Test Questions & Answers | Linguistic Anthropology – Ch.4

Chapter 4: Linguistic Anthropology: Relating Language and Culture

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 01

1) The study of language from an anthropological point of view is called

Feedback: Anthropological linguistics is the study of language from an anthropological point of view.
Page reference: How do Anthropologists Study Language?

a. phonology.

b. ethnography.

c. sociolinguistics.

*d. anthropological linguistics.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 02

2) What is the name for studying the way that language serves as a way to distinguish the way that people actually speak from the idealized ways that they are supposed to speak in a culture?

Feedback: Ethnography of speaking is the study of how people actually use spoken language in a particular cultural setting.
Page reference: How do Anthropologists Study Language?

*a. Ethnography of speaking

b. Sociolinguistics

c. Historical particularism

d. Rapid appraisal

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 03

3) An anthropologist who looks at speech acts as performances by recording narrative speech acts in the form of verses and stanzas rather than as prose paragraphs to capture the performative elements of speech is conducting

Feedback: Ethnopoetics is a method of recording narrative speech acts—including oral poetry, stories, and ritual use of language— as verses and stanzas in order to capture the format and other performative elements that might be lost in written prose.
Page reference: How do Anthropologists Study Language?

a. comparative ethnography.

*b. ethnopoetics.

c. historical archaeology.

d. morphology.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 04

4) Animal call systems

Feedback: Call systems are patterned sounds, utterances, and movements of the body that express meaning.
Page reference: Where Does Language Come From?

a. express information about things that are not currently in their present environment.

b. fail to communicate in response to real-world stimuli.

*c. do not combine calls to make new call meanings.

d. are highly irregular among primates.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 05

5) Koko and Washoe were two primates who had learned

Feedback: It is clear that some apes have the ability to communicate, beyond the limits of a call system, as researchers who have attempted to teach American Sign Language (ASL) to apes demonstrate. A well-known example is a chimp named Washoe, who grew up in captivity but heard no spoken language from her human caregivers, R. Allen Gardner and Beatrice Gardner. The Gardners instead used ASL whenever they were with her, and Washoe learned over 100 signs that had English equivalents. Even more striking, she was able to combine as many as five signs to form complete, if simple, sentences.
Page reference: Where Does Language Come From?

a. call sounds.

*b. American Sign Language.

c. Morse code.

d. English.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 06

6) de Saussure's concept of parole is the

Feedback: The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1916, 1986) suggested a distinction between the structure, or formal rules, of a language (langue) and the way in which people actually speak a language (parole). Distinguishing between langue (“language”) and parole (“speech”) allows linguists to separate the rules and expected usage of language from what people actually say.
Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

*a. way people actually speak a language.

b. formal rules of language.

c. structure of speech sounds.

d. order of words.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 07

7) Words that came from the same ancestral language and originated from the same word are called

Feedback: Cognate words are words in two languages that show the same systematic sound shifts as other words in the two languages, usually interpreted by linguists as evidence for a common linguistic ancestry.
Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

a. loan words.

b. synonyms.

*c. cognate words.

d. phonology.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 08

8) _____________ refers to the structure of speech sounds.

Feedback: Phonology is the systematic pattern of sounds in a language, also known as the language’s sound system.
Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

a. Cognates

b. Parole

*c. Phonology

d. Syntax

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 09

9) How words fit together to make meaningful units is called

Feedback: Morphology is the structure of words and word formation in a language.

Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

a. phonology.

*b. morphology.

c. syntax.

d. cognates.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 10

10) The study of grammatical categories, such as tense and word order, is called

Feedback: Morphology is the structure of words and word formation in a language.

Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

a. phonology.

