Linguistic Anthropology


Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I will continue with that conversation concerning white people on TV by describing a  situation with which I had some difficulty. My interlocutor appeared to be a traditionally-minded middle class white woman. She was talking to me about her home life and detailing a list of things she does for her husband and children with undertones of passive-aggressive complaining set to a positive and bouncy beat. I recognized the form of her speech. I’ve heard it many times in movies and on TV. It’s a speech that I associate with a common way that middle class white women speak about being wives and mothers. And while I recognized that speech, I do not have the lived experience of hearing women talk this way around me my whole life growing up. I have had little access to the traditional grouping of responses to this speech.

The women with whom I would tend to be friends are the types to have responded that this woman’s husband and children could learn to be more appreciative of the things she does for them. The TV and movies that I watch that depict middle class white women giving this type of speech also tend to have this type of commentary. And this one type of response overwhelmingly makes up the mass of my experience with this stereotypical speech. Now, I knew enough to know that my interlocutor was not seeking this type of response, but it was the first one that came to mind for me and I did not immediately know what the alternatives were. And so, I smiled politely without giving any significant verbal response. There was tension.

Quite some time later, I believe I was able to figure out the response my interlocutor expected. I was to have complemented her on what a good mother she was and to have confirmed that there were all these things that we women know are important to do and that these things were part of our special intuition as women (an intuition that men and children didn’t share). Given the level of tension following my polite smile in response, I believe that my interlocutor felt that she had given me clear and obvious conversational cues to complement her mothering and I had purposely decided to not do so.

And even if that weren’t exactly the case in this situation, it’s representative of a general difficulty I’ve encountered more so in Southern California than anywhere else I’ve lived or visited – being in the midst of a conversation in which my interlocutor expects a very specific type of response and believes that this response is obvious and natural. Missing these types of conversational cues can significantly affect how others view how nice you are or how well you get along with the group. I’ve found that asking for clarification in these situations usually meets with a negative response particularly with women. Generally speaking, women are expected to know more of these learned cultural conversational interactions than men, and the expectation of this level of knowledge is part of why I believe the demands on a black woman assumed/expected to be middle class white are more than those on a black man assumed/expected to be middle class white.

In my personal experiences with cross-cultural communications, such as occurred during my time in law school in London, my women friends who spoke English as a second language expressed gratitude that I took care in my use of these types of learned cultural conversational cues. Many of these do not reach the level of idiomatic expression that would be found in a language text, but nevertheless are difficult to navigate without specific knowledge of the language culture.

Yours truly,
S.

Functional Theories of Grammar
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 13: 97-117 (Volume publication date October 1984)
J Nichols
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

This article is for functional theories of grammar what I would like to have for anthropology generally. It lays outs the basics and then goes through a list of all the players, their perspectives, and their works. I enjoyed Nichols’ careful use of words, the pain she takes to explain exactly her use of the word “functional” in the text of this article and how the use of that word might differ across texts and perspectives. I’ve found it difficult lately to tear myself away from my math and science, physics, and chemistry review. I did not give this article the attention I would have liked given how nicely comprehensive it was even though under 20 pages. The use of jargon was not too heavy, but it was present beyond my immediate abilities.

Still I felt a kinship reading it as the approach seems of the type I took toward conversation as a child. About functional grammar Nichols writes: “It analyzes grammatical structure, as do formal and structural grammar; but it also analyzes the entire communicative situation: the purpose of the speech event, its participants, its discourse context.” I used to spend a lot of time observing how people used words in different situations, how context and mood and participants affected word choices. I would take these observations into account when formulating verbal responses. I especially took note of the extra communicative elements that were indicated by the choice of words, but didn’t necessarily follow from the dictionary definitions of the words. As a result, I tended to have a longer than usual pause before responding, and I tended to speak slowly even by Southern standards.

Starting some time in college, I made efforts to be more natural in conversational pace and style. In the process I lost a lot of the observation skills I had gained. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of the gains toward being more natural were worth the loss of those skills. I wish I had kept more written notes as a child.

Over the past year or so, there have been several review articles that I tagged to revisit. This one will join that list. Perhaps for the coming year I will pick 6-12 articles to revisit and make a bigger effort to explore some of the resources mentioned.

With sweetness,
S.

