Deck 14: Language and Communication

Question 1

Sapir and Whorf argued that the grammatical categories of different languages lead their speakers to think about things in particular ways.However,studies on the differences between female and male Americans with regard to the color terms they use suggest that

A) changes in the U.S. economy, society, and culture have had no impact on the use of color terms, or on any other terms for that matter.
B) contrary to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it might be more reasonable to say that changes in culture produce changes in language and thought, rather than the reverse.
C) in support of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, different languages produce different ways of thinking.
D) women and men are equally sensitive to the marketing tactics of the cosmetic industry.
E) women spend more money on status goods than do men.

Answer 1

contrary to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it might be more reasonable to say that changes in culture produce changes in language and thought, rather than the reverse.

Question 2

________ refers to the specialized set of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups.

A) Syntactical vocabulary
B) Spatial vocabulary
C) Focal vocabulary
D) Vernacular vocabulary
E) Temporal vocabulary

Answer 2

Focal vocabulary

Question 3

Recent research on the origins of language suggests that a key mutation might have something to do with it.Comparing chimp and human genomes,it appears that

A) chimps lack the tongue-rolling gene that all humans have, which might explain why they struggle to achieve clear speech.
B) chimps share with humans all the genetic propensities for language but lack the language-activation mutation.
C) a speech-friendly mutation occurred among Neandertals in Europe and spread to other human populations through gene flow.
D) the speech-friendly form of FOXP2 took hold in humans some 150,000 years ago, thus conferring selective advantages (linguistic and cultural abilities) that allowed those who had it to spread it, at the expense of those who did not.
E) the speech mutation occurred even before the hominin line split from the rest of the hominids.

Answer 3

the speech-friendly form of FOXP2 took hold in humans some 150,000 years ago, thus conferring selective advantages (linguistic and cultural abilities) that allowed those who had it to spread it, at the expense of those who did not.

Question 4

What term refers to the arrangement and order of words into sentences?

A) syntax
B) lexicon
C) grammar
D) phonology
E) morphology

Question 5

What is the term for variations in speech due to different contexts or situations?

A) linguistic confusion
B) situational syntax
C) contextual phonetics
D) Chomskian verbosity
E) style shifting

Question 6

Language and communication involve much more than just verbal speech.The study of communication through body movements,stances,gestures,and facial expressions is known as

A) linguistic physiology.
B) biosemantics.
C) kinesics.
D) protolinguistics.
E) diglossia.

Question 7

What is the study of the sounds used in speech?

A) phones
B) phonemes
C) phonology
D) phonetics
E) phonemics

Question 8

A sociolinguist studies

A) the interaction of history and sociology.
B) cross-cultural comparisons of phonemic distinctions.
C) the universal grammar of language.
D) linguistic competence.
E) speech in its social context.

Question 9

What are phonemes?

A) the rules by which deep structure is translated into surface structure
B) regional differences in dialect
C) syntactical structures that distinguish passive constructions from active ones
D) the minimal sound contrasts that distinguish meaning in a language
E) electromagnetic signals that carry messages between speakers in a telephone conversation

Question 10

Linguistic anthropologists also are interested in investigating the structure of language and how it varies across time and space.What is the study of the forms in which sounds combine to form words?

A) phonology
B) syntax
C) morphology
D) lexicon
E) grammar

Question 11

Just as in other areas of anthropology,the study of language involves investigating what is or isn't shared across human populations and why these differences or similarities exist.The linguist Noam Chomsky has argued that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language,so that all languages have a common structural basis.He calls this set of rules

A) the evolutionary linguistic imprint.
B) linguistic structuralism.
C) generalities.
D) a global mental map.
E) the universal grammar.

Question 12

Which of the following was studied by Sapir and Whorf?

A) the interaction of thought and surface structure
B) the influence of language on thought
C) the influence of deep structure on surface structure
D) the influence of deep structure on semantic domains
E) the influence of culture on language

Question 13

What is the term for the ability to create new expressions by combining other expressions?

A) displacement
B) diglossia
C) productivity
D) morphemic utility
E) phonemic utility

Question 14

Which of the following statements about chimpanzee call systems is NOT true?