*b. morphology.

c. ethnography.

d. sociolinguistics.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 11

11) When anthropologists study the way people use language in real settings rather than as a set of grammatical rules, they are focusing on

Feedback: The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1916, 1986) suggested a distinction between the structure, or formal rules, of a language (langue) and the way in which people actually speak a language (parole). Distinguishing between langue (“language”) and parole (“speech”) allows linguists to separate the rules and expected usage of language from what people actually say.
Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

*a. parole.

b. langue.

c. phonetics.

d. morphology.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 12

12) A stoplight is a visual example of which of the following?

Feedback: Signs are words or objects that stand for something else, usually as a kind of shorthand (Figures 4.6 and 4.7). They are the most basic way to convey meaning. A simple example is the ordinary traffic sign that tells motorists to stop at an intersection. The colors, shapes, and designs used in such signs are largely arbitrary; when highway signs were invented early in the twentieth century, engineers could have selected any shape or color for the stop sign. The choice was not totally arbitrary, however, because Americans feel red is more dramatic than yellow or blue, and it may well have been associated with fire departments before the automobile.

Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

a. Symbol

b. Langue

*c. Sign

d. Parole

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 13

13) Anthropologist Sherry Ortner distinguished three kinds of culturally powerful symbols that include all of the following except

Feedback: Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

*a. narrative symbols.

b. key scenarios.

c. summarizing symbols.

d. elaborating symbols.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 14

14) According to anthropologist Sherry Ortner's analysis, the American flag is an example of

Feedback: Summarizing symbols sum up a variety of meanings and experiences and link them to a single symbol. An example is the American flag, which many Americans see as summarizing everything good about America, especially such things as “democracy, free enterprise, hard work, competition, progress, national superiority, freedom, etc.” (Ortner 1971:1340).

Page reference: Type relevant section heading here

a. a key scenario.

b. a sign.

c. an elaborating symbol.

*d. a summarizing symbol.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 15

15) The study of how people classify things in the world is called

Feedback: Ethnoscience is the study of how people classify things in the world, usually by considering some range or set of meanings.
Page reference: Does Language Shape How We Experience the World?

a. ethnography.

b. sociolinguistics.

*c. ethnoscience.

d. biological determinism.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 16

16) Today most anthropologists accept a ________ version of the linguistic relativity argument: the language habits of a community create tendencies to think about the world in certain ways and not others.

Feedback: By the late 1960s, ethnoscience had largely dismissed the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis as having no significance for understanding human cognition. The most powerful argument against the idea that our language shapes our thought is that we have no way of knowing for sure what cognitive processes are involved when we use language in different ways. All we have is the language, which is where we started in the first place, plus our own researcher’s intuition. Today, most anthropologists accept what has come to be called the “weak” or “non-deterministic” version of the linguistic relativity argument, which suggests (much as Sapir wrote) that the language habits of a community lead people to think about the world in certain ways and not others. Such a reading of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis supports the idea that some ways of thinking are guided by the language we use, while others are not.
Page reference: Does Language Shape How We Experience the World?

a. strong (deterministic)

*b. weak (nondeterministic)

c. irrelevant

d. symbolic

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 17

17) A language of mixed origin that developed from a complex blending of two parent languages is called

Feedback: Creole language is a language of mixed origin that has developed from a complex blending of two parent languages and exists as a mother tongue for some part of the population.
Page reference: If Language Is Always Changing, Why Does It Seem So Stable?

a. a pidgin language.

*b. creole.

c. slang.

d. language ideology.

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 18

18) Like cultural anthropologists, linguistic anthropologists work with informants or research subjects through fieldwork.

Feedback: Linguistic anthropologists, like cultural anthropologists, work directly with their informants or research subjects. Thus, much of their research involves fieldwork, building rapport with informants, and long periods of immersion in another culture. But the specific field strategy that a linguistic anthropologist adopts will depend on the kind of questions he or she is asking about the use of language in a particular culture.
Page reference: How do Anthropologists Study Language?

*a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 19

19) Early anthropologists such as Franz Boas saw little use for language as a mechanism for understanding culture.

