Anthropology of Language

Human culture and language are deeply intertwined. Anthropologists would have difficulty understanding a culture without becoming familiar with its language and vice versa. In fact, neither one can exist without the other. Like culture, language is continually changing. Societal norms and practices impact the ways that people communicate with each other. Thus, by looking at how people speak to each other, we can deduce certain things about their relationships and relative status in society.

Integrating concepts from transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, identity and cultural studies, this study presents a conceptual framework for examining how identity is constructed and construed in transnational spaces. Such a topic is currently significant in a time where increasing globalization and mediatization have led to the rise of a generation of ‘armchair travelers’. As a consequence an individual’s sense of place and belonging are simultaneously transformed. These processes form the basis for examining the conflicts and dilemmas of those working in China’s media system, which is said to be a transnational space in transformation and transition. Six in-depth interviews were conducted with Chinese journalists who work in English-language news media in China. The data confirms that there is little editorial independence from the political and ideological frameworks that control China’s media system. The data also offers a fresh perspective on how defining structures impact the cosmopolitan identity. In the analysis, theoretical implications are discussed, reconceptualizing the ways in which we understand the local, place, space, value orientations, and an individual’s sense of belonging.

In this study, I will be using the theory of memetics in order to analyze the emergence of internet memes as a new cultural metalanguage. I will be conceptualizing them as 'superhighway hieroglyphics' based on their pictorial format and historicity in deriving meaning from their own referentiality. I will argue that their forms allow them to communicate more particular emotions and understandings of culture than other forms of language permit in the form of 'feels'. Throughout the course of this essay, the study of memetics will be outlined and its most problematic assumptions revised in an effort to refine certain terms and concepts. This study of internet memes will additionally be contextualized within an understanding of today's rhizomatic and networked organization of cyberspace. I will argue that this has led to the development of the internet meme as a new cultural metalanguage which is able to translate contemporary 'feels'. Pepe the Frog will be used as a case study to showcase how the networked and rapid nature of internet memes allow users to create new kinds of utterances which communicate complex cultural thoughts and feelings. Lastly, the impact of this study on language and evolution discourse will be briefly examined.

A vernacular style of French spoken in informal situations of communication by the youth in Cameroon, Camfranglais is characterized by the insertion of foreign words from English, Pidgin English and, to a lesser extent, other Cameroonian languages and French words  that have undergone a morphological and /or semantic change. If oral uses of this code have been well described, its strong presence on the Internet has prompted us to study its forms and functions in a corpus of everyday writing, which consists of excerpts gathered from forums and blogs. We analyze the lexical, morphosyntactic and graphic features of this code, its pragmatic functions in interaction, as well as the symbolic values and social functions associated with it in the representations of their writers.

Style vernaculaire de français majoritairement parlé par les jeunes au Cameroun, dans des situations de communication informelles, le camfranglais se caractérise par l’insertion de mots étrangers issus de l’anglais, du pidgin-english et, dans une moindre mesure, d’autres langues camerounaises, ainsi que de mots français ayant subi un changement morphologique et/ou sémantique. Si les usages oraux de ce code ont bien été décrits, sa forte présence sur Internet nous a incitée à en étudier les formes et les fonctions dans un corpus d’écrit ordinaire, constitué d’extraits de forums et de blogs. Nous analysons donc les caractéristiques lexicales, morphosyntaxiques et graphiques de ce code, ses fonctions pragmatiques en interaction, ainsi que les valeurs symboliques et les fonctions sociales qui lui sont associées dans les représentations des scripteurs.

Mots clés : camfranglais, parler jeune, écrit d’Internet, variation stylistique, argot, langue française, Cameroun.

Language determines our expressive capacities, represents our identities, and connects us with each other across various platforms and cultures. This course introduces classical and contemporary approaches to studying language, focusing on three main areas: 1) language as a system of rules and regulations ("structure"), 2) language as a symbolic mechanism through which individuals and groups mark their presence ("identity") and 3) language as a means of communication ("sign").

In addition to this, the course examines various ways through which language molds our individual selves: from organizing dreams and desires to shaping autobiographies.

