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UM Digos College

Department of Teacher Education


Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

UNIVERSITY OF MINDANAO DIGOS COLLEGE


College of Teacher Education
Bachelor in Secondary- English

Physically Distanced but Academically Engaged

Self-Instructional Manual (SIM) for Self-Directed Learning (SDL)

Course/Subject: ELT 121 – Language, Culture and Society

Name of Teacher: Prof. JIVINA V. LUMAKANG and


Prof. ANA MARIE V. VILLANUEVA

THIS SIM/SDL MANUAL IS A DRAFT VERSION ONLY; NOT FOR


REPRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OUTSIDE OF ITS
INTENDED USE. THIS IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE USE OF

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

THE STUDENTS WHO ARE OFFICIALLY ENROLLED IN THE


COURSE/SUBJECT. EXPECT REVISIONS OF THE MANUAL.

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

Table of Contents
Page

Part 1. Quality Assurance Policies and Course Outline Policies ................... 2

Part 2. Instruction Delivery

Unit Learning Outcomes ......................................................................... 8


ULOa (Week 1-3) ........................................................................................ 8
Metalanguage ............................................................................................... 8
Essential Knowledge ................................................................................... 8
Self-Help ............................................................................................... 8
Let’s Check .................................................................................... 12
Let’s Analyze …………………………………………………………………… 13
Nutshell ............................................................................................... 12

ULOb ........................................................................................................... 16
Metalanguage ............................................................................................... 16
Essential Knowledge ................................................................................... 17
Self-Help ............................................................................................... 24
Let’s Check ............................................................................................... 25
Let’s Analyze …………………………………………………………………… 25
Nutshell ............................................................................................... 27

ULOa (Week 4-5) ..................................................................................... 30


Metalanguage .............................................................................................. 30
Essential Knowledge .................................................................................. 31
Self-Help ............................................................................................... 36
Let’s Check ............................................................................................... 36
Let’s Analyze …………………………………………………………………… 36
Nutshell ............................................................................................... 39

ULOb ........................................................................................................... 41
Metalanguage ............................................................................................... 41
Essential Knowledge ................................................................................... 41
Self-Help ............................................................................................... 45
Let’s Check .................................................................................... 45

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

Let’s Analyze …………………………………………………………………… 46


Nutshell ............................................................................................... 47

ULOa (Week 6-7) ................................................................................... 56


Metalanguage ............................................................................................... 56
Essential Knowledge ................................................................................... 57
Self-Help ............................................................................................... 62
Let’s Check .................................................................................... 62
Let’s Analyze .................................................................................... 62
Nutshell ............................................................................................... 63

ULOb ........................................................................................................... 65
Metalanguage ............................................................................................... 65
Essential Knowledge ................................................................................... 66
Self-Help ............................................................................................... 72
Let’s Check .................................................................................... 72
Let’s Analyze .................................................................................... 73
Nutshell ............................................................................................... 77

ULOa (Week 8-9) ................................................................................... 79


Metalanguage ............................................................................................... 79
Essential Knowledge ................................................................................... 79
Self-Help ............................................................................................... 88
Let’s Check .................................................................................... 88
Let’s Analyze …………………………………………………………………… 89
Nutshell ............................................................................................... 90

ULOb ........................................................................................................... 92
Metalanguage ............................................................................................... 92
Essential Knowledge ................................................................................... 92
Self-Help ............................................................................................... 95
Let’s Check .................................................................................... 96
Let’s Analyze …………………………………………………………………… 96
Nutshell ............................................................................................... 97

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

Course Coordinator: JIVINA V. LUMAKANG


Email: jivina_lumakang@umindanao.edu.ph.com
Student Consultation: By appointment
Mobile: 09503401070 (Smart) 09366696093 (TM)
Phone: (082)- 227- 4659 (Landline)
Effectivity Date: January 2021
Mode of Delivery: Blended Leaning and Distance Learning
Time Frame: 108 hours
Student Workload: Expected Self-Directed Learning
Requisites:  None
Credit:   3
Attendance Requirements: A minimum of 95% attendance is required at all
scheduled Virtual or face to face session.

Areas of Concern Details


Contact and Non-contact Hours This 3-unit course self-instructional manual is designed
for blended learning mode of instructional delivery with
scheduled face to face or virtual sessions. The expected
number of hours will be 108 including the face
to face or virtual sessions. The face to face sessions shall
include the summative assessment tasks (exams)
since this course is crucial in the licensure examination for
teachers.
Assessment Task Submission Submission of assessment tasks shall be on 1st, 2nd, 3rd
and 4th week of the Term. The assessment paper shall be
attached with a cover page indicating the title of the
assessment task (if the task is performance), the name of
the course coordinator, date of submission and name of the
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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

student. The document should be emailed to the course


coordinator. It is also expected that you already paid your
tuition and other fees before the submission of the
assessment task. If the assessment task is done in real
time through the features in the Blackboard Learning
Management System, the schedule shall be arranged
ahead of time
by the course coordinator.
Turnitin Submission To ensure honesty and authenticity, all assessment
(if necessary) tasks are required to be submitted through Turnitin with a
maximum similarity index of 30% allowed. This means that
if your paper goes beyond 30%, the students will either opt
to redo her/his paper or explain in writing addressed to the
course coordinator the reasons for the similarity. In addition,
if the paper has reached more than 30% similarity index,
the student may be called for a disciplinary action in
accordance with the University’s OPM on Intellectual and
Academic
Honesty.

Please note that academic dishonesty such as cheating


and commissioning other students or people to complete
the task for you have severe punishments (reprimand,
warning, expulsion).
Penalties for Late The score for an assessment item submitted after the
Assignments/Assessment designated time on the due date, without an approved
extension of time, will be reduced by 5% of the possible
maximum score for that assessment item for each day or
part day that the assessment item is late.

However, if the late submission of assessment paper has a


valid reason, a letter of explanation should be submitted
and approved by the course coordinator. If necessary, you
will also be required to present/attach evidences.
Return of Assessment tasks will be returned to you two (2) weeks
Assignments/Assessments after the submission. This will be returned by email or via
Blackboard portal.
For group assessment tasks, the course coordinator will
require some or few of the students for online or virtual
sessions to ask clarificatory questions to validate the
originality of the assessment task submitted and to ensure
that all the group members are involved.

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

Assignment Resubmission You should request in writing addressed to the course


coordinator his/her intention to resubmit an assessment
task. The resubmission is premised on the student’s failure
to comply with the similarity index and other reasonable
grounds such as academic literacy standards or other
reasonable circumstances e.g. illness, accidents, financial
constraints.
Re-marking of Assessment You should request in writing addressed to the program
Papers and Appeal coordinator your intention to appeal or contest the score
given to an assessment task. The letter should explicitly
explain the reasons/points to contest the grade. The
program coordinator shall communicate with the students
on the approval and disapproval of the request.

If disapproved by the course coordinator, you can elevate


your case to the program head or the dean with the original
letter of request. The final decision will come from the dean
of the college.
Grading System All culled from BlackBoard sessions and traditional Contact
Course discussions/exercises – 30%
1st formative assessment – 10%
2nd formative assessment – 10%
3rd formative assessment – 10%

All culled from on-campus/onsite sessions (TBA):


Final exam – 40%

Submission of the final grades shall follow the usual


University system and procedures.
Preferred Referencing Style Depends on the discipline; if uncertain or inadequate, use
the general practice of the APA 6th Edition.
Student Communication You are required to create a umindanao email account
which is a requirement to access the BlackBoard portal.
Then, the course coordinator shall enroll the students to
have access to the materials and resources of the course.
All communication formats: chat, submission of assessment
tasks, requests etc. shall be through the portal and other
university recognized platforms.

You can also meet the course coordinator in person


through the scheduled face to face sessions to raise your
issues and concerns.

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

For students who have not created their student email,


please contact the course coordinator or program head.
Contact Details of the Dean Eduard L. Pulvera, MSIS
Contact Details of the Program Tomas Dequito, MS Bio Mast.
Head
Students with Special Needs Students with special needs shall communicate with the
course coordinator about the nature of his or her special
needs. Depending on the nature of the need, the course
coordinator with the approval of the program coordinator
may provide alternative assessment tasks
or extension of the deadline of submission of assessment
tasks. However, the alternative assessment tasks should
still be in the service of achieving the desired course
learning outcomes.

CC’s Voice: Hello future educators! Welcome to this course ELT 121: Language,
Culture and Society. By now, I am confident that you really wanted to become a
language teacher as well as a skilled teacher and that you have visualized yourself
already being in front of the classroom teaching the English language skills needed by
your future students.