Feedback: In the early decades of the twentieth century, anthropologists saw language as central to understanding culture. Franz Boas (1911) and his team of researchers who were studying the tribes of the northwest coast of North America in the late 1890s published many texts transcribed in their original Indian languages along with English translations. They insisted that the categories and concepts encoded in Native American myths and stories were distinctive of local cultures. They pioneered a tradition—expanded by Boas’s student Edward Sapir—that has come to be called anthropological linguistics, the branch of linguistics that later influenced the development of linguistic anthropology.

Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Language?

a. True

*b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 20

20) Most mammals use some form of call system to communicate with others of their species. Dogs and chimpanzees share an additional linguistic characteristic because they can communicate simple combinations of ideas about things they are not currently seeing.

Feedback: Chimpanzees and gorillas clearly have the cognitive ability to associate signs with concepts and then to combine them in original ways, comparable in some respects to the linguistic ability of a toddler. Such capabilities are not surprising among our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom, given evolutionary patterns among apes that favored the development of cognitive and social complexity. At the same time, it is helpful to remember that our human evolutionary lineage split from those of gorillas and chimpanzees over 7 million years ago. It is almost certain that fully human language involving the possibility of creating more or less infinite combinations of signs and meanings emerged long after this split.

Page reference: Where Does Language Come From?

a. True

*b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 21

21) Most people are unaware of the structure of a language until someone speaking it makes a mistake.

Feedback: Over the past century, linguists and linguistic anthropologists have studied the majority of the world’s languages and found that each is highly structured. Moreover, most people are largely unaware of the structure of their language until someone makes a mistake. Even then, they do not always know what is wrong, they just know the sentence sounded wrong.

Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

*a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 22

22) Languages change very slowly, taking generations or even centuries.

Feedback: If we take a rather static view of language, this issue might lead us to believe that languages are very stable, slow to change; and yet language is dynamic.
Page reference: If Language Is Always Changing, Why Does It Seem So Stable?

a. True

*b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 23

23) According to Edward Sapir, language is the symbolic guide to culture.

Feedback: Sapir’s student Benjamin Lee Whorf expanded on Sapir’s work. Whorf had studied the language of the Hopi Indians and found that his knowledge of the grammars of European languages was of little help in understanding Hopi grammar. He concluded that people who speak different languages actually do—are not just “inclined to,” as his teacher Sapir would have said—perceive and experience the world differently. By the 1950s, linguistic anthropologists saw the ideas of Sapir and Whorf as related and began referring to them as the “Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.”
Page reference: Does Language Shape How We Experience the World?

*a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 24

24) America's pattern of gender inequality is built into our linguistic practices.

Feedback: In her research, Robin Lakoff described how “talking like a lady” involved the expectation that a woman’s speech patterns should include such things as tag questions (“It’s three o’clock, isn’t it?”); intensifiers (“It’s a very lovely hat!”); hedge (“I’m pretty sure”); or hesitation and the repetition of expressions, all of which can communicate uncertainty and were largely absent in expectations about men’s speech. Lakoff argued that the social effects of speaking in this way can marginalize women’s voices in contexts like a courtroom or a workplace, where speaking in a way that implies uncertainty—even if the speaker is not intentionally expressing uncertainty—can undermine a woman’s testimony (as in a court of law) or trustworthiness (as in a workplace).
Page reference: How Does Language Relate to Social Power and Inequality?

*a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 25

25) Nineteenth-century European colonial powers often introduced their own language as the official language in places like sub-Saharan Africa because they viewed indigenous languages as socially inferior.

Feedback: In places like sub-Saharan Africa, nineteenth-century European colonial powers introduced their own language as the official language, in large part because they viewed indigenous languages as socially inferior to their European languages. When the countries of this region acquired independence, many of these languages became one of several national languages.
Page reference: How Does Language Relate to Social Power and Inequality?

*a. True

b. False

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 26

26) Which of the following is a feature of language?

