Hello, how's everybody?
I say that as if somebody's gonna answer me because why would I ask if nobody's gonna answer, right?
We, today, are going to be talking about language and culture.
So, let's go ahead and start.
Remember this from another episode that I gave? "Language is power life and the instrument of culture,
the instrument of domination and liberation".
So, there we have language and
culture, language and power.
Let's get a little bit more into
that.
We're gonna be looking at linguistic anthropology today.
Mutually constitutive - I've practiced that word over and over.
I don't really know how to say it - pronounce it, but that's my best guess.
Constitutive relationships among language, culture, and society, or human sociality.
So, you're seeing the relationship between language, culture, society.
It's constitutive because language doesn't reflect society and culture, but constitutes it.
What do you think?
And also, is constituted by it as well.
Basically, what we're talking about is - what is the role of language?
We're looking at the world of social action
where words are embedded and
constitutive of special cultural - specific cultural activities.
This little line should be a little bit lower, because I wanted to underline that.
Telling stories, asking favors, greetings, praying, directions, insults, etc.
So, I wanted to focus on two today to try to hone in on a little bit of those greetings and giving directions.
These are all cultural, like when you say, "Hi", to somebody.
You don't really think about it at the time. Like me, I say, "How are you doing?"
I'm expecting somebody to say something back or at least say, "Hey."
But, I'm behind the monitor here. So, I'm
talking to myself...
There are many acceptable ways to greet
someone in American English culture.
"Hey! How are you?", "Good morning.", "Wassup?". I'm sure you can think of 10 more right now.
So, each situation is gonna be different depending on the politeness, the speaker roles -
am I the teacher, am I the student, am I the mom, am I the daughter -
And, turn-taking rules, which vary amongst different cultures, even within the same language, different cultures, right?
So, let's look at these four questions.
Who says this? Who says, "Hey! How
are you?"
What do you think?
And in what situation?
So, for me, it would be a
colleague - "Hey, how are you doing?"
And, it's in a situation where you're passing in the hallway and you're in  between classes, "Hey how are you?"
It's like, I see you, I care, but I gotta go.
Is a response expected? I think so, generally.
But, maybe not. Just, "Hey, how are you?", "Hey, how are you?".
That could even be a response.
What do people say in response? "I'm good."
"Everything's good."
"I'm tired." Something like that. So, in English, we can do that. We can have a very short interaction.
I would say, in Spanish, if you ask somebody how they're doing, you need to expect a 10 minute response.
"Well, first of all, when I woke up this morning this happened, and then when I came...", right?
So, even though you may
know the words of how to say that in
another language, that doesn't mean that
you understand what your role is as a
speaker and as a listener.
So, "good morning" - that may be a little bit more formal. I would say that to my boss.
I wouldn't say, "Hey how are you doing?" or "Wassup?", right? I would say, "Good morning", "Good afternoon", to my boss.
Do I expect a response? Well, if my boss feels like responding. Otherwise, no not really.
What would she say in a response? "Hi, it's nice to see you.", or something like that.
So, I need to consider politeness there with me with my boss. I need to consider politeness.
We all do, depending on what our roles are. These are all - they all go hand in hand. The turn taking.
I want to tell you a story about that.
Most evenings, though, I'm having more of a hard time doing this, this summer for whatever reason.
Most evenings we have
dinner together as a family at the table.
That's one thing that I really like to do. If it's 10 minutes for us to all be together, it's just very important to me.
So, if I tell my kids, "We're having dinner, you need to be here at this time", then they know, "Okay, mom."
So, at least a couple nights a week. And so, my little daughter Leila, who's 9, she -
turn taking is different in English than it is in Panamanian Spanish, at least.
So, my family - I'm from Atlanta, but my parents are from Philadelphia.
And they're very kind of reserved and quiet. Everybody has a turn. You take turns.
I say something, there's really not a lot of overlap, unless it's like, "Oh, excuse me. I'm sorry, go ahead", right?
But in Panama, the first time I went, I
thought everybody was mad at each other
because they're all screaming at each
other, and they're all talking over each other.
So, that's what they do.
So, Leila gets really upset if she's talking and somebody, in her mind, is interrupting her.
And I say, "Leila, this is like the Panamanian style of how people talk.
So, you have to kind of get into the conversation. Talk louder than the other person".
Anyway, that's my little story about turn-taking.
You guys probably have one yourselves. I would love to hear it, if I could hear you speaking right now.
But you can think about it.
The other one that I wanted to talk about is giving directions.
So, giving directions, you could either - I don't want to get too much into spatial relations right now.
But, what I want to do is talk about how much information, and whether or not that information is true.
Following the pragmatic Grice's Maxim's that we all expect for some - what somebody's saying to be true,
but, in another culture, perhaps they don't want to appear that they don't know, so they just say something.
They want to try to help you, it's not like they have a bad intention. They just want to be able to help somebody.
So, they say, "Well, go up a couple blocks and then take a right and then keep going down the street until you find..."
So, I studied in Mexico, and I asked directions a few times, and I don't know where I ended up.
I had no smartphone, no Google, nothing.
Somehow, I made it back to where I was
supposed to be. Did they do that with bad intentions?
No, their intention is trying to be helpful.
For somebody from the United States, to me, that was them not respecting me and my time
because time is so important to Americans, to people from United States.
And, when they say, "Go up, take a left, keep going, take a right at this," and it's all jumbled up in my mind.
Even if they did tell me the truth about where it is, I don't know if I would be able to find it.
