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