Feedback: Language is a system of communication consisting of sounds, words, and grammar.
Page reference: Where Does Language Come From?

a. It is rarely used to communicate.

b. It is not systematic.

*c. It consists of sounds organized into words according to some sort of grammar.

d. It is only used by the civilized races

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 27

27) In evolutionary terms humans are distinct from other primates with respect to their ability to use language because we

Feedback: Chimpanzees and gorillas clearly have the cognitive ability to associate signs with concepts and then to combine them in original ways, comparable in some respects to the linguistic ability of a toddler. Such capabilities are not surprising among our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom, given evolutionary patterns among apes that favored the development of cognitive and social complexity. At the same time, it is helpful to remember that our human evolutionary lineage split from those of gorillas and chimpanzees over 7 million years ago. It is almost certain that fully human language involving the possibility of creating more or less infinite combinations of signs and meanings emerged long after this split.

Page reference: Where Does Language Come From?

a. have much larger brains.

b. can learn American Sign Language.

*c. can speak using a larynx.

d. have much smaller brains.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 28

28) When language speakers use slang or metaphor, they are engaging in which concept suggested by French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure?

Feedback: The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1916, 1986) suggested a distinction between the structure, or formal rules, of a language (langue) and the way in which people actually speak a language (parole). Distinguishing between langue (“language”) and parole (“speech”) allows linguists to separate the rules and expected usage of language from what people actually say.
Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

a. Langue

*b. Parole

c. Cognate

d. Phonology

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 29

29) For pastoral groups such as the Dinka and the Nuer, the cow acts as which kind of symbol?

Feedback: Elaborating symbols explain and clarify complex relationships through a single symbol or set of symbols. Elaborating symbols work in exactly the opposite way from summarizing symbols, because they help us sort out complex feelings and relationships. For example, the cow is an elaborating symbol among the Nuer and Dinka peoples of South Sudan. For these herding groups, cows are used for bride wealth, and people spend an extraordinary amount of time thinking about their cows, their coloration, their body parts, and the like. The Nuer and Dinka think of the cow as resembling the body of society with its varied and interlinked parts. By talking about cows, they can talk about social relations within the community.

Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

a. Metaphor

*b. Summarizing symbol

c. Narrative symbol

d. Elaborating symbol

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 30

30) Talking about sports as a battlefield is an example of

Feedback: Metaphors are implicit comparisons of words or things that emphasize the similarities between them, allowing people to make sense of complex social relations around them.
Page reference: Where Does Language Come From?

a. a summarizing symbol.

b. a simile.

*c. a metaphor.

d. an elaborating symbol.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 31

31) The key scenario differs from other kinds of symbols because it

Feedback: The key scenario differs from the other two kinds of symbols because it implies how people should act. A common American key scenario is the Horatio Alger myth. In Horatio Alger’s many novels, this scenario often involves a young boy from a poor family who works hard to become rich and powerful. It does not matter that most of us will not become these things; the scenario has meaning for how we feel about and evaluate hard work and persistence.

Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

a. helps us talk about difficult emotions.

b. synthesizes everything important to society in a single symbol.

*c. implies how people should act.

d. explains complex relationships in a single symbol.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 32

32) Linguists refer to mixed languages with a simplified grammar that people rarely learn as a mother tongue as

Feedback: Pidgin language is a mixed language with a simplified grammar, typically borrowing its vocabulary from one language but its grammar from another.
Page reference: If Language Is Always Changing, Why Does It Seem So Stable?

*a. a pidgin language.

b. a creole language.

c. language ideology.

d. slang.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 33

33) The US government's prohibition of Native American children speaking their indigenous languages in Indian schools has contributed most profoundly to

Feedback: Many indigenous groups around the world are facing what scholars call ”language death,” referring to the dying out of many minority languages. Some linguists argue that nearly half of the world’s 5,000 or 6,000 languages are in jeopardy of dying out within a century. In many cases, government actions have systematically set the stage for native language death by discouraging younger members of the community from using their indigenous language in favor of the national language. For example, in the United States, the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent many American Indians to schools where, until the 1970s, they were prohibited from using their native languages and were taught that their languages were inferior. The effect has been that many Indians stopped using their native tongues, and most indigenous North American languages are spoken by only small numbers of older people.
Page reference: If Language Is Always Changing, Why Does It Seem So Stable?

a. ethnocentrism.

b. cultural relativism.