The Relation of Morphology to Syntax
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 18: 157-175 (Volume publication date October 1989)
Susan Steele
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)


Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I read the first few pages of this article and I was drawn in by the fact that Steele defines key, basic terminology and gives clear explanations and examples. However, the laymen-level clarity drops away after the first few pages in a way that left me wondering what the editing of this article had been like. Had an editor removed sentences and paragraphs thought to be redundant and/or unnecessary, I thought.  I also thought it might be that Steele defined the basic terms/concepts more to distinguish her membership in a specific linguistic camp rather than in an effort to make the article more generally accessible. It’s possible that my concentration fell away as the discussion became more esoteric. The Wikipedia article on syntax had definitions for and links to wider explanations of many of the relevant terms for this article – this wiki article has so many links that it seems a good jumping off point for garnering a basic familiarity.

I often wonder how linguists make it through a day of ordinary communication. Are they able to shut off the laboratory thinking once they leave the lab? Even with my limited knowledge, I have often felt overwhelmed by the amount of “stuff” people communicate about themselves in the course of every day speech. (A friend mentioned that this sense of being overwhelmed might be the explanation for why a the character of linguist Henry Higgins in “Pygmalion“/“My Fair Lady” was a confirmed bachelor who avoided the standard social obligations.) I’ve casually observed how people use language differently on social media sites being that they are preparing tidbits for a wider public consumption than in the average daily conversation. Even without benefit of tone of voice and body language, I’ve found that people seem to communicate a lot more about their private lives than they consciously intend… this despite generally taking more care in how they craft their words.  I wonder how much word choices and sentence structure vary with the emotional content of the communication… can we tell a happy story by the structure of the sentences and are we less able to manipulate these variables consciously when sharing stories with others?

Midnight approaches…

Warm regards,

S.

Mayan Linguistics: Where Are We Now?
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 14: 187-198 (Volume publication date October 1985)
L Campbell, and T Kaufman
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

Over the weekend I met someone whose response to his encounters with linguistics was to start work on creating his own language. On the other hand, my encounters generally leave me unendingly hopeless as to being able to say anything to anybody about anything. I once met someone of like mind with whom I had vocal interactions that consisted of primal, emotion-filled sound utterances back and forth and overlapping; this seemed as genuinely communicative as any formal language. I wonder sometimes about primal interactions using a very unfamiliar language with sounds not normally encountered in the native language in which the interlocutors choose words based on sound, shape and feel — and then looking at the translations as an exercise in making real and imagined connections.

All that was to say that I had language thoughts on my mind when choosing a review this week. Reading articles published before the internet explosion makes me wonder whether the availability of information on the internet has impacted the way scholarly articles are written. Knowing that I can turn to the internet certainly widens the spectrum of articles that I choose to read. My eyes glazed over during parts of this article. Some of the vocabulary wasn’t familiar and being a relatively short article the in-text explanations were mostly bare. When the authors wrote that Proto-Mayan was an ergative language, there was enough of an explanation to get the gist, but it’s nice to be able to turn to the internet to fill in the holes.

I was happy to be reminded of how linguistics can help create a fuller picture of prehistory. The authors write of how reconstructed vocabulary can show speakers of a language to have been highly skilled in an area like agriculture. We talk about what we know and we create finely tuned and specialized vocabulary for the things we know well. Neat.

Yours always,
S.

The Study of Language Use in Oceania
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 15: 149-162 (Volume publication date October 1986)
K A Watson-Gegeo
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

This was a relatively short review (around 10 pages). It’s more of a bare bone directory of where to go for more. I would be interested in the studies that examined “the communicative aspects of music and chant, where songs and chants are carefully coded messages, have important functional relationships to spoken language, are significant instantiations of social hierarchy, or provide a forum for dispute.” Using song and chant in these ways resonates with my experience growing up in the Mississippi Delta and recent experiences in Southern California. I think specifically of women singing in unison or back and forth or in sequence. In the Delta my experience was with black women; in Southern California my experience has been mostly with women with Mexican heritage. The experience feels the same. Sometimes the singing works as a secret communication in that the song may have an in-group defined meaning that fits the current situation. It can be a way of complaining and commiserating about a bad or unfair work environment though the lyrics might not offer an immediate clue. It can be a communication between the women as to their feelings about the current task, about the day, about relationships, or about a particular life period. It can be a way of gossiping openly as, again, the group members understand the song to be indicative of a certain type of person or behavior. Down South, the songs were often religious in nature and also often call and response songs… sometimes reduced to humming or nonverbal chanting. I’ve never actively participated in this type of singing in a significant way (too young at one point and too shy at later points), but I do find it comforting. Perhaps I will one day look for studies on communication through song in the United States; it’s not high on the list at the moment.