CO Before the actual teaching performance, you must deal with the concept of
how language, culture and society are connected. There are discussion of
concepts that will enhance our understanding of language and how it
shaped our worldviews. We can also observe in our environment the
realities of culture affecting our conversation with the use of language.

Let us begin!

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

Big Picture
Week 1-3: Unit Learning Outcomes (ULO): At the end of the unit, you are expected
to:
a. Demonstrate a sound understanding of language acquisition and its theories.
b. Explain the cultural influences upon language acquisition.

Metalanguage

For you to demonstrate ULOa, you will need to have a wide range of
understanding of the terms, concept and theories of language acquisition. You need to
understand the following terms as they will be important in the lesson.

Key Terms:

Essential Knowledge

To perform the aforesaid big picture (unit learning outcomes) for the first three (3)
weeks of the course, you need to fully understand the following essential knowledge
that will be laid down in the succeeding pages. Please note that you are not limited to
exclusively refer to these resources. Thus, you are expected to utilize other books,
research articles and other resources that are available in the university’s library e.g.
ebrary, search.proquest.com etc.

Language Acquisition 1

The process of the acquisition of a language needs some basic foundations.


Within the first two or three years, an individual requires interaction with other
language-users in order to have a contact to a specific language. The child is required

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

to be capable of sending and receiving sound signals in a language. And in order to


learn a language, a child must be able to hear a language being used.

Input
Under normal circumstances, human infants are certainly helped in their
language acquisition by the typical behavior of older children and adults in the home
environment who provide language sample, or input, for the child. The speech style of
someone who always spend time interacting with the infant incorporates a lot of forms
associated with “baby talk”. This style can either be simplified words or alternative
forms, with repeated simple sounds and syllables, for things that surround the child. It is
also characterized with consistent use of questions, often using exaggerated intonation,
extra loudness and a slower tempo with longer pauses.
Stages of Language Development
1. Cooing- the earliest use of speech sounds has been described as cooing. During the
first few months of an infant’s life, the infant is gradually capable of producing vowel-like
sounds like high vowels [i] and [u]. By four months, infants will develop velar sounds
where they are able to use the back of their tongue hence, our common description of
“cooing” or “gooing”.
2. Babbling- on this stage, a child is producing a number of vowel and consonant sounds,
as well as a combination of these such as ba-ba-ba and ga-ga-ga. We call this type as
“babbling”.
3. One-word stage- between twelve to eighteen months, children begin to produce a
variety of recognizable single unit utterances. Single terms are uttered for everyday
objects such as “milk”, “cookie”, “cat”, “cup” and “spoon” the other term for this is
holophrastic (meaning a single form functioning as a phrase or sentence).
4. Two -word stage- on this stage, an occurrence of two distinct words is used together
around 18 to 20 months of a child’s life. Words like big boat, mama dress, doggie bark,
hit ball, etc. In this stage as well, adult interaction became fuller as feedbacks are
consistently forming from the child to another dyads.
5. Telegraphic speech- this stage is around two and two-and-a-half years old and is
characterized by strings of words (lexical morphemes) in phrases or sentences such as
this shoe all wet, cat drink milk, and daddy go bye-bye. Developing sentences here is
evident.

Language Acquisition Theories 2

By age 3 or 4, most children have acquired sufficient proficiency in language that they
are able to carry on productive conversations with the people around them.

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

Theorists have offered numerous explanations for how children learn their native
language. Let us investigate these theorist explaining language acquisition.

1. Modelling and Reinforcement

Many theorist claimed that language development is a result of a modelling process that
children simple imitate the speech of other people. In some degree, observation and imitation of
others are greatly involved in their language acquisition. Sounds patterns that parents or a
caretaker are occasionally imitated by these young acquirers. Even specific words and
expressions are being picked up by these young acquirers.
Behaviorist like B. F. Skinner (1957) claimed that reinforcement plays a vital role, to that
of the parents and other adults in the home environment of a child where praise or in other ways
a reward/s is available. He also believed that infants make a variety of speech sounds in a
seemingly random fashion where adults respond favorably to and so making these young
acquirers encouraged to repeat but only to those speech sounds in their local language.

2. Nativism

There are also biological theories to explain language acquisition. Noam Chomsky, a
pioneer of this approach known as nativism, he proposed that children have a biologically
built-in mechanism know as language acquisition device where this device enables them to
learn many complex aspects of language. This devoice provides a a prewired knowledge and
skills that make the work of learning a language possible and much simpler.
Another evidence also proving Chomsky’s claim comes from a brain research. The left
hemisphere of the cortex dominates in speech and language comprehension. Two specific
regions of the left cortex of the brain seem to specialize in language functions. The right
hemisphere is actively involved in sifting through multiple possible meanings to ambiguous
statement, perceiving humor and sarcasm and using sign languages.
However, this theory is considered only as part of a neurological mechanism of the brain,
in spite of these biological and psychological evidences, there are still theories that can give a
better explanation on language acquisition.

3. Information Processing Theory

This theory focuses on the specific cognitive processes that children use as they acquire
language. From an information processing perspective, one essential ingredient in language
learning is attention. Infants pay attention to human speech. They show some preferences on
human voices and in some cases expects and give efforts to receive one. Reasoning also
played a role in language development. Fairly enough, this theory sets a ground breaking
explanation for language learning but theorist also take note of another factor that can
contribute to language learning which is the environment.

4. Sociocultural Theory

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

Socialization can foster language development and children are being socialized to use
language. Language socialization involves both explicit instruction about language (e.g., parents
may insist that children say “please” and “thank you”) and more indirect means of
communicating

_________________________________________________

1 Yule, G. (2014). The study of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 170-174
2 https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/samplechapter/0/1/3/6/0136101291.pdf
appropriate linguistic behaviors (e.g., parents may model turn taking and other cultural
conventions of social interaction). Furthermore, social interactions provide a means through
which children internalize language. Consistent with Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive
development, children use words first in their interactions with others, and then, through the
process of internalization, gradually incorporate these words into their everyday thought
processes.

1. Jourdan, C. and Tuite K. (eds). (2006). Language, Culture, and Society: An introduction to
Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 40-65; 192-215.
2. Kramsch, C. (ed.). (2002). Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological
Perspective. New York: Continuum. pp. 31-172
3. Schieffelin, B. B. and Ochs, E. (eds.). (1995). Language Socialization across Cultures.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.80-96.

Let’s Check
Activity 1. Provide what is asked in the items below.
1. How can language be developed in the perspective of a behaviorist?
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2. What theory in language acquisition that explains the biological mechanism of
our body? Can this theory be considered as having a plausible explanation
towards language development? Why?

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
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Let’s Analyze

Activity 1. Directions: Interview a parent of a young child (between the ages of three to five)
and answer as many of the following questions about the child’s language development. Then,
on the next page paste pictures of the said interview as a form of evidence (please follow safety
protocol for the interview).

1. What is the child’s gender, and current age? What the language/s spoken at home?
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___________________.

2. When did the child start cooing and babbling? What did it sound like? (write the parent’s
answer phonetically).
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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________.
3. What was the child’s first word or words? At what was the child’s age when they speak
them?
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4. What was the meaning of the child’s first holophrastic utterances?
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5. What were some of the child’s two-word utterances? What did they mean?
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6. How do the parent’s recollections of their child’s development differ from the information
in this chapter? What do you think is the reason for the differences? Analyze and discuss
your conclusions.
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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
__________________________________.

In a Nutshell

Based from the terms we learn and essential knowledge about language acquisition
theories, please feel free to write your arguments or lessons learned below.

Your turn. What did you learn about this lesson?


1. ___________________________________________________________________
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2. ___________________________________________________________________
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3. ___________________________________________________________________
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Q & A List

This section is a place for you to raise your questions and queries that you feel the instructor
should give attention to. Feel free to ask relevant questions related from the course here. This Q
& A portion helps in the review of concepts and essential knowledge.

Questions/Issues
Answers

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Keywords Index
This section lists down the keywords for easy recall of concepts.

Language socialization Language Acquisition Device Nativism

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

Metalanguage

For you to demonstrate ULOb, you will need to have a wide range of
understanding of the different types of language assessment and testing. You need to
understand the following terms as they will be important in the lesson.

Key Terms:

● Language Relativity - the structure of a language influences the way its speakers conceptualize
the world
● Speech acts- an utterance considered as an action, particularly with regard to its intention,
purpose, or effect.
● Conversation analysis- is an approach to the study of social interaction, embracing both verbal
and non-verbal conduct, in situations of everyday life.
● Cultural frames- the unspoken systems of meaning at play in affecting our behavior, our attitudes,
and our decisions.

