ANTH_100_LECTURE_15_PART_1_SPRING_2023_

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Anthropology

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Oct 30, 2023

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ANTH 100 - LECTURE #15, PART 1 (SPRING, 2023).mp4 Speaker 1 [00:00:20] O'Leary of everyone is. Yeah. How is everyone doing? Speaker 2 [00:00:28] Um, I am. Speaker 1 [00:00:30] Doing well, so. Okay, let's. Let's look at our agenda for today. And let me minimize my video box here. There we go. So obviously, we're going to be looking at language. We're going to be looking at what makes symbolic. And that's the sort of point of distinction in terms of our method mode and style of communication, is it's it's symbolic. So what makes human language distinctively human? Well, it's that symbolic capacity. Power, language and culture related. They're sort of dialectically intertwined. You can't have one without the other. So it makes it sort of makes it very. Very interesting to to approach this from an anthropological perspective and not just a straight linguistic perspective. I'm always seeing this and maybe it's getting annoying, but in my Anthro 202 class, I really get into that distinction between linguistics in studying linguistics from a linguistic perspective, as opposed to a linguistic anthropological perspective, which always looks at things from a graphic perspective but situates it within a cultural context. Okay, how do we communicate without language? And there are many ways and again, this is very interesting as well. And how do how do languages shift over time? The really interesting thing is all languages are subject to an evolutionary shift. I guess in the micro and macro sense. But and we're in a time now I don't I don't know what to call this. I mean, philosophers and some anthropologists call this the age of the Anthropocene, you know, very human dominated era of our reports. Of our existence, but because it's due to the internet too, things are changing really quickly. And I'm I'm privy to this change in real time just because I've got two children who are avid. Oh, that sounds weird. It's almost like it's a choice. It's a they use the Internet a lot. It's this sort of basic tool now that when I first got it, shucks, when I was like 21, you know, I'd used it before, but we didn't get it in our house really until a little bit after the mid-nineties. It was a luxury, right? It was like dial up. So if you're on the Internet and a friend called, it would interrupt and break that that connection. And then you'd pick up the phone and hear that voice, as some of you probably remember this, right? Super loud and annoying. And man, the speeds were excruciatingly slow compared to, like, watching like, customers now. What does it mean to learn a language? Very frustrating endeavor, especially when you're getting older, but. Still a question to be asked and something we'll touch on very, very quickly later. Next for next Monday's Wednesday's lecture. Oh, my goodness. I still have allergies, but I don't even know why. What happens when languages come in contact with each other? And what kind of change does that bring about? Kind of loan or borrow words are incorporated into one language. You'll see there some very interesting contexts, like Iceland, which are the government is sort of very hard lined about their language and incorporating loanwords and Iceland disguising foreign loanwords, which sort of sounds ridiculous, but they do that. So we'll we'll talk about that. And we'll also touch on what linguistic inequality is as well. A very curious term. And at the end of this today and on Wednesday, we can say it is now safe to turn off your computer. Okay, Do it. I think there's a meme floating around of Shia LaBeouf, and my Alexis makes fun of me sometimes because. Oh, who was it? It was a parent. And then another student had said that I looked like shy, a buff. And I'm like that. Not even close. And then Alexa started torturing me with Nemes in particular. This one just. Oh, here we go. Oh, that was too. Don't let your dreams be dreams. Well, I don't even know what Why? Trust. Oh, it. Don't let your dreams be dreams. Yesterday. You set tomorrow. So just do it right. Your dreams come true. Just do it. So keep the training a success. You're going to wake up and work all day. Nothing is impossible. Like getting in in Anthro 100 books. Anyone else quit and you're not going to stop there? Go. What are you waiting for? Yes, you can just do it.