I will try this week to return to the practice of choosing the next articles in groups of five as I have found myself more and more leaving the decision until later in the week than is comfortable. Generally speaking I’m looking for ways to rededicate myself to perhaps have a stronger finish to my year of self-study.

With sweetness from all the ages,
S.

Language and World View
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 21: 381-404 (Volume publication date October 1992)
Jane H. Hill and Bruce Mannheim
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest lady,

It’s approaching the one-year mark on my friend’s death. May is the month of his birth and his death. For the last several months I’ve found myself repeating more frequently the phrase, “I feel his presence.” I have a feeling associated with saying those words. I find that I’m unsure what those words mean or what that feeling means. I don’t have the same feeling in saying, “I remember him,” or “This reminds me of him.” I wonder whether I have the same facial expressions and intonation as the people I observed saying those words in my childhood. Is the feeling the same feeling they had?

I am fascinated by the conversations people have without thinking, with how much of life is scripted. There are so many intimate and personal moments and interactions that have these settled upon words. When I was younger, I made bigger efforts to avoid the scripts with a surprising amount of “success.” I now often feel that I am missing shared cultural “stuff” because I didn’t wholly internalize some of the scripted phrases.

I do feel a certain comfort in saying, “I feel his presence,” despite not knowing what it means. I wonder what all goes into which scripted phrases are heavily internalized and which are not? We all have certain popular words and phrases with which we don’t identify, right?

In elementary school, kids often had discussions about confusing words/meanings in common cultural expressions. It seemed that by middle school, these conversations dried up. Kids were less concerned about what the expressions meant and more concerned with using them correctly.

I read “Language and World View” to get a sense of what types of things were being said and which names were being mentioned (the same as with every article). Of course there was much mention of Boas, Sapir ad Whorf – all on my to-read list for this topic. There was also mentioned of someone else who more recently made my to-read list, George Lakoff. Some time ago, I bookmarked a YouTube video of a lecture he gave somewhere (George Lakoff “The Brain and Its Politics”).   Haven’t watched it, yet.  I even checked out some of his books from the local public library, but I didn’t get around to reading them (still working on regaining the ability to devour books). Anyway, one of the nice things about reading these review articles is that I not only get a brief discussion of some of ideas put forth by Lakoff, the authors also pointed me toward someone, Naomi Quinn, who offers criticisms of Lakoff. So, there was a little bump in my excitement to read both scholars.

I’ve been saying for quite some time that I need to widen my reading. This is becoming more pressing. I enjoy reading the review articles, but I find that I’m growing more and more bored with the way that I interact with the text. I feel as though I’m having the same five thoughts over and over. I’m trying not to be overly harsh with myself since I said that I was giving myself a year to casually graze in anthropology. And, there is something building from doing this reading… I trust.

Ever enjoying the sweetness and light of you,
S.

Status and Style in Language
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 14: 557-581 (Volume publication date October 1985)
J T Irvine
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

My mind was instantly filled with various language experiences just from reading the title of this article. I am learning that I will likely continue reading articles on linguistics after my year of self-study, so I could stand to read some type of basic introduction to linguistics.

During a discussion of studies on variance in language-use according to caste in India, Irvine writes that sometimes speakers would attempt to “caste-climb” by using speech forms associated with higher ranks and how this dynamic was “at odds with the stereotypical picture of Indian castes as rigid, immutable strata, unchallengeable and unmanipulable.” This idea of status climbing by changing the manor of speech put me in mind of several language experiences I had/observed while living in London. Several times before class or during breaks in law school lectures I heard a concern repeated. The speaker said to her group that they had to be careful not to socialize with Oxbridge people who hadn’t gone to the proper (pre-university) schools, in other words, those who weren’t genuinely members of the upperclass. The speaker seemed concerned that a non-upperclass person might try to use the prestige of having gone to Oxbridge combined with having adopted an acceptable accent to “class-climb.” One of the most vocal speakers on this matter was an upperclass person from the Indian subcontinent. I wonder whether she had a special sensitivity due to experiences in India. (Note: Many applications for upper-level jobs required the applicant to list schools as far back as middle school for similar reasons.)