*c. language death.

d. language ideology.

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 34

34) Although language is one of the most rule-bound aspects of human culture, it is also one of the least conscious.

Feedback: Language is one of the most rule-bound and structured aspects of human culture. Yet, ironically, language is also one of the least conscious aspects of culture. Very few of us are aware of the sources of the linguistic usages most common in how we talk. Moreover, while language is structured, it is also one of the most dynamic aspects of human life, because it can change so rapidly. Different languages have words for different sets of concepts, just as different words can be used for similar concepts.

Page reference: How do anthropologists study language?

*a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 35

35) Because of the widespread use of mass media today, sociolinguists have found increasing homogeneity in the use of language in the United States.

Feedback: The sociolinguist William Labov observed in the 1980s that language change in the sound system of American English was concentrated in the cities. He also noted that sound change was most pronounced between generations in the same communities. Such findings suggest a much stronger role for peer groups in the transmission of linguistic forms than linguists had previously noticed.
Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

a. True

*b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 36

36) Elaborating symbols and summarizing symbols work in opposite ways.

Feedback: Summarizing symbols sum up a variety of meanings and experiences and link them to a single symbol. An example is the American flag, which many Americans see as summarizing everything good about America, especially such things as “democracy, free enterprise, hard work, competition, progress, national superiority, freedom, etc.” Elaborating symbols explain and clarify complex relationships through a single symbol or set of symbols. Elaborating symbols work in exactly the opposite way from summarizing symbols, because they help us sort out complex feelings and relationships.

Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

*a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 04 Question 37

37) Countries find it relatively easy to decide what language its citizens will speak.

Feedback: Different countries have tried to control language change through the creation of national language policies. Short of making one particular regional dialect the national language, however, countries have found it nearly impossible to dictate what language or what form of the national language the public will speak. Three examples—taken from the Netherlands, France, and Quebec (Canada)—demonstrate different approaches to controlling processes of language change.
Page reference: If Language Is Always Changing, Why Does It Seem So Stable?

a. True

*b. False

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 38

38) If Jakob Grimm, who developed what has come to be known as Grimm's law, were analyzing the historical relationships among the so-called dialects of Chinese (such as Cantonese and Mandarin), what data would he be looking for in his linguistic fieldwork?

Feedback: As speakers of languages became isolated from one another—perhaps because of migration and geographical isolation—the consonants in the original language shifted one way in Sanskrit, another way in Greek and Slavic languages, in a different direction in Germanic and English, and yet another way in Latin and the Romance languages, all of which came to be known as Grimm’s Law.
Page reference: Where Does Language Come From?

a. The characters used by people who spoke these different dialects

b. The average height, weight, and cephalic index of speakers of these several dialects

c. Whether the speakers they surveyed knew any other non-Chinese languages

*d. How the speakers of each dialect pronounce different words with similar meanings in the several dialects

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 39

39) If you were a linguistic anthropologist interested in language change in smaller American cities, building on William Labov's studies from the 1980s, what method would you use?

Feedback: The sociolinguist William Labov observed in the 1980s that language change in the sound system of American English was concentrated in the cities. He also noted that sound change was most pronounced between generations in the same communities. Such findings suggest a much stronger role for peer groups in the transmission of linguistic forms than linguists had previously noticed.
Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

a. Compare text messages, instant messages, and Twitter entries from people of different ages

b. Compare the professional slang of people in different occupations

c. Analyze similarities and differences in the use of modern technology among people in different age groups

*d. Record how younger people, middle-aged people, and senior citizens pronounce ordinary American words

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 40

40) If you were conducting a symbolic analysis of TV programs and wanted to identify a key scenario such as the Horatio Alger myth, which of the following would you focus on?