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

● Metasemiotic- the focus on the speaker would have to be on the individual person as speaker,
that is, as engaged in a speech act, rather than, say, as a person in general.

Essential Knowledge

To perform the aforesaid big picture (unit learning outcomes) for the first to third
week of the course, you need to fully understand the following essential knowledge that
will be laid down in the succeeding pages. Please note that you are not limited to
exclusively refer to these resources. Thus, you are expected to utilize other books,
research articles and other resources that are available in the university’s library e.g.
ebrary, search.proquest.com etc.

Cultural Influences on Language Acquisition 1

To be able to understand the influences of culture to language use, we will draw out
psycho- and sociolinguistics, educational linguistics and linguistic anthropology to
explain the connections of culture to language. To have a glance of this lesson, let us
organized around three major questions to provide a discussion in this lesson:

________________________________________
1 Schieffelin, & Ochs, E.(1995). Language Socialization across Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.80-96.

How is cultural meaning encoded in the linguistic sign?

Language relativity perceives the way the language that people use and shapes
the way they think. Sapir claimed that “Language is a guide to social reality it powerfully
conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes. The ‘real world’ is to a
large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two
languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social
reality. The world in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the
same world with different labels attached.” In language relativity, there are particularly
three levels: the semiotic level, linguistic level and discursive level.

● Semiotic relativity concerns about how speaking any natural language at all may
influence thinking. The question is whether having a code with a symbolic component
(versus one confined to iconic and indexical elements) transforms thinking in certain
ways. If so, we can speak of a semiotic relativity of those aspects of thought with respect
to other species or individuals lacking such a code. For example, here we would include

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UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

not only animal comparisons, but also studies showing cognitive deficits arising from lack
of access to verbal input during early periods of life (e.g. among the deaf) as well as the
cognitive advantages for classification and memory abilities arising from the mere
presence of a verbal or other symbolic label. The influence of language on thought at
this level has long been recognized, although much remains to be learned about the
specific mechanisms.
● Linguistic relativity concerns about how speaking one or more particular natural
languages (e.g., Hopi versus English) may influence thinking. The question is whether
quite different morphosyntactic configurations of meaning affect some aspects of
thinking about reality. If so, we can speak of a structural relativity of thought with respect
to speakers using different language codes. This has been the level traditionally
associated with the term structural relativity and will be the focus here. Long
controversial, the existence of cognitive effects is now widely recognized although
controversies still exist over how profound they are in terms of process type or
behavioral impact.
● Discursive relativity concerns about whether using language in a particular way (e.g.
schooled, scientific) may influence thinking. The question is whether verbal discursive
practices affect some aspects of thinking either by modulating structural influences or by
directly influencing the interpretation of interactional context. If so, we can speak of a
functional relativity of thought with respect to speakers using language differently. This
level can be conveniently referred to as discursive relativity. Although there is an
abundance of evidence that training in these functional regimes has effects, there is
much disagreement as to whether the effects are due to social or cognitive factors,
especially in the context of schooling. Claims about discursive relativity assert that in
addition to any social factors, some functional practices actually enhance the cognitive
power of language with regard to certain goals.

In sum, various fields of research related to Applied Linguistics have made it easier
in recent decades to conceptualize how culture is encoded in the linguistic sign and its
use. Culture is linked to language in three major ways: semiotically, linguistically,
discursively.
How is cultural meaning expressed pragmatically through verbal action?

To provide answers on this question we will focus on three studies: The


cross-cultural speech act realization project, Moerman’s ethnographic conversation
analysis, and Tannen’s frame analysis.

● Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization Research. The multinational cross-cultural


speech act realization project (CCSARP) con- ducted by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper

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UM Digos College
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Telefax: (082)553-2914

in the eighties (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989) was a pathbreaking project that compared how
requests and apologies were realized across different national languages and their
national cultures. Discourse completion tests (DCT) and situational role-plays were used
to elicit plausible rejoinders uttered by native speakers in distinct pragmatic situations,
such as requesting that a roommate clean up the kitchen, or apologizing for not returning
a book to your professor on time. This methodology was the object of frequent
adjustments, first requesting an open-ended utterance, then providing a contextual
constraint in the form of a third rejoinder. But still the DCT left too much to the
imagination of the respondents and their idiosyncratic understandings of the situation to
be able to provide a reliable measure of pragmatic competence pegged to “the native
speaker”.
● Culturally Inflected Conversation Analysis. As Conversation Analysis (CA) gained in
importance in Applied Linguistics as a method to measure gains in grammatical and
discourse competence, the need was felt to incorporate a cultural dimension in a method
that remained strictly focused on what the participants were orienting to in the
conversation itself. Culture was brought into the picture by Moerman (1988), based on
his work in Thailand and his memorable transcriptions of conversations between rice
farmers and the local authorities. He was the first applied linguist to include cultural and
historical knowledge in the field of conversation analysis. His work enabled applied
conversation analysts to include perceptions, memories, and cultural beliefs into their
data as long as it could be shown that the participants were orienting to them at the time
of utterance.
● Cultural Frames. Tannen (1993) showed the importance of cultural frames to
understand events. These “frames of expectation” were studied as social roles (e.g.,
what men and women expect of each other in conversation) or characteristics of a
conversational style (e.g., California vs. New York Jewish style). Researchers gained
access to these invisible frames by eliciting narratives from pictures or videos without
words, such as Wallace Chafe’s The Pear Story, that make visible a storyteller’s
assumptions about stories and their culturally-specific expectations about human
motives and actions. Tannen found that, when they retold the pear story, her American
informants paid much more attention to the cinematic aspects of the video than her
Greek informants, who focused more on evaluating the motives and intentions of the
characters and on passing moral judgments.

In sum, culture as enacted pragmatically by speakers and writers has been


studied by psycho- and sociolinguists who have been quick to map the pragmatics of
one language on to psychological and social characteristics of groups that speak that
language.

20
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How is culture co-constructed by participants in spoken interaction?


During the course of 80’s and 90’s language and culture gained an insight that
culture was expressed by participants in and through the very structure of spoken
interaction, the post-structuralist turn in the last fifteen years has focused the attention
on its co-constructed nature and on the non-structural aspects of this co-construction,
such as identities, ideologies, timescales, and orders of indexicality.

● Structuralism and Post-structuralism. In the 80’s and 90’s, applied linguists


were interested in finding out how interlocutors in conversation express social
and cultural identities through their use of language in social contexts and how
they reproduce well-bounded ethnic, familial, and social cultures. They drew, for
example, on Gumperz’ (1982) notion of contextualization cue and its role in
cross-ethnic communication, on Ochs’ study of family narratives and their role in
reproducing a family culture of “father- knows-best”, on Goffman’s (1981) notion
of facework and social positioning, and on Tannen’s notion of conversational
style (1984) in the reproduction of cultural networks. In the last 15 years, with
globalization, applied linguists have had to deal with the multilingual uses of
language in multicultural contexts and the co-construction of multiple, changing
and sometimes conflicting cultural flows. 21st century researches on this have
explored the code-switching and code-meshing practices of bilingual youngsters
in classrooms, in large urban centers and online exchanges, the trans idiomatic
practices of transnational immigrants and the rise of hyper reflexivity in an era of
superdiversity.
● Toward A Constructivist View of Language and Culture in Spoken
Interaction. For some researchers, culture is not a fixed, stable institutional
reality that individuals belong to by virtue of having been socialized in it and that
pre-exists the individual. Culture is, rather, a process of language use that is
integrated with other semiotic systems such as “ritual, dance, music, graffiti,
beat-boxing, clothing, gestures, posture, ways of walking and talking”. Speakers
and writers do not just perform culture, they construct it in interaction with others.
In so doing, they often make use of the stereotypical views of traditional cultures,
but in order to draw a profit of distinction and further their interests.
● From Performance to Performativity. Deborah Cameron has characterized this
constructivist perspective as ‘post-mod- ern’ (Cameron 2005), which doesn’t
mean that it has superseded the modern, but that the emphasis has shifted from
an essentialist view of culture as the performance of pre-existing values and

21
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beliefs to a view of culture as a performative process in which old words can be


given new meanings and can give birth to new thoughts. In her reanalysis of one
of her students’ work, Cameron (1997) gives a brilliant example of this
performative turn in the study of language and culture, in this case the gendered
culture of white males performing heterosexual masculinity by making fun of a
colleague’s homosexuality in his absence. The point of this exchange is not so
much, Cameron argues, to bash gays, but, rather, to reconstruct their own
heterosexual identity that might have been put into question by their association
with a gay man. The notion of performativity serves here to analyze empirical
data not as reflecting existing power relations but as creating and either
reinforcing or transforming the balance of power between “men” and “women”.
● From Culture to Historicity and Subjectivity. With performativity, time has
re-entered the picture of a field that tended to consider culture only spatially or
geographically. In anthropological research, the vague notion of ‘culture’ has
given way to culture as historicity and subjectivity. Researchers, inspired by
insights from complexity theory, cultural memory studies and metasemiotic
studies, look at the data with increased reflexivity and attention given to the
subjective perspectives of both researcher and researched. Performative models
of culture enable us to envisage another relation to time and space, one based
not on linearity and simplistic views of causality, but on the emergence of
phenomena nested one in the other, and on the “layered simultaneity” of
timescales.