American movies sometimes show Londoners with widely different accents getting together as couples or being members of the same family without comment. The reality that I observed was much different. Several times I observed (middle class) Londoners who seemed to be from similar economic backgrounds, in similar places in their careers and otherwise compatible refuse to date each other because of a difference in accent – at times a level of difference that wouldn’t seem significant to an American ear. It seemed some couples made due if they had the same accent, but their parents had different accents; but it was a source of discomfort.

Part of legal study in the UK involved acquiring a two-year training contract with a law firm. Several of my classmates significantly shifted their speaking styles to match what might be expected at a perspective law firm. One friend  said that she did so unconsciously during a short internship at a law firm. She could not reproduce the same accent outside that law firm’s environment. She was from a well-to-do Taiwanese family which placed her outside the normal British accent scrutiny to a certain extent. It appeared that successfully adopting the right accent could make things a lot smoother for her than it would for a non-upperclass British person doing so.

Irvine didn’t engage in a detailed discussion of status and style in British English, but I believe she pointed to some relevant literature in the bibliography. I’m sure I will want to revisit her bibliography at a later date.

Thank you for your many kindnesses,

S.

Language Socialization
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 15: 163-191 (Volume publication date October 1986)
B B Schieffelin, and E Ochs
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor….

My dearest Simone,

In reading “Language Socialization” and thinking about how language is used to instruct about culture, I thought more on the baby talk exercises in my extended family. Schieffelin and Ochs write about how some children’s early encounters with language are more one-on-one, mostly caregiver to child, and how others have an early immersion into multi-person conversations and how the latter learn early that conversations can be complicated and multi-layered. They also speak about how children “must learn how to appropriately convey their feelings to others as well as to recognize the moods and emotions that others display.” It seems the baby talk exercises in my family meant immersion from birth into multi-person conversations for the infant as well as early instruction on reading and interpreting emotions and affect. Here’s something I wrote earlier:

When I was younger, there was much baby talk on behalf of the fetus and on behalf of the infant. Older people would talk on behalf of infants (much the same way one might talk in place of a stuffed toy for a child) at least through a time at which the infant was aware that the talk/speech had to do with her. There was an expectation that the older speaker would pay attention to the facial expressions and body language of the infant when creating communication on behalf of the infant. Other would-be speakers might challenge poor interpretation and take up speaking for the infant with a “no, I don’t think that…” I remember these interaction being fun social experiences. Even very young children could give a go at speaking on behalf of the infant as long as the would-be speaker had the requisite language and observational skills.

I felt the whole experience helped communication between children in the family and between children and adults. I think it encouraged a wholistic approach to interpreting communications from children. The authors write of a divide between “child-centered communication” and “situation-centered communication,” and how adults with a child-centered orientation make a greater effort to decipher the verbal utterances of the child in an effort to understand what the child is trying to communicate,  and how those who were situation-centered paid less attention to or even ignored the verbal utterances of a child. I wonder whether it’s not so much that situation-centered adults were ignoring the verbal utterance, as much as it was that the verbal utterances were one of many clues used to decipher the desires of the child, along with facial expressions and body language and environmental cues.

Seems I’m pressing closer and closer to my Monday before midnight deadline for writing to you. Next week, I’ll post earlier.

Many warm thoughts,
S.

P. S.  It’s my grandmother’s birthday.  (Happy Birthday, Granny!)

Theories and Politics in African American English
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 23: 325-345 (Volume publication date October 1994)
Marcyliena Morgan
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I read “Theories and Politics in African American English” shortly after reading “A Survey of Afro-American English.” I didn’t write down many of my thoughts at the time and at the moment I find myself not in the best mood to write anything, but I will. Marcyliena Morgan’s review was published over a decade after the one by John Baugh, but the discussion doesn’t seem much changed. Shall I bore you with my passing thoughts over the week? Morgan uses the term African-American English (AAE), so I’ll go with that.

