UCLA Anthropology 4 midterm Answered
Questions (Latest 2026)
What are the three language properties? - Correct Answers
✅1) Language is a code for representing experience
2) Language is a form of social organization
3) Language is a system of differentiation
What does Duranti's concept of "ontological commitment"
state? - Correct Answers ✅that language 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
How do Kroskrity and Lippi-Green define language ideologies?
- Correct Answers ✅-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.
Language ideologies introduce a bias toward an idealized,
homogenized spoken language and its users, which is
imposed and maintained by dominant institutions -- drawn
from upper, middle class. - Correct Answers ✅According to
Kroskrity and Lippi-Green, what makes language ideologies
controversial?
,UCLA Anthropology 4 midterm Answered
Questions (Latest 2026)
Habituation - Correct Answers ✅Language is a habit;
something we do not question
According to the Principle of Linguistic Relativity (AKA the
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis), why aren't individuals ever able to
accurately describe their worlds? - Correct Answers ✅- 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
Conversation analysis - Correct Answers ✅Interpretations
of what is going on in a conversation must be shown in the
structure of the talk.
How is language a social organization? Give 2 examples. -
Correct Answers ✅the way we converse 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
, UCLA Anthropology 4 midterm Answered
Questions (Latest 2026)
System of differentiation - Correct Answers ✅focusing on
how another language doesn't fit the standard; othering
another language
Linguistic Inferiority Principle - Correct Answers ✅The
tendency of speakers of the socially dominant group in a
society to interpret speech of a marginalized group as
linguistically inferior to that of their own.
ie. the well-meaning teacher
Social network refers to the density and plexity of your
speech community. What does it mean to have a dense social
network? Plexity? - Correct Answers ✅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)
Social network - Correct Answers ✅groups of people that
interact frequently and are linked to some common center
(such as gang or neighborhood)
How can a social network be multiplexed? - Correct
Answers ✅You know more than one aspect of the other
person's life
Questions (Latest 2026)
What are the three language properties? - Correct Answers
✅1) Language is a code for representing experience
2) Language is a form of social organization
3) Language is a system of differentiation
What does Duranti's concept of "ontological commitment"
state? - Correct Answers ✅that language 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
How do Kroskrity and Lippi-Green define language ideologies?
- Correct Answers ✅-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.
Language ideologies introduce a bias toward an idealized,
homogenized spoken language and its users, which is
imposed and maintained by dominant institutions -- drawn
from upper, middle class. - Correct Answers ✅According to
Kroskrity and Lippi-Green, what makes language ideologies
controversial?
,UCLA Anthropology 4 midterm Answered
Questions (Latest 2026)
Habituation - Correct Answers ✅Language is a habit;
something we do not question
According to the Principle of Linguistic Relativity (AKA the
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis), why aren't individuals ever able to
accurately describe their worlds? - Correct Answers ✅- 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
Conversation analysis - Correct Answers ✅Interpretations
of what is going on in a conversation must be shown in the
structure of the talk.
How is language a social organization? Give 2 examples. -
Correct Answers ✅the way we converse 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
, UCLA Anthropology 4 midterm Answered
Questions (Latest 2026)
System of differentiation - Correct Answers ✅focusing on
how another language doesn't fit the standard; othering
another language
Linguistic Inferiority Principle - Correct Answers ✅The
tendency of speakers of the socially dominant group in a
society to interpret speech of a marginalized group as
linguistically inferior to that of their own.
ie. the well-meaning teacher
Social network refers to the density and plexity of your
speech community. What does it mean to have a dense social
network? Plexity? - Correct Answers ✅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)
Social network - Correct Answers ✅groups of people that
interact frequently and are linked to some common center
(such as gang or neighborhood)
How can a social network be multiplexed? - Correct
Answers ✅You know more than one aspect of the other
person's life