Feedback: A key scenario is a kind of symbol that implies how people should act.
Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

a. The presence or absence of wealth as a sign of social status in particular programs

*b. Plots that are repeated in many of the programs that American viewers interpret as commonplace social experiences

c. The different dialects spoken by different cast members

d. The symbolic use of power in modern American culture

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 41

41) If Benjamin Whorf were trying to find further proof that grammar shapes the way people perceive the world, which of the following would not be a focus of his research?

Feedback: Sapir’s student Benjamin Lee Whorf expanded on Sapir’s work. Whorf had studied the language of the Hopi Indians and found that his knowledge of the grammars of European languages was of little help in understanding Hopi grammar. He concluded that people who speak different languages actually do—are not just “inclined to,” as his teacher Sapir would have said—perceive and experience the world differently. By the 1950s, linguistic anthropologists saw the ideas of Sapir and Whorf as related and began referring to them as the “Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.”
Page reference: Does Language Shape How We Experience the World?

a. The structure of tenses in English and other languages spoken in the United States

b. The number of basic color terms compared with English

c. The structure of person pronouns in the several languages

*d. The density of the population in the several communities

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 42

42) If you studied speech patterns such as those analyzed in Robin Lakoff's study of gendered speech, you might find that “talking like a lady”

Feedback: In her research, Robin Lakoff described how “talking like a lady” involved the expectation that a woman’s speech patterns should include such things as tag questions (“It’s three o’clock, isn’t it?”); intensifiers (“It’s a very lovely hat!”); hedge (“I’m pretty sure”); or hesitation and the repetition of expressions, all of which can communicate uncertainty and were largely absent in expectations about men’s speech. Lakoff argued that the social effects of speaking in this way can marginalize women’s voices in contexts like a courtroom or a workplace, where speaking in a way that implies uncertainty—even if the speaker is not intentionally expressing uncertainty—can undermine a woman’s testimony (as in a court of law) or trustworthiness (as in a workplace).
Page reference: How Does Language Relate to Social Power and Inequality?

a. contributes to gender equality in the workplace.

*b. marginalizes women's voices in work contexts.

c. demonstrates that women and men are equal.

d. builds certainty and trust.

Type: Short Answer

Title: Chapter 04 Question 43

43) If you wanted to study how athletes and non-athletes used language differently on your campus, how would you go about finding this out?

Feedback: Linguistic anthropologists, like cultural anthropologists, work directly with their informants or research subjects. Thus, much of their research involves fieldwork, building rapport with informants, and long periods of immersion in another culture. But the specific field strategy that a linguistic anthropologist adopts will depend on the kind of questions he or she is asking about the use of language in a particular culture.
Page reference: How do Anthropologists Study Language?

Type: Short Answer

Title: Chapter 04 Question 44

44) According to linguistic anthropologists, why don't our pets actually understand a rudimentary form of English?

Feedback: Chimpanzees and gorillas clearly have the cognitive ability to associate signs with concepts and then to combine them in original ways, comparable in some respects to the linguistic ability of a toddler. Such capabilities are not surprising among our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom, given evolutionary patterns among apes that favored the development of cognitive and social complexity. At the same time, it is helpful to remember that our human evolutionary lineage split from those of gorillas and chimpanzees over 7 million years ago. It is almost certain that fully human language involving the possibility of creating more or less infinite combinations of signs and meanings emerged long after this split.

Page reference: Where Does Language Come From?

Type: Short Answer

Title: Chapter 04 Question 45

45) How can language mark our social position and status? In your answer apply the theory of language ideology.

