UCLA Anthropology 4 midterm
Study online at https://quizlet.com/_fh7vzo
1. What are the three language properties?: 1) Language is a code for represent-
ing experience
2) Language is a form of social organization
3) Language is a system of differentiation
2. What does Duranti's concept of "ontological commitment" state?: that lan-
guage is never neutral or a means of communication in the sense that it is always
viewed with people's interest and power because it is always socially charged,
loaded with issues of race, class, citizenship and other forms of social identification
3. How do Kroskrity and Lippi-Green define language ideologies?: -our beliefs,
feelings and judgements about language structure, language use and the people
who use them because we are socialized into language and into thinking about
language based on our sociopolitical experiences in life.
4. Language ideologies introduce a bias toward an idealized, homogenized
spoken language and its users, which is imposed and maintained by domi-
nant institutions -- drawn from upper, middle class.: According to Kroskrity and
Lippi-Green, what makes language ideologies controversial?
5. Habituation: Language is a habit; something we do not question
6. According to the Principle of Linguistic Relativity (AKA the Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis), why aren't individuals ever able to accurately describe their
worlds?: - we are always going to be influenced by our nature and nurture, our
language is imbued with our interests/perspectives etc.
- we are restrained to certain modes of interpretation even while we think we are not
- language is the framework through which you make sense of the world and it
structures our thoughts
7. Conversation analysis: Interpretations of what is going on in a conversation
must be shown in the structure of the talk.
8. How is language a social organization? Give 2 examples.: the way we con-
verse reveals social structure
Ex.
1. Who interrupts who and when indicates authority
2. Who laughs and when people laugh indicates if the speaker and listener are
aligned
9. System of differentiation: focusing on how another language doesn't fit the
standard; othering another language
10. Linguistic Inferiority Principle: The tendency of speakers of the socially dom-
inant group in a society to interpret speech of a marginalized group as linguistically
inferior to that of their own.
, UCLA Anthropology 4 midterm
Study online at https://quizlet.com/_fh7vzo
ie. the well-meaning teacher
11. Social network refers to the density and plexity of your speech community.
What does it mean to have a dense social network? Plexity?: Density refers
to the number of connections you have with others; the more dense a speech
community, the more the members sound like each other Plexity measures the form
of the connection (ie. classmates, roommates)
12. Social network: groups of people that interact frequently and are linked to some
common center (such as gang or neighborhood)
13. How can a social network be multiplexed?: You know more than one aspect
of the other person's life
14. What does it mean to indirectly index something? Explain using an ex-
ample.: When the Asian American girl (from Reyes reading) used AAVE to make
herself sound tough, she indexed herself as tough but indirectly, she is indexing by
upholding negative stereotypes about African Americans being violent/criminal/ag-
gressive. Therefore to indirectly index something is when a meaning is used by a
certain group so much that it begins to relate with them.
15. What is the difference between dual and triple indexicality?: Dual indexical-
ity: when an individual indirectly indexes and reinforces negative stereotypes linked
to a race without having to experience any of the lived experiences of this culture
Triple indexicality: encompasses dual indexicality but also adds another index of
a shared social-economical and cultural affiliation with the lived experience of the
oppressed.
16. Languaging race: the concept that draws on the idea that we can't study
language without studying race and the politics of race since language is socio-cul-
turally constructed
17. How does Hill define "White public space?" (3): - Physical and interactional
spaces of unequal power relations
- White public spaces are seen as normal (unmarked) and anything that doesn't
align with it is different and policed (marked)
- the most important sites of the practices of racializing hegemony (when whites are
visibly normal and everyone else marginalized)
18. How does Alim specifically use the concept of unmarked and marked?
Give another example of markedness in general terms.: Unmarked: constitutes
what is socially normalized
-in linguistic practices, Whiteness would be unmarked.
Marked: is used on racialized populations as a visual category of monitoring their
otherness.
Study online at https://quizlet.com/_fh7vzo
1. What are the three language properties?: 1) Language is a code for represent-
ing experience
2) Language is a form of social organization
3) Language is a system of differentiation
2. What does Duranti's concept of "ontological commitment" state?: that lan-
guage is never neutral or a means of communication in the sense that it is always
viewed with people's interest and power because it is always socially charged,
loaded with issues of race, class, citizenship and other forms of social identification
3. How do Kroskrity and Lippi-Green define language ideologies?: -our beliefs,
feelings and judgements about language structure, language use and the people
who use them because we are socialized into language and into thinking about
language based on our sociopolitical experiences in life.
4. Language ideologies introduce a bias toward an idealized, homogenized
spoken language and its users, which is imposed and maintained by domi-
nant institutions -- drawn from upper, middle class.: According to Kroskrity and
Lippi-Green, what makes language ideologies controversial?
5. Habituation: Language is a habit; something we do not question
6. According to the Principle of Linguistic Relativity (AKA the Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis), why aren't individuals ever able to accurately describe their
worlds?: - we are always going to be influenced by our nature and nurture, our
language is imbued with our interests/perspectives etc.
- we are restrained to certain modes of interpretation even while we think we are not
- language is the framework through which you make sense of the world and it
structures our thoughts
7. Conversation analysis: Interpretations of what is going on in a conversation
must be shown in the structure of the talk.
8. How is language a social organization? Give 2 examples.: the way we con-
verse reveals social structure
Ex.
1. Who interrupts who and when indicates authority
2. Who laughs and when people laugh indicates if the speaker and listener are
aligned
9. System of differentiation: focusing on how another language doesn't fit the
standard; othering another language
10. Linguistic Inferiority Principle: The tendency of speakers of the socially dom-
inant group in a society to interpret speech of a marginalized group as linguistically
inferior to that of their own.
, UCLA Anthropology 4 midterm
Study online at https://quizlet.com/_fh7vzo
ie. the well-meaning teacher
11. Social network refers to the density and plexity of your speech community.
What does it mean to have a dense social network? Plexity?: Density refers
to the number of connections you have with others; the more dense a speech
community, the more the members sound like each other Plexity measures the form
of the connection (ie. classmates, roommates)
12. Social network: groups of people that interact frequently and are linked to some
common center (such as gang or neighborhood)
13. How can a social network be multiplexed?: You know more than one aspect
of the other person's life
14. What does it mean to indirectly index something? Explain using an ex-
ample.: When the Asian American girl (from Reyes reading) used AAVE to make
herself sound tough, she indexed herself as tough but indirectly, she is indexing by
upholding negative stereotypes about African Americans being violent/criminal/ag-
gressive. Therefore to indirectly index something is when a meaning is used by a
certain group so much that it begins to relate with them.
15. What is the difference between dual and triple indexicality?: Dual indexical-
ity: when an individual indirectly indexes and reinforces negative stereotypes linked
to a race without having to experience any of the lived experiences of this culture
Triple indexicality: encompasses dual indexicality but also adds another index of
a shared social-economical and cultural affiliation with the lived experience of the
oppressed.
16. Languaging race: the concept that draws on the idea that we can't study
language without studying race and the politics of race since language is socio-cul-
turally constructed
17. How does Hill define "White public space?" (3): - Physical and interactional
spaces of unequal power relations
- White public spaces are seen as normal (unmarked) and anything that doesn't
align with it is different and policed (marked)
- the most important sites of the practices of racializing hegemony (when whites are
visibly normal and everyone else marginalized)
18. How does Alim specifically use the concept of unmarked and marked?
Give another example of markedness in general terms.: Unmarked: constitutes
what is socially normalized
-in linguistic practices, Whiteness would be unmarked.
Marked: is used on racialized populations as a visual category of monitoring their
otherness.