A) They consist of a limited number of sounds.
B) Like language, they include displacement and cultural transmission.
C) They consist of sounds that vary in intensity and duration.
D) Calls cannot be combined when multiple stimuli are present.
E) They are stimuli dependent.

Question 15

Cultural-including linguistic-diversity is alive,well,and thriving in many countries.Local entrepreneurs and international companies such as Google,Yahoo,and Microsoft that capitalize on that diversity are positioned to succeed.Their success depends,however,in large part on

A) their ability to creatively impose their product on others.
B) their capacity to take a biocultural approach to marketing.
C) external market forces that have little to do with people's cultural, including linguistic, preferences.
D) their ability to hire workers from the markets they hope to enter and teach them the values of their corporate culture.
E) their capacity to follow one of the main lessons of applied anthropology, that external inputs fit best when tailored properly to local settings.

Question 16

Which of the following statements about sociolinguists is NOT true?

A) They are concerned more with performance than with competence.
B) They look at society and at language.
C) They are concerned with linguistic change.
D) They focus on surface structure.
E) They are more interested in the rules that govern language than the actual use of language in everyday life.

Question 17

The lexicon of a language is

A) a dictionary containing all of its morphemes and their meanings.
B) its degree of complexity.
C) the set of rules that govern the written but not spoken language.
D) its symbolic and poetic value.
E) the range of speech sounds.

Question 18

Research on the communication skills of nonhuman primates reveals their inability to refer to objects that are not immediately present in their environment,such as food and danger.The ability to describe things and events that are not present is called

A) cultural transmission.
B) displacement.
C) linguistic imagination.
D) phonology.
E) productivity.

Question 19

A key feature of language that helps explain anthropologists' continued interest in studying it is that it

A) enables us to compare human and nonhuman primate linguistic grammars.
B) tells us a lot about the present, although nothing about the past.
C) is always changing.
D) helps them distinguish between the more and less evolved human races.
E) rarely changes, so it provides a good window into linguistic uses of the past.

Question 20

What term refers to the existence of "high" and "low" dialects within a single language?

A) displacement
B) diglossia
C) semantics
D) kinesics
E) lexicon

Question 21

Sapir and Whorf argued that all humans share a single set of universal grammatical categories.

Question 22

Syntax refers to the rules that dictate the order of words in a language.

Question 23

What term refers to languages that have descended from the same ancestral language?

A) F2 languages
B) sibling languages
C) daughter languages
D) brother languages
E) protolanguages

Question 24

Diglossia refers to linguistic groups,like those in Papua New Guinea and Australia,that distinguish between only two colors: black and white or dark and light.

Question 25

One aspect of linguistic history is language loss.When a language disappears,

A) less strain is put on the educational system, because it has less language diversity to deal with.
B) historical linguists have confirmation that language is also a victim of evolutionary forces.
C) so does pride in one's heritage.
D) cultural diversity is reduced as well.
E) humanity is that much closer to global integration.

Question 26

Linguistic productivity refers to the fixed linguistic structures that prevent the creation of new expressions.

Question 27

What is an example of what Bourdieu calls symbolic domination in the context of language use?

A) in an egalitarian society, the promotion of linguistic diversity
B) pride in one's linguistic heritage, regardless of what the majority thinks
C) the fact that in a stratified society, even people who do not speak the prestige dialect tend to accept it as standard or superior
D) focal vocabulary contrasts among groups
E) Chomsky's insistence that the universal grammar defines all culture

Question 28

When does copula deletion (absence of the verb "to be")occur in AAVE?

A) where SE has contractions
B) randomly
C) in the past tense
D) in the future tense
E) in SE, not AAVE

Question 29

What type of term is used to convey or imply a status difference between the speaker and the person being referred to or addressed?

A) formal addresses, but sociolinguists rarely pay attention to them, because their use in a social situation is always a result of linguistic exploitation
B) honorifics
C) style shifts
D) diglossia
E) linguistic relational

Question 30

What is pidgin?

