Socially Charged Life of Language: Introduction to Language and Culture

"All words have the "taste" of a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age group, the day and hour. Each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived it's socially charged life..."    ---Bakhtin

"Black Lives Matter", "Blue Lives Matter", "All Lives Matter", 
---"Make America Great Again"

• Key Points and Learning objectives
• Language IS NOT a neutral medium for communication
• Language is a SET OF SOCIALLY EMBEDDED PRACTICES
• Social interactions are MEDIATED by language, whether spoken, written, verbal or noinverbal
• Semester will show that LANGUAGE AND CULTURE ARE INEXTRICABLY INTERTWINED

Examples to Consider: How is it the case that a linguistic analysis alone or a sociocultural analysis alone would NOT provide a comprehensive explanation of the significance of these events?

• getting "stoned" in San Francisco-Anti drug high school class (group 1)
• losing a language in Papua New Guinea (group 2)
• Pounded rice ritual in Nepal (group 3)
• BLM (group 4)

Think about the following when discussing your ethnographic example in your group:

1. how is language enmeshed in cultural values and social power?
2. How is inequality challenged or reproduced (upheld) through language?
3. How do linguistic "forms" like different words for the same thing influence people's thoughts and attitudes?
4. How do people's attitudes about language affect their perception of those that speak them (including themselves)?
5. How is the language in ritual (special contexts) different from everyday language?
6. Can language be understood outside of the social context in which it is used?

*The intertwined nature of language and culture requires, according to LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGISTS, requires that language be studied in REAL LIFE (social) CONTEXTS for any comprehensive understanding of human communication.

Language Decontextualized (emphasis on language as grammatical systems, rather than social acts)

• DeSaussure
• Chomsky
• Pinker

Though anthropological linguists value the work of linguists, they see "grammar" (structural aspects of language and 'universal grammars') as simply one aspect of language's "socially charged life".