Feedback: The concept of language ideology refers to the ideologies people have about the superiority of one dialect or language and the inferiority of others. A language ideology links language use with identity, morality, and aesthetics. It shapes our image of who we are as individuals, as members of social groups, and as participants in social institutions.
Page reference: Where Does Language Come From?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 46

46) How is communication between animals (call system communication) different from human language?

Feedback: It is clear that some apes have the ability to communicate, beyond the limits of a call system, as researchers who have attempted to teach American Sign Language (ASL) to apes demonstrate. A well-known example is a chimp named Washoe, who grew up in captivity but heard no spoken language from her human caregivers, R. Allen Gardner and Beatrice Gardner. The Gardners instead used ASL whenever they were with her, and Washoe learned over 100 signs that had English equivalents. Even more striking, she was able to combine as many as five signs to form complete, if simple, sentences.
Page reference: Where Does Language Come From?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 47

47) To what extent do our American English grammatical categories shape the ways we anticipate events that occur in the world around us? Consider, for example, how the use of the English pronouns “he,” “she,” “they,” and “it” affects social relationships.

Feedback: American English has fewer pronouns than many other languages. We distinguish between singular and plural, among three persons (first, second, and third), and among three cases (subjective, objective, and possessive). If we consider only person and number, we have six basic pronouns, plus two extra pronouns for gender marking in the third-person singular (he, she, and it). This set of pronouns does not even begin to exhaust the possible pronoun distinctions that could be used. In French, for example, the second person singular pronoun (“you”) takes two forms: tu (an informal, intimate form) and vous (a formal form). The Awin language of Papua New Guinea has singular, dual, and plural forms of its pronouns, meaning “you” (one person), “you two,” and “you” (more than two).

Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 48

48) How do language ideologies marginalize groups of people? Give an example to illustrate your answer.

Feedback: The concept of language ideology refers to the ideologies people have about the superiority of one dialect or language and the inferiority of others. A language ideology links language use with identity, morality, and aesthetics. It shapes our image of who we are as individuals, as members of social groups, and as participants in social institutions.
Page reference: Where Does Language Come From?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 49

49) With the rise of social media during the past decade, new terms have entered American English. How can there be language changes if we are not consciously aware that we are changing the way we speak?

Feedback: There are implications here for language change. Over the long term, such suggested ways of thinking would lead to a preference in each language for some kinds of linguistic change over others. If we take a rather static view of language, this issue might lead us to believe that languages are very stable, slow to change; and yet throughout this chapter we have suggested that language is dynamic. Let us now consider how language can constantly be changing, yet seem so stable.

Page reference: Does Language Shape How We Experience the World?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 50

50) In England, the dialect one speaks marks you as a person of a very specialized social class. What is it about our regional or social dialect that allows people to classify us and view us through unflattering stereotypes?

Feedback: Another interesting way to think about phonology is to consider accents and dialects, which are regional or social variations of a single language. Sometimes the variation occurs between generations or among people of different social classes. Part of the distinctive sound of these forms of speech results from differences in ”intonation,” the pattern of rising and falling pitch, but careful analysis of the sounds usually shows that accents and dialects also have systematic differences in their respective sound systems.

Page reference: How Does Language Actually Work?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 04 Question 51

51) How does understanding that men and women speak differently, even though they both speak American English, help us to understand patterns of social behavior?

Feedback: In her research, Robin Lakoff described how “talking like a lady” involved the expectation that a woman’s speech patterns should include such things as tag questions (“It’s three o’clock, isn’t it?”); intensifiers (“It’s a very lovely hat!”); hedge (“I’m pretty sure”); or hesitation and the repetition of expressions, all of which can communicate uncertainty and were largely absent in expectations about men’s speech. Lakoff argued that the social effects of speaking in this way can marginalize women’s voices in contexts like a courtroom or a workplace, where speaking in a way that implies uncertainty—even if the speaker is not intentionally expressing uncertainty—can undermine a woman’s testimony (as in a court of law) or trustworthiness (as in a workplace).
Page reference: How Does Language Relate to Social Power and Inequality?