Maybe that's the thing in the past because, now, we have a phone and it'll tell you where to go.
So, giving directions as well. The idea is that you want to think about what are the values of the culture?
And, what does that tell you about the way that they speak?
And, what is the way people speak, tell you about the values in their culture?
So, we're also going to talk about "iconic signs", "indexical signs".
So, this is all in indexicality. "Iconic signs", "indexical signs", and "symbolic" or "arbitrary signs".
This is a little confusing. And it's even a little
confusing to me because I have to keep
looking up which means what, but I want to explain it to you.
Iconic signs actually look like what
they represent.
So, a photograph represents this particular cat. A cat looks like this. My cat doesn't look like that.
It has like really pointy long ears, huh? But he's still cute.
So, the real image of a cat.
It could also be an onomatopoetic expression. I usually say that in Spanish, so it's kind of confusing to me to say it in English.
So, something that sounds like what it would be, "buzz" or "swoop" or "swoosh", right?
"Swoosh". That kind of looks like what it sounds like, right?
By the way, these don't necessarily match cross cultures and across languages
because I say that the rooster says, "cock-a-doodle-doo". My husband says,
"No way the rooster says that. The rooster says, 'quiquiriquí, cucurrcu'."
And I'm like no he doesn't, I don't hear it.
Iconic signs. Indexical signs have a connection to what they represent and are suggestive.
So, it's not a direct resemblance.
Like the iconic, there is a connection but it's not necessarily direct. So, it's indirect.
So, if I look at the swoosh, or the swoop, or swoosh.
Indirect - "Oh, this must be about
sports because I see the Nike." No?
So, indirectly indexical. "Oh, that sign's representing this." It's not direct, right?
Not really. I mean, I guess you could think about the swoop or the swoosh but...
[Shrugs]
And then lastly, we have symbolic which is arbitrary.
Have a meaning that must be culturally learned because they don't actually look like what they represent.
So, the example here is a red light, means stop.
Yeah? A swoop or a swoosh, means "Nike".
Do you think that?
You know Macklemore's song about the shoes, and what the symbol that they are - what they represent.
If you haven't heard it, I'll have to
send you the link.
So, if you want to look at these concepts but in a different way, I just gave you one more up here.
"Indexical". If you see cat poop or
a fur ball, "Oh, that's from a cat."
That's a cat, this person has a cat.
There's a connection.
"Iconic". A picture or a "meow".
So, this is what it represents, kind of.
And then, "symbolic". The letter - the word C-A-T, that's symbolic. The word "cat"
because we could call anything else a
cat, right? It's arbitrary.
The other thing I want to talk about is a "cultural lens".
So, when I was saying that you need to consider what values a culture holds dear and how they express
that through language or vice versa, expressing through language what values
you hold or that the language possibly
determines your values, which is something else.
In English, we think about
time and money. Spending money, spending time.
"Spending time".
How long do you spend in the line - in the drive-through at In-N-Out?
Maybe 20 minutes, if it's really busy but, usually - like, McDonald's it's like 5 minutes.
If it's more than 5 minutes it's just so frustrating. I'm wasting time.
Except, now, you got a smart phone. You can just you know snap while you're in line.
Whatever, but you still feel like you're wasting time, right?
Other cultures don't have that. There's no wasting time.
"Investing time". So, time is is is almost like a currency because you spend money, you spend time, you waste time,
you waste money, you invest money, invest time in a project.
I'm giving you my time, that's what I'm giving you, and you can budget your time.
So, think about the relationship there and how, if you know another culture - what is their concept of time?
It's probably not the same.
In Panama once, I spent like 45 minutes in the McDonald's drive-through.
And I was like, "This concept of drive-through, they just don't get it. So why do they have it?"
"Cultural lens". Here, we're looking at kinship terms.
So, this is another way that cultures express their value and their thought process through terms, through terminology.
So, the terms in English are based on gender.
So, here on this little slide, the triangle is male, and the circles are female.
You're either male or female, pretty much.
Unless, you're not.
And then, that's a whole other issue that we could discuss for 20 hours.
"Generation".
So, here's one generation. You go down to the next generation, you go down to the next generation.
Some people don't - some
languages don't have that.
So, think about this.
Some languages don't distinguish
between if it's male or female.
And then you have the line for kinship terms for English, a direct line.
So, mother, son, daughter; mother, daughter, or son. That's direct.
It's more vertical, kind of.
And then, "collateral", which sounds kind of funny. Collateral. So, an aunt and a nephew or niece, there.
I want to show you the difference between English language thinking and Seneca kinship terminology.
Just so you have a little bit of an idea of what I'm talking about, the differences.
They have different terms for older and younger. However, they don't have different terms for a cousin.
They're all either sisters, son, brother.
So, if you're looking at -
here, with the direct line and collateral -
that's really blurred there's really not -
they don't really think about that. They do gender, right? So, let's look at this.
My mother's sister's daughter. My mother's sister's daughter. Here I am, right?
That would be my cousin.
But, nope. It's sister. Sister, sister, sister, sister or brother.
Sorry, brother would be the triangle.
My mother's sister's son. So, my mother's sister's son is my son.
No, is my mother's son. It would be my cousin.
My father's brother's daughter. Father's brother's daughter would be my sister.
Crazy.
There's not that distinction between - the nuclear family is not there, like we have it in English.
So, that's just one example that I thought you would enjoy.
And, I'll see you next time. Bye!