In sum, the performative turn in the study of language and culture within a
post-structuralist perspective does not, as many have feared, transform culture into a
merely discursive process, open to all the relativity and subjectivity of individuals’ verbal
utterances and with no clear agreed upon social boundaries. It does underscore the
man-made nature of culture, its historicity, its disciplining power and its power to impose
on a social group definition of what is taken-for-normal, the shared understanding of
people and events.

22
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1. Jourdan, C. and Tuite K. (eds). (2006). Language, Culture, and Society: An introduction to
Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 40-65; 192-215.
2. Kramsch, C. (ed.). (2002). Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological
Perspective. New York: Continuum. pp. 31-172
3. Schieffelin, B. B. and Ochs, E. (eds.). (1995). Language Socialization across Cultures.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.80-96.

Let’s Check

Activity 1. Answer what is asked in the following items.

1. What is meant by language relativity?


______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
_________________.
2. What is the difference between semiotic and linguistic relativity?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________.
3. How can culture be inflected in conversation?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________.

Let’s Analyze

23
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Telefax: (082)553-2914

Activity 1. In this activity, you are required to watch a video, follow the link below and
answer the following questions.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k

1. How did the speaker explain “language shapes our thoughts”?


______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________.
2. How did the speaker explain the value of language?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________.
3. What are your thoughts of this statement “To have a second language is to have a
second soul” – by Charlemagne?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________.
4. According to the speaker “the words we speak is dependent on the culture we have”,
how would you react on this?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________

24
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Telefax: (082)553-2914

In a Nutshell

Our discussion to cover ULOb, can be summarized by the following key points below:
● cultural meaning is encoded in the linguistic sign
● cultural meaning is expressed pragmatically through verbal action
● culture is co-constructed by participants in spoken interaction
Your turn. What did you learn about the influence of culture to language?
1. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
2. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
3. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________

Q & A List
This section is a place for you to raise your questions and queries that you feel the
instructor should give attention to. Feel free to ask relevant questions related from the
course here. This Q & A portion helps in the review of concepts and essential
knowledge.
Do you have any question for clarification?
Questions/Issues Answer
1.

25
UM Digos College
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Telefax: (082)553-2914

2.

3.

4.

5.

Keywords Index

This section lists down the keywords for easy recall of concepts.

Language Relativity Metasemiotic Cultural frames Conversation analysis


Cross-cultural speech act
Big Picture
Week 4-5: Unit Learning Outcomes (ULO): At the end of the unit, you are expected
to:
a. Demonstrate an understanding of the concept speech play; and
b. Explain language and cultural identity and their relationships.
26
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Metalanguage

For you to demonstrate ULOa, you will need to have a wide range of
understanding of the concept of verbal art. How verbal art leads to culture and
language. You need to understand the following terms as they will be important in the
lesson.

Key Terms:

Essential Knowledge

To perform the aforesaid big picture (unit learning outcomes) for the fourth to fifth
week of the course, you need to fully understand the following essential knowledge that
will be laid down in the succeeding pages. Please note that you are not limited to
exclusively refer to these resources. Thus, you are expected to utilize other books,
research articles and other resources that are available in the university’s library e.g.
ebrary, search.proquest.com etc.

Verbal Art 1

Verbal Art is experienced by children for those who love stories like folktales, myths,
legends, proverbs, and other "literary forms" from the other materials which are
commonly considered as folklore. Art it is only necessary to compare myths, folktales,
proverbs and riddles with the direct statements of ordinary speech to see a similar
concern with the form of expression, over and above the needs of communication.

As Social Rituals

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Rituals are typically formal social ceremonies that take place in a prescribed way,
often in a sacred context. It follows established customs, such as when those getting
married say their vows to one another. These rituals convey information about the
culture and about the participants of that culture. Participating in a ritual provides an
opportunity for an individual to fulfill a social commitment to their community of people.
A wedding is as example of social ritual.

• Social Ritual is a social behavior specific to given cultures. It is used to reinforce


social bonds and structure. It is passed on from generation to generation.
• Like Verbal Art, in order for it to be preserved, one must reinforce these and pass
to the new generation.

Verbal Art as Literature

Verbal art includes not only spoken word texts but all forms of art created with
language, including literature. 

● Folktales- these are stories that grew out of the lives and imaginations of the people, or
folk. They have always been children's favorite type of folk literature. Their popularity
springs from their imaginative characters, their supernatural elements, their focus on
action, their simple sense of justice, their happy endings, and the fundamental wisdom
they contain.
● Myths- are set in olden times, even in pre-historic times. However, legends are stories
about people and their actions, or deeds they perform to save their people or nations.
● Proverb- a short sentence that people often quote, which gives advise or tells you
something about life. Example: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"
● Riddle- a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth
as a puzzle to be solved. Example: The more you take, the more you leave behind. What
am I? Answer: footsteps

Engagement and Interaction Between Audience and Performers

Engaging your audience means giving them a way to connect with you and your
performance. It isn’t as much about you connecting with them, though engagement
definitely goes both ways. Three methods to engage audience: (sense of wonder,
emotion and engagement)

1. A sense of wonder might be expressed by the audience as “How does she do that? “or
I’ve never seen anything like this.” This is both the simplest and the most challenging
form of engagement. As a performer, you invoke wonder by a combination of your
flawless technical skill, your bravery, and your creative act development.

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2. Emotion engagement comes via a “that could be me” feeling or connection to the
audience’s personal experience.
3. Relationships between the characters provoke emotional responses in the audience. To
create this sort of engagement, make sure your act has a story, a personality, or an
abstract but obvious emotional component. Getting the audience to clap to a rhythm,
inviting them to make suggestions, or having them call out a word on cue are all good
ways to interact with a crowd who can’t be on stage with you.

Literary and Cultural Values of Verbal Art

Literary value does not include the values expressed or implied in a text but refers
specifically to how one can attribute worth to a text in terms of its value to 'civilization', a
culture, a society, or a particular group of people.

Cultural values are the core principles and ideals upon which an entire community
exists. This is made up of several parts: customs, which are traditions and rituals;
values, which are beliefs; and culture, which is all of a group's guiding values

1. Jourdan, C. and Tuite K. (eds). (2006). Language, Culture, and Society: An introduction to
Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 40-65; 192-215.
2. Kramsch, C. (ed.). (2002). Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological
Perspective. New York: Continuum. pp. 31-172
3. Schieffelin, B. B. and Ochs, E. (eds.). (1995). Language Socialization across Cultures.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.80-96.

Let’s Check

Activity 1. Answer what is asked in the following items.

1. What is meant by verbal art?


______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
29
UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

______________________________________________________________________
_________________.
2. Explain how culture is seen in verbal arts?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________.
3. How can verbal art be studied linguistically?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________.

Let’s Analyze
Activity 1. In this activity, you are required to create a six stanza rhyming poem. Using
the vernacular language. In your poem, you must showcase your culture (anything that
will relate to your culture).

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________

30
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Department of Teacher Education
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Telefax: (082)553-2914

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________

31
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Telefax: (082)553-2914

In a Nutshell
Your turn. What did you learn about the influence of culture to language?
1. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
2. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
3. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________

Q & A List
This section is a place for you to raise your questions and queries that you feel the
instructor should give attention to. Feel free to ask relevant questions related from the
course here. This Q & A portion helps in the review of concepts and essential
knowledge.
Do you have any question for clarification?
Questions/Issues Answer
1.

2.

32
UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

3.

4.

5.

Keywords Index

This section lists down the keywords for easy recall of concepts.

Speech play Verbal Art anthropology Literature

Metalanguage

33
UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
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For you to demonstrate ULOb, you will need to have a wide range of
understanding of the terms and the concept of cultural identity and their connection to
language. You need to understand the following terms as they will be important in the
lesson.