Some of the discussions of AAE seem to describe speech elements that I tend to associate with Southern rural speech generally. I wonder whether some researchers and non-black residents outside the South associated certain speech elements more exclusively with AAE because they only encountered that speech from black people. I’m thinking of the large migrations of blacks from the South and how others may have taken certain elements of Southern speech to be AAE exclusively. It’s been a while since I’ve spent any significant amount of time in rural Mississippi, so my memory of distinctions between white speech and black speech in the area are a bit fuzzy. Morgan discusses the lack of third person singular verb agreement in AAE – this I remember to have been common in the region. I could imagine just about anyone saying, “Oh, he don’t mind…”

Growing up, the black people in the area referred to the local speech as talking “country,” while more standard English speech was deemed talking “proper.” There were country-talking white people and proper-talking black people. There were distinctions between black and white speech, but I’m hazy on what those were. I am left with the impression that the dividing line between black and white speech was not as clearly drawn in my rural Mississippi area (in the 70s and 80s) as I get the impression it may be in some of the academic literature, at least in regard to some of the basic grammar.

Morgan writes that African-American parents did not believe the differences between AAE and standard English were significant enough to create misunderstandings in the classroom and that instruction should be in standard English. This was the thinking where I grew up and I tend to agree. The most significant thing for me was having teachers who understood my experience as a black child. Several of the older teachers and the principal at my elementary school were more mindful of the fact that they were educating black children. Younger black teachers weren’t as much that way. I went to a different all-black elementary school for one year and the teachers there didn’t speech as much to the experience of a black child either.

The older teachers were more likely to speak directly and specifically about things being said about black children and black people in academia and in the general media. We got the rundown – This is what you will hear; This is how you might feel about it; Here is an alternative way to view things. As far as speaking standard English, they spoke about the possibility of being teased by peers and the wider black community; they spoke to black males as far as dealing with the perception that speaking standard English might be seen as being more effeminate; they spoke about dealing with negative responses from whites in the community; they spoke against the more negative and belittling characterizations of AAE.

The negativity from whites in the local community could be frightening at times. When my more “proper” speaking cousins from the North came to visit, they often got cold and mean stares from whites because of the way they spoke. Given that there was a certain amount of stigma attached to speaking with a Southern accent, black children speaking more standard English with a non-Southern accent were responded to as if they were being hostile, as if they were attacking whites by speaking in a certain manner.

My favorite elementary school teacher spoke in a manner very similar to that of Maya Angelou. I think of her whenever I hear Maya Angelou speak. This teacher greatly influenced how a I speak and how I think. I was so lucky to have that group of elementary school teachers. I may have some more follow-up on this later.

Ever true,
S.

A Survey of Afro-American English
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 12: 335-354 (Volume publication date October 1983)
J Baugh
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to my Tutor….

My dear Madame,

As is often the case, I have waited too late to write to you given the deadline I set for myself.  I’ve been ill, but the situation would mostly likely be the same if I weren’t.  Still, I will say a few things…

My rural Mississippi hometown was in a predominantly black county and it typified Baugh’s statement  that “urban and rural varieties of BVE [nonstandard black vernacular English] are maintained most by those individuals who have limited contact with nonblacks.”  While a great many of the adults in the area had the “ability to shift their speech styles depending on the social situation and their relative linguistic dexterity,” (Baugh), many of the older members of the community did not perform such shifts.  Because of the stigma associated with BVE, one sometimes had to be careful not to appear disrespectful when addressing these older members of the community in the sense of not subtly implying by use of “standard English” that one thought them stupid or less worthy of respect.  In these cases a fluidity in speech style came in handy.

Several of my elementary school teachers, including my favorite one, strongly encouraged the use of standard English.  What I took from these teachers was that speaking standard English gave “them” one less derogatory thing to say about “us.”  The thinking mentioned by Baugh was definitely floating around–that BVE indicated some genetic inferiority or that black children weren’t learning a real language or that black children were incapable of learning standard English.  My teachers emphasized that style of speech did not speak to intelligence or capability, no matter what “they” said.  We read black authors who used BVE deliberately in their writing because it communicated experience that couldn’t be related otherwise.  We read speeches by black orators, such as Sojourner Truth, that showed that use of BVE was not at odds with wit and intelligence.  I liked this approach by my teachers.

Recently, I’ve noticed on a social media site that black people from my hometown will often spell words in such a way as to make it clear that they are using BVE intentionally and without shame.  I wonder whether this is evidence that the same attitudes present when I was in elementary school are still around.

Ok, if I stop now, I will just make the deadline.  Still reading “America Day by Day.”  Hope to comment more on that soon.

Ever true,
S.

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