Well, you can do it. We're talking about showing your computers off. I don't look like that guy. So let's move. That's going to hilarious. Speaker 2 [00:06:41] Let's move on. Speaker 1 [00:06:44] Human language. This is Noam Chomsky. So he is a very distinguished linguist at M.I.T. and their world renowned linguistics department. He's got a really monotone, distinctive way of talking. Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon without significant analog in. And so that's that's our one mean today. Just kidding. There are a load in this lecture. I once did a lecture in medical anthropology. 347. Maybe one or two of you are in this class who are in that class, and I think 7/8 of the lecture was just means. I tried an experiment and I think it worked. What the heck is human language anyways? Well, it's a set, a series, a system of symbols that humans. Put together in such a way to convey, explain and communicate their experience of. Interstates one another, but also the world. What makes it interesting, though, is that it's a set of arbitrary symbols and. Why we call things certain things is just arbitrary. This is a pencil. If it were a pen in French Saturn's stylo stylus, perhaps based on the Latin term, something pointy, right? But these are all arbitrary words. So in different languages, these objects are labeled differently. And it's arbitrary. It's not like there is some grand sort of cosmological generator out there that labels things for us, and we just sort of have to finally be like, Okay, pencil, great. That's just what it is universally. No, it's arbitrary. And so we'll talk a little bit about this idea of speech community. And I mean, that that's you know, we look at our textbook, that's a little bit of a problematic idea. And I think community of speech practice might be a little bit more indicative as to what's going on. But these communities of speech practice or people who speak the same language for the same purposes understand that. Things are what they are owing to this process, not mentioned in our textbook called Conventionality. It's just a matter of convention. Yes, it's arbitrary, but conventionality means, you know, historically people have come together and agreed that this is a pencil that is a skateboard deck. And owing to that practice of conventionality, we can now have a commonality in terms of what we're referring to in the world and then becomes understood in. So I can say to most people who understand English, Oh, can you pass me the pencil? They're not going to pass a pillow and be like, Oh, okay. Right. Which is a little bit of a silly comment there. But anyway, is this linguistic in the sixties came up with these six design features hawk it his name was. And again, I just it's odd that the textbook is quoting things from the sixties because they know that there are more contemporary sources out there. Oh, well. Well, that's cool. But these six design features anyways, that. Comprise or make language distinctive in that being. Human language distinctive are as follows So you have in we will define each one of these in turn openness as a plastic as opposed to a closed system of language. You have this idea of duality, of pattern, and we're going to talk about phonemes and morphemes arbitrariness, and we've touched on that already. Displacement. So talking about temporality, being able to talk about things in and out of time, which is something distinctly human, which would be all of these are prevarication. Being able to use the language for all the purposes. So being able to see things that while syntactically in sync, symptomatically correct in terms of where they sit in the sentence and in terms of the flow of meaning can be completely meaning less. And I've got a meme to explain that. And then Semantic City, which is using language always in context. Situated within a cultural context to refer to things that people can understand owing to those dynamics of conventionality. So let me just make sure I'm on the right track here. Okay, so. Oh. My information didn't work direct. Okay, so this idea of openness is really I don't like the term. I think I like the term dynamic more, but it really indexes or points to the ability of speakers of human language to formulate, create and understand brand new messages. Kind of like what's going on between these two ladies.

And I don't know what this picture is hilarious to me because this woman who looks like my aunt. Is? I don't know. She's confused, man. She's getting super close to this person's face, and her mouth is quite large. And I don't know if she is a Dementor from Harry Potter sucking this woman's poor soul out of her mouth into hers. If she's got her. Bad breath. And she's examining that as a halitosis. Political scientist, I don't know who knows what's going on here, but something new is happening. And. Oh. My innovations really didn't work here. What's going on here? Yeah, she. What the heck? She's going like, what's going on here? I really. Speaker 2 [00:13:42] Sometimes I'm. Speaker 1 [00:13:45] I might have to switch textbooks here because we've got an interruption here. It's kind of abrupt. But anyways, openness is this ability to create new. New man, new messages, and to sort of bend language and render it plastic, i.e. bendable. So it's dynamic, right. And it's sort of in contrast to nonhuman primates, which have a closed system of language based on a call system. Right. And so it's said that there's been some sort of evolutionary dynamic between call systems in symbolic language and in call systems. If you remember, I think Alexis had talked about this a little bit, but these are sort of, you know, I don't want it. It's an odd thing to have to define off the cuff, but like almost like a primal utterance, like laughing. But that's not really a primal utterance. Oh. Crying, grunting, groaning. You know, these kinds of things or like some of the dads were saying, my son's best friend's dads, we hang out from time to time. Oh, Marc, do you make dad noises? Sort of like doing what? And they were like, oh, just sitting down like, Oh. And I was like, Nah, not really. Next topic. So. Yes. Anyways, these call system or call systems, they have evolved alongside language, but not into language because there's a certain complexity based on all of the six features that Hoggett pointed out that language has that these more primal utterances don't. And so I don't think a case can be made for one turning into the other. I think these just sort of evolved in parallel as well as other aspects of this openness of language. Gesture changes in rhythm. Oh my gosh. Intonation, right. These aspects are called speech prosody, and you can really affect a situation. You know, and even just off the top of my head, if I ask my son to put his shoes away. Just with your intonation, you can go from sort of like. A demanding, maybe not very nice statement. Put those shoes away or you can change the intonation a little bit and say what? Those shoes. You know, and it just depends on the situation, how frustrated you are as a parent because you're tripping over shoes in the kitchen or whatever. But all of these aspects, again, rhythm gestures that go along with it. If you're frustrated, your body language is going to match your your level of frustration and what kind of tonality you're going to use and also volume. Inhuman sign language. Ah. You know what's interesting is American Sign Language. And, I don't know, money features all of these elements. Of human language, so openness, etc.. Except it's not. You know, it's not. The vocalist, it's transformed into another mode of communication. In getting back to to this specific aspect of openness, animals and we'll talk about a little bit about nonhuman primates. Use a less sophisticated channel of communication, which more often is is visual instead of auditory. Although, you know, if we're talking about other animals in the animal world, of course, there are aspects of communication there. You know, whales in this is definitely auditory so that maybe that's more of a generalized statement based on our textbook statement. Oh, anyways, bees have almost like a chemically induced language that's based on visual cues. Speaker 2 [00:18:35] In. Speaker 1 [00:18:35] Other animals as well. So, but taking this to nonhuman primates, as