Key Terms:

Essential Knowledge

To perform the aforesaid big picture (unit learning outcomes) for the fourth to fifth
week of the course, you need to fully understand the following essential knowledge that
will be laid down in the succeeding pages. Please note that you are not limited to
exclusively refer to these resources. Thus, you are expected to utilize other books,
research articles and other resources that are available in the university’s library e.g.
ebrary, search.proquest.com etc.

Language and Cultural Identity

Cultural identity is the sense of belonging towards a culture. This belonging can
be justified with the shared set of companionship, principles or beliefs of living.

Basically, it can be considered as owning the culture and its various boundaries
of ethnicity, nationality, language, religion, and gender. And owning the culture means
that the person embraces all the traditions that have been passed down throughout
history. The cultural identity reveals the person’s heritage, as well as help identify with
others who have the same traditions or similar belief structures.

Importance of Cultural Identity 1

It is more of a foundation or foreground on which every other boundary is


established. Starting at a very young age, we embrace the traditions and norms of our
parents and grandparents and hold on to them as we grow older.

We continue to practice them as it becomes a source of identity for us and helps


us better understand the people who share these common aspects of culture with us.
This not only broadens up our relationships but lead to further advancement of the
34
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cultural acts which would have otherwise been abandoned if not for the ownership
demonstrated by the culture’s youth.

Ownership of culture directly adds value to cultural identity and it includes


practicing of religion, wearing traditional clothes or even eating food that reflects the
respective culture. It establishes means of identifying the person as part of that culture
or nationality.

Aspects of cultural identity

● Nationality. It is the country that the person is born in, and/or the country that the person
currently lives in. It determines cultural identity because the person adopts the culture of
that country.

● Ethnicity. It is the culture of the person and is a very crucial aspect of cultural identity as
the person usually has the culture of his/her respective ethnicity. It also often helps
identify the physical looks of the person.

● Religion. It is the set of moral beliefs and principles related to the existence of God and
the world. It contributes to cultural identity by helping in determining the personal and
moral characteristics of the person. Religions have throughout time, shaped many
cultures.

● Education. Cultural identity has a direct impact on the way children perform in


education. This can be described by the following example – Asians are usually quiet in
class and consider it inappropriate to make eye contact with the teacher. However,
European children value active classroom discussion and maintain eye contact as it
reflects their respect and engagement.

Levels of Identification

There are numerous levels of identification that are conveyed by means of language:

1. The national level- the national level and the ethnic and/or regional one, that for
historical reasons play a significant role and on which we will dwell shortly.
2. Rank or social class- the expressions we use when speaking to others always reflect
the status relationship between ‘them’ and ‘us’; close, friendly relations or formal reserve,
respect and deference require different forms of exchange.

35
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__________________________________
1 https://www.cleverism.com/lexicon/cultural-identity/

3. Level of sexual identity or gender- in all societies the ‘proper’ way for women to speak
is different from that for men, a difference that sometimes goes as far as to the
methodical use of a special vocabulary and of different syntactical structures. In
European societies it is usually inappropriate for a woman to use expressions that are
too ‘strong’ and direct, or to use pronunciation that is the characteristic of dialect or
slang.
4. The level of generation- the words that teenagers use are very distinct from what the
older generations might use. Teen speak is very good marker of identity for teenagers.
Similarly, adults and elderly people use words that teenagers wouldn't usually use, so
they would be markers of identity for adults.
5. The level of professional identity- the identifying cohesive element here is the sharing
of technical and special languages, of jargon that is not familiar to the community at
large.

Your grammar may be a little different and people will think that you are speaking
"bad English" but that is not the encouraged perspective people should be taking, it is
just a result of grammar from another language being adopted into the person's speech
when they speak English and as a result they speak an ethnolect.

Relationship of Language and Cultural identity

The theoretical perspectives discussed above suggest a distinctively inseparable


relationship between language, culture, and identity. Individual personal attributes do
not predetermine one’s destiny in life but are intricately enmeshed into a complex
scenario with other dimensions: one’s own cultural values, the sociocultural context,
language ideology, power relations, the politics of language, which impact upon one’s
identity causing it to be in a constant state of flux, ever-changing and shifting depending
on the changing contexts.

Language and identity are inseparably associated with each other. While language is
the medium used by individuals to negotiate a sense of self in different contexts identity
construction is a social and cultural process which is accomplished through discursive
practices. Therefore, the ability to use a specific language in a specific context
influences the development of cultural by creating a tension between the discourse of
the dominant culture and the discourse of the subculture of second language speakers.

36
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Culture and language shape one’s identity and personality. There is much importance of
culture and language to one’s individual identity.

Language is a powerful instrument of identity and belonging. In other words, the


manner in which language is used determines to which social group individuals are
allowed entrance. Bucholtz and Hall (2004) characterize language as “the most flexible
and pervasive symbolic resource” that is at the center of the cultural reproduction of
identity.

1. Jourdan, C. and Tuite K. (eds). (2006). Language, Culture, and Society: An


introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.
40-65; 192-215.
2. Kramsch, C. (ed.). (2002). Language Acquisition and Language Socialization:
Ecological Perspective. New York: Continuum. pp. 31-172

3. Schieffelin, B. B. and Ochs, E. (eds.). (1995). Language Socialization across Cultures.


Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.80-96.

Let’s Check

Activity 1. Answer what is asked in the following items.

1. What is meant by identity?


______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
_________________.
2. Explain how culture is seen in language?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________

37
UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________.

Let’s Analyze
Activity 1. In this activity, you are required to interview at least two senior citizens and
ask them the following questions. Please do social distancing as you do the interview.

Senior Citizen 1:

1. What have you notice about the language of the youth in this time?

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
2. What are the words that were spoken before but are not spoken in this
generation anymore?

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
____________________________.

Senior Citizen 2:
1. What have you noticed about the language of the youth in this time?

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________

38
UM Digos College
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Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

2. What are the words that were spoken before but are not spoken in this
generation anymore?

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________

39
UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

In a Nutshell
Your turn. What did you learn about the influence of cultural identity to language?
1. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
2. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
3. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________

Q & A List
This section is a place for you to raise your questions and queries that you feel the
instructor should give attention to. Feel free to ask relevant questions related from the
course here. This Q & A portion helps in the review of concepts and essential
knowledge.
Do you have any question for clarification?
Questions/Issues Answer
1.

2.

40
UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

3.

4.

5.

Keywords Index

This section lists down the keywords for easy recall of concepts.

Cultural Identity Language

Big Picture
Week 6-7: Unit Learning Outcomes (ULO): At the end of the unit, you are expected
to:
a. Demonstrate an understanding about language and social relations; and

41
UM Digos College
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b. Explain language, culture and thought.

Metalanguage

For you to demonstrate ULOa, you will need to have a wide range of
understanding of the concept of language and social relations. How these social
relationships are manifesting in language.

Essential Knowledge

To perform the aforesaid big picture (unit learning outcomes) for the sixth to
seventh week of the course, you need to fully understand the following essential
knowledge that will be laid down in the succeeding pages. Please note that you are not
limited to exclusively refer to these resources. Thus, you are expected to utilize other
books, research articles and other resources that are available in the university’s library
e.g. ebrary, search.proquest.com etc.

Speech Communities
A speech community is a group of people who share rules for conducting and
interpreting at least one variety of a language or dialect. The term can be applied to a
neighborhood, a city, a region or a nation. We all belong to at least one speech
community. The earliest speech community we belong to is the one we share with our
primary caregivers (usually our parents) and is the basis for some of the most intimate
and long term relationships we form across our life. The rules and norms of this speech
community show up in a dialect referred to as the vernacular, the most basic variety or
dialect of language we command. Our vernacular speech is least susceptible to
monitoring and least likely to change across our lifetime.

Roles in Speech communities

● Interlopers- people who are more to a new dialect area. How well do they fit in?
Depends on their age ability, motivation/desire.
● Insiders- people at the very core of the social group. They're highly integrated involved
in the group, but not necessarily group leaders. They are the leading force of spreading
linguistic change. 
42
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● Outsiders- they are not part of the mainstream, isolated, considered uncool. Also called
'lames'. Tend to be linguistically conservative, don't use slang, don't use vernacular--less
'local' -sounding.
● Aspirers- social ambitions beyond the "immediate domain" (the local group). Tend to be
more standard.

SOCIAL CIRCLES

A social circle is a group of socially interconnected people. A social circle may


be viewed from the perspective of an individual who is the locus of a particular group of
socially interconnected people and from the perspective of the group as a cohesive unit.
A social circle also gives you a platform where you can discuss all your
problems and ask for suggestions from many people at once. There are times when we
want to discuss a particular issue with people who are not involved in it, and a social
circle provides you just that. When you are a part of a social circle or circles, it also
becomes easier to pursue things that are of common interest.