A) a partial language that results from primitive tribes' attempts to learn the language of a modern industrialized state
B) a mixed language that develops to ease communication between members of different cultures in contact, usually in situations of trade or colonial domination
C) a rhythmic sublanguage present in any human language as the result of a universally shared mutation
D) a set of languages believed to be most like the original human language, spoken by a small population of Indian Ocean islanders
E) metalanguage, developed by computer programmers, that has yielded valuable insights into the workings of the human brain

Question 31

In this chapter,an alternative to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that cultural changes lead to changes in language.

Question 32

Focal vocabularies are found only in non-Western societies like the Eskimo and the Nuer.

Question 33

Ethnosemantics studies how different members of different linguistic groups organize,categorize,and classify their experiences and perceptions.

Question 34

Recent genetic research suggests that a speech-friendly mutation took hold in humans around 150,000 years ago,thus conferring selective advantages (linguistic and cultural abilities)that allowed those who had it to spread it,at the expense of those who did not.

Question 35

Animal call systems exhibit linguistic productivity.

Question 36

All human nonverbal communication is instinctive,not influenced by cultural factors.

Question 37

Words that clearly descend from the same ancestral word are known as

A) synonyms.
B) subgroups.
C) homonyms.
D) cognates.
E) daughters.

Question 38

Phonology is the study of speech sounds.

Question 39

Kinesics is the study of communication through body movements,stances,gestures,and facial expressions.

Question 40

Sociolinguists study linguistic performance by categorizing speakers as inadequate,competent,or highly proficient.

Question 41

What are some ways in which linguistics can aid archaeologists,biological anthropologists,and sociocultural anthropologists who are interested in history?

Question 42

African American Vernacular English (AAVE)is an incomplete linguistic system that is able only to express thoughts and ideas related to life in inner-city communities.

Question 43

In all languages,the same honorifics have the same meaning,regardless of context.

Question 44

Creole languages are commonly found in regions where different linguistic groups come into contact with one another.

Question 45

Discuss some common interests of linguistics and ethnography.Of what use can knowledge of linguistic techniques and principles be to the ethnographer?

Question 46

Studies investigating differences in the way men and women talk are examples of sociolinguistics.

Question 47

Compare and contrast the evolution of language and biological evolution.What role may mutations play in the origins of human language,if any?

Question 48

What is linguistic relativity? Illustrate how it applies to languages and to dialects of English.

Question 49

Sociolinguistics has demonstrated that men lack the linguistic capacity to distinguish between slight changes in color.

Question 50

Problems arise with contemporary means of communication,such as texting and online messaging,because much of what we communicate is a nonverbal reflection of emotional states.

Question 51

The world's linguistic diversity has been cut in half,as measured by the number of distinct languages extant,in the past 500 years; and half the remaining languages are predicted to disappear during this century.

Question 52

According to some estimates,the world's linguistic diversity has been cut in half in the past 500 years,and half the remaining languages are predicted to disappear during this century.Why does this matter? Isn't this just a natural result of globalization,something we should actually celebrate because it makes communication among diverse groups much easier?

Question 53

Historical linguists use linguistic similarities and differences in the world today to study long-term changes in language.

Question 54

According to the principle of linguistic relativity,all languages and dialects are equally effective as systems of communication.

Question 55

Discuss factors that increase linguistic diversity among speakers of the same language.

Question 56

Linguistic stratification can occur between dialects when one is considered a prestige dialect,as is the case with High German and Low German,and with Standard English (SE)and African American Vernacular English (AAVE).

Question 57

The origins of AAVE are found mostly in West Africa,rather than in the dialects of the southern part of the United States.

Question 58

How has technology influenced the way you communicate? Considering what you already know about anthropological theory and methods,what kinds of questions might an anthropologist pose about the role of technology in human culture,and particularly language? How might he or she go about answering those questions?

Question 59

What are honorifics? Why are sociolinguists interested in their use in context? In your everyday life,do you ever use honorifics? What does their use,or lack of use,imply about your relationships to others?

Question 60

Bourdieu argues that languages with the highest symbolic capital are those that are better systems of communication.