I as I said a few moments ago, this style and approach to language, which is, you know, in a lot of ways circumscribed to call system is closed because, number one, it seems that and I'm no primatologist but nonhuman primates can. Call in an appropriate context. So, you know, a call is matched to a certain imperative, like if there's a predator or something. And I know some primates have many up to 40 to 50 different calls, you know, and they can match it based on what the predator is in, what the type of threat it is. If it's an arboreal predator, meaning it can climb up trees, there will be a call for it. If it's a ground dwelling predator, that means scramble up the trees, they'll have call for it. But it seems like it's really closed in this situation and it's not dynamic and open in subject to an innovative improvizational shift, if that makes any sense. And apparently and I have to speak about this with some distance, just since I've never even shaken a primary hand, even though Simons and Gibbons are my favorites and have been. Apparently primates aren't able to combine calls or owing to that, you know, micro evolutionary shift of language to be able to create new ones. So they're learning through a closed cultural system and then applying. But it's almost like they can't modify or build on new ones in. I don't know. I mean, maybe given the the chance or the context, they they could. But again, I don't know. I have to sort of defer to the experts here. I'm not quite sure about that. Closed call systems also lack this really interesting aspect of human language, and this is the ability. To. Talk in and out of time. Speaker 2 [00:21:07] And. Speaker 1 [00:21:07] You can refer to things that don't exist, that have never existed, or things that could exist in the future or have existed in the past. And this is about memory and being able to take oneself in a certain moment in time, in a certain sociocultural context, shift it backwards and forwards, or depending on your orientation to time. We all have to understand that Indigenous time oftentimes is spiral or circular and not linear. So we have to understand and it's not just Indigenous time, there are other modes of or other temporalities that are not, you know, instrumental in linear from point A to point B, right? So you can talk about things, Oh my gosh, like a nonexistent object. Oh, like. Oh, it gets kind of hard, right? Like a demogorgon from Stranger Things. Although it does exist in the show, it doesn't exist in real life. You know, you can talk about aliens. You know, I don't really I'm sure there's some sort of other life form out there. I've never seen one. No idea what it would look like. Don't know how long you would have to travel to run into one. I don't think it would be in the sort of form morphologically of a humanoid with two arms and two legs. I think it would more. If there are aliens out there, other lifeforms probably look more like a sea creature. Who knows? Maybe something. If you've if any of you have seen the movie called The Abyss, just straight Up the Abyss, which is about sea exploration, and they run into an alien lifeform down there, maybe it would look like that, but that's sort of like a shapeshifter. But anyways, this is the great thing about language, is we can talk about these things almost as if they exist when they sort of don't. And you can dislodge yourself out of time and talk about what happened to you when you were a little kid, You know, what was I telling? I always tell, or maybe not so much. Alexis and I are exactly the same age. Well, she's actually two months in a few days older than me. But I'm I'm always telling them about the eighties, and I get ridiculous. I rules. You know, when I was a kid, I literally did have to walk 2.2 kilometers and it was uphill, but not both ways. And I wouldn't wear any boots and I wouldn't wear a hat because I refused in minus like 30 degree weather and I still survived. Now, oh, I don't want to hear another story from the eighties. You talk about future events. Well, we're going to be doing this in all likelihood, it will unfold there be like this. So this is displacement. Speaker 2 [00:24:17] And.

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