Saturday 18 October 2008

Language and culture

The study of Language by George Yule (2006)

New words
Linguistic relatively: the idea that, some extent, we think about the world using categories provided by our language
Linguistic determinism: the idea that we can only think in the categories provided by our language
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the general idea that differences in language structure cause people to view the world differently, from the names of two American linguists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf
T/V distinction: the difference between pronouns such as tu (socially close) and vous (socially distant) in French, used address terms
Back-channels: the use of words (yeah) and sound (hmm) by listeners while someone else is speaking

Study questions
1 Culture is socially acquired knowledge.
2 Determinism is the idea that language determines thought.
3 Non-lexicalized means not expressed as a single word.
4 Classifiers are grammatical markers that indicate the type or ‘class’ of a noun.
5 The word ‘advice’ is a non-countable noun, which is not used with a/an.
6 A sentence with a tag question is more likely to be spoken by a woman because it is expressing an opinion in a way of inviting agreement rather than asserting it.

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