POWER AND SOLIDARITY

Power is a relationship between at least two persons and it is nonreciprocal in


the sense that both cannot have power in the same area of behavior. Power is
self-explanatory and the degree to which one interlocutor is able to control the behavior
of the other.
Solidarity is a relationship which is based on similarity or even sameness of
salient characteristics in two (or more) persons. "attended the same school or have the
same parents or practice the same profession". Such relationships are reciprocal, i.e.
they obtain equally for both individuals. The varying aspect of the solidarity dimension is
its intensity, or degree of solidarity, ranging from close intimacy to distant reserve. The
former type of relationship is likely to be marked by mutual exchange of first names,
while the latter by reciprocal use of titles and last names.

Linguistics Signal of Power and Solidarity


a. Noun phrases- the sensitive items include ordinary noun phrases, built round
common noun, when used as vocatives. 
b. Verb form- verbs are signals of power and solidarity in some language such as in
Japanese, Korean, and Persian.

43
UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
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Telefax: (082)553-2914

c. Vocabulary level- a good example of this found in Javanese, which offers a range
of alternative forms, listed in lexicon, for each of a large number of meanings.

GENDER AND LANGUAGE


Historically, the terms "sex" and "gender" have been used interchangeably, but
their uses are becoming increasingly distinct, and it is important to understand the
differences between the two.
Gender is defined as a classification of a noun or pronoun as feminine,
masculine or neuter. Gender is defined as the socially constructed roles and behaviors
that a society typically associates with males and females.
It is obvious that the men and women who speak a language , use it in different
ways, it can be claimed that there are differences in men’s and women’s speech since
boys and girls are brought up in different ways and they generally fill different role in
society.
“The problem is therefore not so much a linguistic one as a cultural one. Lakoff believes
that the distinction between men’s and women’s language is a symptom of a problem in
our culture, and not primarily the problem itself. Rather, it reflects the fact that men and
women are expected to have different interests and different roles, hold different types of
conversations, and react differently to other people.”
- Wardhaugh, R (2006)
“Another way women’s and men’s conversations appear to vary is in the topics they
choose to discuss. Women, it is said, select more personal topics: their family, their
emotions and their friendships. Men, on the other hand, are said to prefer more
impersonal topics, often based on factual or technical knowledge, such as football, cars
or home improvements. These require fewer intimate revelations, and also emphasis the
exchange of information as the reason for the conversation. Women’s conversations
focus more on the development and maintenance of the relationship between speakers,
fostered by the exchange of intimate details and supportive listening.”
-Shân Wareing (2004)

1. Jourdan, C. and Tuite K. (eds). (2006). Language, Culture, and Society: An introduction
to Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 40-65;
192-215.
2. Kramsch, C. (ed.). (2002). Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological
Perspective. New York: Continuum. pp. 31-172

44
UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

3. Schieffelin, B. B. and Ochs, E. (eds.). (1995). Language Socialization across Cultures.


Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.80-96.

Let’s Check

Activity 1. Answer what is asked in the following items.

1. What is meant by speech community in your own understanding?


___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________.
2. Explain how gender is seen in language?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________.

Let’s Analyze
Activity 1. In this activity, you are required to answer the following questions

Describe your interaction with the following group of people.


Barkada_____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
Family_______________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________
Classmates___________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
45
UM Digos College
Department of Teacher Education
Roxas Extension, Digos City
Telefax: (082)553-2914

Workmates___________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
Neighbors____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
______________.

46
In a Nutshell
Your turn. What did you learn about language and social relations?
1. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
2. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
3. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________

Q & A List
This section is a place for you to raise your questions and queries that you feel the
instructor should give attention to. Feel free to ask relevant questions related from the
course here. This Q & A portion helps in the review of concepts and essential
knowledge.
Do you have any question for clarification?
Questions/Issues Answer
a.

b.

100
c.

d.

4.

100
Metalanguage

For you to demonstrate ULOb, you will need to have a wide range of
understanding of the concept of language, culture and thought. How culture and thought
are being locked in the language use.

Essential Knowledge

To perform the aforesaid big picture (unit learning outcomes) for the sixth to
seventh week of the course, you need to fully understand the following essential
knowledge that will be laid down in the succeeding pages. Please note that you are not
limited to exclusively refer to these resources. Thus, you are expected to utilize other
books, research articles and other resources that are available in the university’s library
e.g. ebrary, search.proquest.com etc.

Language, Culture and Thought

There are four principle formulations concerning the relationship of language,


thought and culture; (1) speech is essential for thought, (2) language is essential for
thought, (3) language determines or shapes our perception of nature and (4) language
determines or shapes our cultural world view.

Speech is Essential for Thought


We must learn how to speak aloud, otherwise we cannot develop thinking.
Thought is a kind of behavior, speech, which originates from speech production (verbal
or non-verbal). It develops as a kind of speech. By speaking aloud, you start to speak
subvocally or make internal articulations.(Thought is defined as subvocal speech or
behavior.
Why is speech production not necessary in order to think?
● Children having no speech production can comprehend and think. Example, hearing
persons who are born mute. If a person can comprehend the meaning of speech, that
person must have the ability to think.
● Speech comprehension, which implies thought, develops from speech production in
normal children. Speech comprehension precedes speech production. In other words,
speech comprehension is the basis for speech production. For example, children who
could only produce single-word utterances could understand syntactic structures
composed of more than one word. This shows that the children’s level of speech
comprehension is well in advanced of their level of speech production, which is an only
one-word production.
● Simultaneously speaking aloud while thinking about something different. Thinking of
something other than what we are saying (wandering mind).

100
● Telling a lie or saying one thing while thinking something quite different. This means that
when we tell lies, two distinct processes (speaking aloud and speaking subvocally/to
yourselves) with different content occur at the same time.
● Meaning and thought occur without behavior because people do not lose meaning of
words when any parts of their body are lost/removed. For example, paralyzed person
can still think clearly. This shows that thought was not dependent on body movements or
movements of the speech organs.
● Interpreting between languages can be done and consider the work of simultaneous
interpreters. They have to understand (a process done in their minds) the messages told
to them in one language and then transforms the language to another language by
speaking it aloud. This shows that a system of abstract thought to mediate between
languages has made simultaneous interpretation possible.

Language is Essential for Thought

We must learn language, how to produce or understand speech, otherwise we


cannot develop thinking. The language system, with its rule or vocabulary, is necessary
for thought. Thought was derived from speech production. It is supposed to be
language-specific and not universal.

● Deaf persons without language can think. For example, deaf children, when at play
and when participating in activities around the home, behave as intelligently and
rationally with respect to the environment as do hearing children. If one holds that
language is the basis for thought, then these deaf children do not think and that they
were merely robots.
● Multilinguals are whole persons. According to this theory, if multilinguals have more
than one thought process (one for each language), such persons would not be able to
think coherently or would have separate thought intelligencies/ personalities. Persons
knowing 3 languages would have formed 3 systems of thought, for example. This is not
true because it is proved through a case that a multilingual and a monolingual child living
in the same environment have no difference in terms of beliefs, values, personality and
their perceptions of the world and nature.
● Intelligent animal behavior occurs without language. Thought must have some basis
other than language. The following examples can prove this statement. For example,
monkeys (without language) can develop some simple counting and arithmetic abilities.
Insects (also without language) can think of strategies for gathering food, defending
themselves and finding mates. Since animals can think without language, there is no
reason to believe that humans cannot do the same.

Language Determines or Shapes Our Perception of Nature

100
The learning of language will determine or influence the way we perceive the
physical world, visually, auditorily, etc. One’s knowledge of vocabulary or syntax
influences one’s perception and understanding of nature.

● Perception, interest and need determine vocabulary. It is our interest and need that
determine our coinage of vocabulary and its use. For example, children, from all over the
world, are enchanted by dinosaurs. They perceive the types of dinosaurs through
perception, they develop their interest in dinosaurs and later they feel the need to seek
the names of these objects.
● Color and snow vocabulary. Rather than language determining perception, it is
perception that determines language.

Color words, for example, speakers of a language with limited repertoire of color terms
appeared no different from speakers with broader repertoire of color terms in terms of
distinguishing colors of rainbow.

Snow words, for example, Hawaiians have only one, the English word ‘snow’ but the
Inuits have single words for snow-on-the-ground, hard-snow-on-the-ground,
block-of-snow and others. As for English-speaking skiers in cold countries, they name
snow through its physical condition by creating phrases namely ‘powder snow’, ‘wet
snow’, etc. It is because of the importance of snow in their lives that they have created
more words for snow than have Hawaiians. It is this language device of creating phrases
which every language has that makes up for any vocabulary deficiency.