The contribution aims to share some consideration on educational inequality potentially expressed in the relationship with teachers and educators, observed from the outside school education context of a local public afterschool service for primary school in the North East of Italy, where I’ve been working as an educator for more than three years. Educational context like this, can be a very special place to observe the effects of inequalities in school and the power dynamics involved, not only on an ethnic basis. This setting, laying in some kind of “middle land” between a scholastic and an informal context, can be a key place where educators can try to fill up the “holes” left by school in terms of communication with children, time and opportunities offered especially to the more needed ones, in order to empower  their basic abilities to succeed in school and  come out of  fragile socio-economic positions. It is also a space for every child for exercise social abilities and handle emotions, beyond the very normative classroom context, and for negotiate power among the peers. Coming from anthropology, and having special interest in anthropology of education, I’d like to contribute to the debate by sharing this highly reflexive experience with a double identity, of educator and of anthropologist, based on two main aspects. The first, the observation that changes in behaviour, attitude and in communication ways of educators, can help to change the behaviours of children, working on inequalities, power and on opportunities to access school abilities for everyone. Second, conflicts and inequality are also part of the peer group dynamics, involving, again, power, prestige and cultural production. The afterschool service, is a privileged observatory  not only for the dynamics involving children and teachers, but also teachers and families, where educators can witness the misunderstandings going on between the two institutions and educative agencies. In this specific case, the afterschool service itself is carrying on a strategy based on some kind of educative alliance with both of them, implementing a network work based on a strong communication. Taking it as an example of good practice, it can be discussed the utility of this approach in similar cases, to enhance the possibility for all children to get equal opportunities and to express themselves.

Link for download the whole book: https://www.scuolademocratica-conference.net/proceedings-volume-i-politics-citizenship-diversity-and-inclusion/
Contribution at pag. 101

This article describes some of the social issues of phonetic accommodation among Cameroonian immigrants in Paris, through the analysis of their ideologies about the practice of whitisage, a neologism which refers, according to the speakers, to the act of ''speaking French like a White person'' or in other words, ''speaking French without an accent''. This practice is a form of accommodation which consists in adapting one's way of speaking toward a non Cameroonian interlocutor by imitating his or her accent. By describing both the social functions and the ambivalent meanings of this language practice, I show that if it can be valued as a form of adaptation and a sign of open-mindedness to the others in a new socio-cultural environment, it can also be perceived, in some contexts, as a form of assimilation and rejection of one's identity. I argue that the negative values associated with whitisage must be related to the socio-historical circumstances in which this social practice appeared as a psychological and cultural consequence of the power relationship between the Black colonized and the White colonizer.

Proverbs are a simple way of expressing a well-known truth or adage based on common sense or experience. They are usually considered to be imbued with ancestral wisdom, passed down from generation to generation until they become part of a society's oral tradition. This post will explore what anthropology, archaeology, and the ethnographic record can offer to the field of paremiology, which is dedicated to the collection and study of proverbs.

This chapter will examine the concept of rhetoric within anthropological studies of oratory and political practice. We will find that there have been two views of rhetoric, a broad one consisting of phenomenologies of strategic language use and a narrow one that is basically Western rhetoric, which itself has certain peculiar notions of what language is and what kinds of selves and persons that notion presupposes and entails. A final section will address the historical emergence and trans- formation of oratorical models of discursive interaction and the result- ing formation of new kinds of politics emerging within new imagined worlds.

The paper discusses the connection between writing, identity and community in the online communication, presenting a part of a PhD thesis which reviews 12 blogs of recent Italian emigrants in the United States between October 2011 and October 2014. The identity is examined through by the means of two theories. The first theory is the Narrative Identity Theory, which assumes that the identity is a process of construction of the self, a personal project, mediated by narratives that can be consciously renegotiated and elaborated. The second theory assumes that not only one identity is contained within one person, but the self is guided by many voices or " I positions " (The Dialogical Self of Hubert Hermans). This theory sees the writing as a way to actively reorder the I-positions according to the needs of the situation. It's fundamental to be able to integrate the new context and the new events in the global " legend " of the self in a period of passage and discontinuity. The blog writing is analyzed as a strategy to take control of the inner narrative and stabilize a disbalanced condition. The blogosphere takes the part of supporting community in the absence of the traditional migration connections.

