Six Theories of culture and how they relate to Language (Duranti Ch.2)

1. Six Theories of culture and how they relate to Language (Duranti Ch.2) • Premise: Language as cultural Practice • What is “Culture”? • Critiques: reductive of complexity - colonial agenda and supremacy - dichotomies “them” versus “us” • Minorities within mainstream • Anthropologies need to be aware of their role • Access to elite academic culture • New explore root metaphors and concepts • Avoid danger of defining Duranti Ch.2

2. Agenda Week 2: • Who is who in the class -- student intros  •  No Bedtime stories  • -  Engage props:  books for children  • -  Questions/aspects you want to have addressed • -  Handout on Mainstream children  • -  Close reading Trackton and Roadville • -  Making the most out of Preschool • BREAK  Duranti Ch.2

3. Agenda Week 2 (cont) • Six theories of culture   (PPP with handout)   • Looking ahead to week 3  •     new: writ a blog entry •      respond to peer response papers  •   A page of your own     Duranti Ch.2

4. Six Theories of Culture as Distinct from Nature (Goodenough) as Knowledge (Levy Strauss) as Communication (Geertz) Duranti Ch.2

5. 6 Theories of Culture (cont) 3 as a system of Mediation (Marx) 4 as a system of Practices (Bordieu) 5 as a system of Participation (Lave) Duranti Ch.2

6. 1.Culture as distinct from Nature • Evidence of culture as learned • The “nature/culture” dichotomy • Evidence of “crossroad” in Language capacity exists, particulars come from experience. Philosophical assumptions: Kant- Boas Duranti Ch.2

7. Kant’s defines Anthropology • “What a human being does because of his free spirit, as opposed to the natural laws which govern Human physiology” • Duranti p. 25 Duranti Ch.2

8. Hegel • Culture as the process of estrangement or Entfremdung “getting out” • Stepping out of one’s own limited ways of seeing things • “Buildung” as in “build” and “picture” I.e. the image of God (Gadamer) • Struggle to control instinct Duranti Ch.2

9. Socialization • Shapes the child’s mind and behavior towards ways of thinking, speaking and acting accepted by a community beyond her family. Duranti Ch.2

10. Language as part of culture • Rich systems of language specific classification- Kant mathematics! • Linguistic labels give cues about the types of social distinctions relevant for a give group (ex. no term for privacy, or “die” for people, animals and even machines!) -questions addressed by “Linguistic relativism” • Structuralists carry out componential analysis: classes of objects, thoughts, actions, relationships, events, ideas, -- • Lexical distinctions (Goodenough, Spradley) Duranti Ch.2

11. 2. Culture as knowledge • Premise: If culture is learned then much of is is Knowledge about the world • Re-cognize: objects, places, people ideas • Share common patters of thought, ways of understanding the world • Ways of making inferences and predictions • In sum, cognitive view of the world Duranti Ch.2

12. Goodenough, 1957 quote p. 27 • “Culture ….must consist of the end product of learning: knowledge in it’s most general sense. ..Not just things but their ORGANIZATION …The forms people have in mind, their models for perceiving, relating and otherwise interpreting them” • Linguistic homology know a culture=knowing a language. Mental. How can we “explain” that bias? • Goal of ethnography: describe cultural grammars. Duranti Ch.2

13. Types of knowledge • Propositional Know-that Referential function of language is key Natural kinds- ethosemantics How do people turn into objects? (p. 29) • Procedural • Know how Shift toward innativist view (Chomsky) Duranti Ch.2

14. Culture as socially distributed knowledge • How people think is real situations (Lave) math in weight watchers, math in grocery shopping • Two assumptions • One, Individual is not endpoint of acquisition • Two, not everyone has access to same information or uses of techniques • Example Hutchings and navigation as team Duranti Ch.2

15. Study of quarter-masters • Quote by Hutchins • Unit of analysis for talking about cognition • Include human and environmental resources • “Complex task involves web of co-ordination between media and processes inside and outside the individual task performance Duranti Ch.2

16. In sum, Knowledge distributed amongst • Tools and Participants • Learning from formal instructions is rare… • More like cooking: need to be in the task, watch an expert • Hence apprenticeship is the most common way to transmit knowledge Duranti Ch.2

17. Stereotyping through Language • As a system of classification • As a practice, a way to “taking and giving” to the world (p32) • Implication: using the “same” expression does not connote the “same” meaning • Rather “capacity for mutual prediction” Wallace 1962 • Gumpez (1982) shows how language can be a barrier to social integration Duranti Ch.2

18. 3. Culture as communication 3.1 Levy Strauss and the Semiotic approach • Extends Jacobson to The Cooking example: The raw and the cooked • Binary distinctions Duranti Ch.2

19. 2.3 Clifford Geertz and the interpretative approach • Cultural differences are not seen as variations for universal abstract thought • Interest in method of inquiry “never-ending interpretative process characteristic of human experience • Following Weber man as “animal suspended in the webs of significance he himself spun” Duranti Ch.2

20. Ethnography as Thick description • Thick description of a human behavior is one that explains not just the behavior, but its context as well, such that the behavior becomes meaningful to an outsider. • Difference between a “blink” and a “wink” the meaning of a wink depends on the context. As the context so does the meaning of the wink • Thick description describes the context of the practices and discourse in the society • Participation produces and reproduces worldviews, including local notions of Person (or Self) Duranti Ch.2

21. 2.3.3 Indexicality and meta-pragmatics • Communicative force of culture entails not just representing aspects of reality but connecting individuals, groups and individuals to each other. • Communication as a way to point towards, bringing into the context beliefs, feelings, identities, events bringing them into the present= the indexical meaning of signs • Language through indexicalitiy provides a theory of action or a meta-pragmatics Duranti Ch.2

22. 2.3.4 Metaphors as folk theories of the world • Define metaphor: “The use of a word or phrase to refer to something that it isn't, implying a similarity between the word or phrase used and the thing described” Wikitionary • metaphors allow us to understand one domain of experience in terms of another • Time flies like an arrow • She broke the silence • The head of state (states as beings with a head) Duranti Ch.2

23. 4. Culture as a system of Mediation • Marx Duranti Ch.2

24. 5. Culture as a system of Practices • Based on Heidegger “way of being in the world” • Heath- bedtime routines Duranti Ch.2

25. 6. Culture as a System of participation (p.46) • Related to culture as system of practices • Assumes: “any action in the world including verbal communication, is inherently • Social • Collective • Participatory Duranti Ch.2

26. Perspective on Language: • How is language used in the real world? • Speak as way yo participate in a world always larger than us as individuals • Words carry myriad if possible connections to humans, beliefs, events, acts and feelings • Reaffirms socio-historical connection • Indexicality of language part of any act of speaking as participant in a community of speakers • (Quote p. 46 “if the world…) Duranti Ch.2

27. On Predicting and interpreting (p 47) • Social actors need to make predictions • Vicissitudes are part of human social life • How often something happens is important • Types of speech are never “the same” • Particular-general or viceversa. Be critical! • Social actors have “models” • Metaphors are good to think with • All theories are mortal! Duranti Ch.2

28. Conclusion (49) • Read thinking of the “Bedtime stories article” Duranti Ch.2