● Hopi ‘Time’ and Chinese ‘Counterfactuals’.

Hopi people and time. People are not different because of their language, but because of
their experiences. Deep down, we are all the same, it couldn’t be otherwise. For example,
Hopi people use periods relating to the harvest, the moon, the sun and other significant
events. We do much the same in English (“......when it gets dark”, “.... when the weather
gets warm”).

The Chinese language and ‘counterfactuals’. Chinese were not as able as English
speakers to think hypothetically about what is not true because of certain grammatical
features of the Chinese language. This happened due to faulty translations but once
proper translations were made, there was no basis for claiming a difference in thinking.

● Lack of vocabulary does not indicate lack of concept. We describe a thing, which
does not have a single word for it, with a phrase carrying a similar concept. For example,
we have a name for the underside of our hand that is called ‘palm’ but we have no word
for the topside. Instead, we use the phrase ‘back of the hand’. This shows that lack of
vocabulary item is not indicative of a lack of a concept.
● Knowledge overrides literal word meanings. We can believe something quite different
from what the language literally specifies and that the continual use of a language form
100
may not change an underlying thought. In other words, one thing is said but another is
understood (similar to lying, but in this case, people know it is not true). For example, the
word ‘sunset’. We always hear and use this word that it leads us to believe that the sun
sets on its own. The truth is; it is the earth that moves, not the sun.
● Multilingual’s view of nature. If it is said that different languages have distinctive and
important effects on the way we view nature, then the multilingual must similarly have
distinctive and important ways of viewing nature. But such is not the case. Multilingual is
a whole person who perceives nature as other humans do.

Language Determines or Shapes Our Cultural World View

The learning of language will determine or influence the way we understand our
culture and the world. Even if language is somewhat distinct from thought, nevertheless,
knowing a language will itself condition and influence one’s cultural, social beliefs or
views of the world. Language does provide a view of culture and society and an outlook
on the world. Predicts that human of the same language should have the same world
views as their views are conditioned by their language.

● Same language yet different world views. According to the theory, speakers of the
same language must have same world views. This is not true. For example, a
monolingual English-speaking family of members with various religions (Mother is a
Buddhist, father is a Christian, son is a Moslem), view the world differently according to
the beliefs of their religions.
● Different languages yet similar world views. For example, a communist doctrine is
shared by speakers of many languages namely; Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and
Cubans.
● Same language but world view changes over time. Changes in world view occur
without changes in language. Changes in world view can occur due to causes other than
the language system namely the spread of new ideas, economic domination, wars, etc.
● One language can describe many different world views. For example, the Bible of
the ancient Hebrew people. If this Bible were to be translated into many languages with
perfect translations, the meaning of the Bible in every language may differ because
every word in any languages carry different primary or secondary meanings,
implications, presuppositions, feelings, attitudes and politeness. This will cause many
different world views out of a Bible of Hebrew language.
● Multilingual’s world view. The theory predicts that a multilingual will have as many
distinct world views as language systems. This is, again, not true because as been
mentioned before, multilingual is a whole person who perceives nature as other humans
do.

100
1. Jourdan, C. and Tuite K. (eds). (2006). Language, Culture, and Society: An
introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.
40-65; 192-215.
2. Kramsch, C. (ed.). (2002). Language Acquisition and Language Socialization:
Ecological Perspective. New York: Continuum. pp. 31-172

3. Schieffelin, B. B. and Ochs, E. (eds.). (1995). Language Socialization across Cultures.


Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.80-96.
Let’s Check

Activity 1. Answer what is asked in the following items.

1. What is one common definition of “culture” in the study of language?


___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________.
2. What is one common definition of “thought”?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
3. What is on common definition of “language”?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________.

Let’s Analyze
Activity 1. In this activity, you are required to research of the following terms and state
your understanding to them relative to your research.

Linguistic Determinism
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________

100
____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________
Language and Thought
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________
Linguistic Relativity
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________
Whorfian Analysis
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________.

In a Nutshell

Your turn. What did you learn about language and social relations?
1. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
2. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
3.___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
Q & A List
This section is a place for you to raise your questions and queries that you feel the
instructor should give attention to. Feel free to ask relevant questions related from the
course here. This Q & A portion helps in the review of concepts and essential
knowledge.
Do you have any question for clarification?
Questions/Issues Answer
a.

100
b.

c.

d.

5.

Big Picture
Week 8-9: Unit Learning Outcomes (ULO): At the end of the unit, you are expected
to:
a. Demonstrate an understanding about how language has changed overtime; and
b. Explain the variation of language.
100
Metalanguage

For you to demonstrate ULOa, you will need to have a wide range of
understanding of the concept of language has evolved overtime. In this lesson also we
will discuss the factors of how language changes

Language Change 1

The way languages change offers insights into the nature of language itself. The
possible answers to why languages change tell us about the way language is used in
society, about how it is acquired by individuals and may reveal to us information about
its internal organization. There is no simple explanation for why languages change. This
is an area in which there is much speculation and little proof. The area is an interesting
and fruitful one but there are few if any direct answers. For this reason historical
linguistics has traditionally been concerned with how languages evolve and not why
they do so in one particular direction and not in another.
1) All languages change and there is no such thing as a language which is not changing.
The rate of change may vary considerably due to both internal and external factors.
English, for example, has changed greatly since Old English. Other languages, like
Finnish and Icelandic, have changed little over the centuries.
2) Language change is largely regular- one can recognise regularities in the types of
change which languages undergo, even if these cannot be predicted.

Internal and External Changes


Language change can basically be assigned to one of two types: either the
change is caused by a structural aspect of the language – this is internally motivated
change – or it does not in which case one speaks of externally motivated change.
● Internal change - internally motivated change usually leads to balance in the system,
the removal of marked elements, the analogical spread of regular forms or the like. It a
nutshell it produces regularity in the grammar. As languages consist of different levels, a
change in one quarter may lead to an imbalance in another and provoke a further
change.

_________________________________________________
1 https://www.uni-due.de/ELE/LanguageChange.pdf
● External change- change in history is regarded as externally motivated if there is no
obvious internal reason for it. An instance of this is the major shift is long vowels which
began in the late Middle English period. This is basically a raising of long vowels by one
level and the diphthongisation of the two high vowels /i:/ and /u:/. There was no
100
discernible internal reason why this change should have started as it did in the late
Middle English period, so the assumption in that there was external motivation: for some
reason a raised realisation of long vowels, or a slight diphthongisation of high vowels –
whichever came first – became fashionable, caught on in the speech community and so
the ball starting rolling and has, for Cockney at least, not come to rest since.

Pidgins and Creoles


A pidgin is a restricted language which arises for the purposes of communication
between two social groups of which one is in a more dominant position than the other.
The less dominant group is the one which develops the pidgin. Historically, pidgins
arose in colonial situations where the representatives of the particular colonial power –
soldiers, sailors, tradesmen, administrators – came into contact with indigenous
populations. The latter were more or less forced to develop some form of
communication with the former, particularly if they were enslaved. This resulted in a
language on the basis of both the colonial language and that/those of the native
population. Such a language represents a restricted form of the colonial one as it serves
a definite purpose, namely basic communication with the colonists.
In the course of several generations such a simplified language can become
more complex, especially if it develops into the mother tongue of a group of speakers in
which case it is termed a creole. The interest of linguists in these languages has
increased in recent decades. The main reason is that pidgins and creoles are young
languages. In retracing their development it is possible to see how new languages can
arise. Furthermore, the large number of shared features among widely dispersed
pidgins and creoles leads to the conclusion these features are typical of language in
general.
Creoles are regarded by many linguists as embodying universals of structure.
The features of older languages, such as complex morphology or intricate phonology,
are seen as arising due to the action of various forces over a much longer period of
time. The pidgins and creoles which developed during the colonial period of the west
European maritime powers – England, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands –
are distributed around the world in areas in which these countries were colonially active.
The colonial language in the area where a pidgin arose is called the lexifier language
because the vocabulary of the pidgin largely stems from this.

Language Death 1

A dead language is a language which is no longer spoken by anyone as their


main language, or a language, such as Latin, that is no longer learned as a native
language by a speech community. When the last speaker of a language dies, the

100
language too will die. Sometimes it is not necessary to wait for the last speaker to die
before considering the language as dead because the last speaker has no one to speak
to fluently or frequently. So, the language is extinct, as good as dead.

