call the people they study Respondents - During sampling, researchers gather information about age, gender, religion, occupation, income, and political party - These characteristics (variables) are known to influence political decisions - Many more variables affect social IDs, experiences, and activities in a modern nation than in the small communities where ethnography grew up - These social predictors include age, religion, level of education, the region of the country, whether we come from a town, suburb, or city, our parent's professions, ethnic origins, and income levels - Because we must be able to detect, measure, and compare the influence of social indicators, many contemporary anthropological studies have a statistical foundation

Daughter Languages-

languages that descend from the same parent language and that have been changing separately for hundreds or even thousands of years - The original language from which they diverge= Protolanguage - Ex) French= daughter language of Latin - Ex) The Romance languages and the Germanic languages all belong to the indo-European (IE) language family - Ex) Proto-Indo-European (PIE), spoken in the more distant past, was the common protolanguage of Latin, proto-Germanic, and many other ancient languages

Ethnographic present-

the period before Westernization, when the "true" native culture flourished - Anthropologists now recognize that the ethnographic present is a rather unrealistic construct - Cultures have been in contact-- and have been changing-- throughout history (most native cultures had at least one major foreign encounter before any anthro. ever came their way) Contemporary ethnographers have abandoned the goals of salvage ethnography and ethnographic realism for more dynamic approaches that recognize connectedness and change - Contemporary ethnographies usually recognize that cultures change constantly and than an ethnographic account applies to a particular moment