This journal and its contents may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. ©2021 Journal of International Women's Studies.

Mathematics is often seen as an epitome of cold objectivity and astounding infallibility. Particularly for the outsiders, it comes across as an extremely rigid and closed system which seems impenetrable owing to its very specific and technical language. This article problematises these assumptions and seeks to study mathematics as a social practice with insights drawn from an anthropology of language and concepts, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics and semiotics. Using the anthropological insight that a language is always embedded in a form of life, this article shows how mathematical practice generates its own conventions and forms of language use. In particular, two dimensions of language use in mathematics are delineated and their consequences for further research are drawn out. In the first part of the article, the role of concepts in the discourse of mathematics is explored and in the second it is shown how applying a rigid distinction between syntax and semantics to mathematical language obstructs our understanding of its fluid and dynamic character. The argument unfolds through an analyses of interviews, texts and classroom sessions and shows how mathematical practice is heavily context bound and mathematicians often display an ethnographic attentiveness towards their work. The general tenor of the description is such that it attempts to trace the ethical dimension latent in mathematical practice and suggests a possibility of exploring it as a form of life. Connected to this thought is the argument that like any other practice, mathematical practice generates its own forms of reflections which cannot simply be assimilated to philosophical/theoretical knowledge. The question whether this action knowledge regarding mathematics has some relation to the South Asian location where the ethnography unfolds is also tentatively explored.

The author considers the impact of postmodernism on the contemporary humanities, especially on the theoretical linguistics. The main thesis of the paper can be formulated as follows: postmodernism contributes to the fact that in linguistics increasingly there are such tendencies, like mudding the subject of research, dispense with the ‘directives of language’, i.e. the disuse of conventional scientific language, violations of the requirement of statements verifiability, breaking the rules of communication. The author examines the elements of postmodern science on example of several directions of modern linguistics: cultural linguistics (linguoculturology), ethnolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and discourse linguistics.

This article describes some of the social issues of phonetic accommodation among Cameroonian immigrants in Paris, through the analysis of their ideologies about the practice of whitisage, a neologism which refers, according to the speakers, to the act of ''speaking like a White person'' or in other words, ''speaking French without an accent''. This practice is a form of accommodation which consists in adapting one's way of speaking toward a non Cameroonian interlocutor by imitating his or her accent. By describing both the social functions and the ambivalent meanings of this language practice, I show that if it can be valued as a form of adaptation and a sign of open-mindedness to the others in a new socio-cultural environment, it can also be perceived, in some contexts, as a form of assimilation and rejection of one's identity. I argue that the negative values associated with whitisage must be related to the socio-historical circumstances in which this social practice appeared as a psychological and cultural consequence of the power relationship between the Black colonized and the White colonizer.

A paper published in 1996, The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 19.2.

A bedrock assumption made by philosophers like Noam Chomsky is that the contexts within which children acquire a language exhibit an irredeemable poverty of stimulus. They argue that, given this poverty, the basic elements of language must be innate. My argument, however, is that this assumption is philosophically suspect in that it assumes an untenably Cartesian conception of "stimulus." I then go on to develop an alternative within which the underdetermination of stimulus plays a key role.

"C'est un malentendu"... Par cette formule s'opère le constat d'un trouble dans la communication et s'exprime en même temps le souhait de ne pas voir la situation dégénérer en un conflit plus sérieux. Mot de paix mais aussi de pouvoir - il faut être "quelqu'un" pour oser qualifier en ces termes la parole de l'autre -, chaque auteur en a sa définition, allant d'un constat tragi-comique à l'affirmation optimiste du caractère heuristique du malentendu sur le terrain ethnographique. Le terrain est en effet le lieu où les malentendus et les mécompréhensions (misunderstandings) abondent, pouvant susciter l'angoisse mais pouvant aussi mener à de nouvelles voies d'approches, à des formulations différentes, ou à un rire libérateur.