Types of Language Death


Four primary types of language death, each of which has linguistic and
sociolinguistic consequences (Campbell & Muntzel, 1989).
1. Sudden language death occurs when a language abruptly disappears because its
speakers die or are killed. In such cases (e.g. Tasmanian; Nicoleño, a Native American
Indian language in California), the transitional phase is so abrupt that there are few if any
structural consequences as the language dies. It is, of course, possible for an
already-dying language to suddenly become extinct, so that this type of death is not
necessarily mutually exclusive with other types, but it is also possible for sudden
language death to affect a monolingual group of speakers.
2. Radical language death occurs when the process resembles sudden language death in
terms of the abruptness of the process, but is distinguished by the shift to another
language rather than the complete disappearance of the speakers of a language. In
radical language death, speakers simply stop speaking the language as a matter of
survival in the face of political repression and genocide.
3. Gradual language death this is the most common type of language death, and the one
most critical for our examination of language variation here, is the case of language loss
due to “the gradual shift to the dominant language in a contact situation” (Sasse 1992:
22). In such cases, there is often a continuum of language proficiency that correlates
with different generations of speakers. For example, fewer younger speakers use the
dying language variety and with less proficiency in more restricted contexts than their
older cohorts within the community; speakers who do not have a full range of functional
or structural competency in the language have often been labeled semi-speakers
(Dorian 1977), though the label obviously covers a wide range of proficiency levels.
4. Bottom-to-top language death- the distinguishing feature of bottom-to-top language
death is the way in which the situational contraction of language use takes place. In
many cases, a dying language will be retained in more casual and informal contexts
while it is not used in more formal settings. In the case of bottom-to-top language death,
the language loss takes place in everyday conversation and casual settings while the
language is retained in more formal, ritualistic contexts. This contraction follows the
Latinate pattern where the language was used in formal ecclesiastical contexts long after
it died in everyday conversation.

Structural Levels in Language Death


Language death may affect all levels of language organization, from the formal
structural properties of phonology and syntax to the contextual domains of language
use.
100
_______________________________________________

1 http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/WWW_Content/9780631218036/32Chap29.pdf

In the following sections, we discuss the consequences of language death on specific


levels of language structure and use. While there are obviously shared characteristics,
there are also peculiar manifestations associated with different levels of structure and
function.
● Phonology- Several phonological traits of dying languages have been highlighted in the
research literature on language death. Among the prominent traits are (1) the reduction
in inventorial and syllable structure distinctions (Dressler 1972, Andersen 1982, Cook
1989, Holloway 1997); (2) the loss of marked phonological features (Dressler 1972,
Campbell and Muntzel 1989, Cook 1989, Holloway 1997, Bereznak and Campbell
1996); and (3) the increased variability of phonetic and phonemic variants (Cook 1989,
Campbell 1985).
● Morphology- Several alternatives are available to obsolescing language varieties in
their morphological change. Again, the most commonly cited pattern is a reduction in the
number of morphologically marked categories and in the number of allomorphs
(Elmendorf 1981, Schmidt 1985, Campbell and Muntzel 1989, Dressler 1988, Huffines
1989, Holloway 1997), along with increased variability in morphological marking.
● Syntax- The syntax of dying languages may reveal several different strategies that
contract the number of syntactic devices available to speakers of a dying language,
resulting in what Andersen (1982: 99) refers to as the tendency to “preserve and overuse
syntactic constructions that more transparently reflect the underlying semantic and
syntactic relations.” O
● Lexicon- The decline in the lexicon is one of the most prominent traits noted with
reference to language death. Both linguists (Miller 1971, Dorian 1973, Andersen 1982)
and native speakers comment on the reduction in the lexicon in moribund language
varieties. Dorian (1973: 119) notes that “explicit comment on the decline of Gaelic
focuses almost entirely on the lexicon” for speakers of East Sutherland Gaelic who
regularly observe that older speakers had more words for items than younger speakers
● Language use- One of the most often cited traits of obsolescing language varieties is
their contraction in the contexts or domains of use, often referred to as stylistic
shrinkage. Mougeon and Beniak (1989: 299) note that the process of dying “usually
involves the decline of stylistic options which are tied to those societal domains where
use of the minority language is excluded.”

100
1. Jourdan, C. and Tuite K. (eds). (2006). Language, Culture, and Society: An
introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.
40-65; 192-215.
2. Kramsch, C. (ed.). (2002). Language Acquisition and Language Socialization:
Ecological Perspective. New York: Continuum. pp. 31-172

3. Schieffelin, B. B. and Ochs, E. (eds.). (1995). Language Socialization across Cultures.


Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.80-96.
Let’s Check

Activity 1. Answer what is asked in the following items.

1. Describe the event of language death.


___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________.
2. What are the instances that a language survive? State the factors that affect their
survivability._________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
______.
3. What could be the contribution of communities or the government for a language
to thrive?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
100
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________.

Let’s Analyze
Activity 1. In this activity, you are required to research internal and external changes of
the following languages:

TAGALOG DIALECT
Internal Changes External Changes

CEBUANO LANGUAGE
Internal Changes External Changes

100
In a Nutshell

Your turn. What did you learn about language and social relations?
1. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
2. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
3. ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________

Q & A List
This section is a place for you to raise your questions and queries that you feel the
instructor should give attention to. Feel free to ask relevant questions related from the
course here. This Q & A portion helps in the review of concepts and essential
knowledge.
Do you have any question for clarification?
Questions/Issues Answer
a.

b.

100
c.

d.

e.

100
Metalanguage

For you to demonstrate ULOb, you will need to have a wide range of
understanding of variation of language. We will understand that language variation has
differed according geographical, social and contextual variation.

Essential Knowledge

To perform the aforesaid big picture (unit learning outcomes) for the eight to ninth
week of the course, you need to fully understand the following essential knowledge that
will be laid down in the succeeding pages. Please note that you are not limited to
exclusively refer to these resources. Thus, you are expected to utilize other books,
research articles and other resources that are available in the university’s library e.g.
ebrary, search.proquest.com etc.

Variation of Language 1

The study of language variation is an important part of sociolinguistics, to the


extent that it requires reference to social factors. Languages vary from one place to
another, from one social group to another, and from one situation to another, and these
are the main topics of this lesson. They are treated in geographical variation, social
variation, and contextual variation, respectively.
Linguistic Item and Variety
We talk and write about languages, dialects, sociolects, accents, jargons,
registers, and so on and so forth, but none of these terms can be taken for granted and
many of them are difficult to define in a satisfactory way. Sociolinguists in most cases
study social distribution of particular linguistic items, for example words, sounds, or
grammatical constructions. Let us give some examples of linguistic items.
There are many ways of speaking, and each way of speaking is a variety. In a
more precise manner, a variety may be defined as a set of linguistic items with similar
social distribution. It should be emphasized that a variety is not necessarily a
“full-fledged language”, with a large vocabulary and grammar. It may simply be a small
100
set of linguistic items, as is the case with a slang, which may typically be defined as a
quite restricted set of new words and new meanings of older words, mixed with linguistic
items with a much larger social distribution.

GEOGRAPHICAL VARIATION
We often talk about the Chinese language, the Hindi language, the Arabic
language, and the Fula language, without thinking about how problematic these terms
_____________________________
1 https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/ikos/EXFAC03-AAS/h05/larestoff/linguistics/Chapter%207.(H05).pdf
are. Of course, they are not at all meaningless, but their meanings are often rather
different from what is generally assumed.
● Dialect. It is generally assumed that Fula is a language, that is, a single
language, with a number of dialects. In this sense, a dialect is regarded as a
geographical variety of a language, spoken in a certain area, and being different
in some linguistic items from other geographical varieties of the same language.
This definition of dialect is in common use among linguists, and differs from a
usage found in several European language communities among non-linguists,
where dialect is often used about «provincial» varieties that differ from the
standard dialect, which is then regarded as the «proper language»; we shall
come back to the standard dialect. The standard dialect is then regarded as the
«non-dialectal» variety of the language.
● Dialect Continuum. A dialect continuum is a chain of dialects, let us say dialects
1–10, with the following property: Speakers of dialect 1 understand dialect 2
extremely well. Speakers of dialect 1 and dialect 3 understand each other rather
less well, and speakers of dialect 1 and dialect 4 less well again. There comes to
a point, however, say at dialect 5, where dialect 1 is no longer intelligible to the
local people and vice versa.
● Isoglosses. What makes dialects—as well as languages—different is their
differing sets of linguistic items.
● Standard Languages. The adjective standard means ‘recognized as correct or
acceptable’, and a standard language is a variety that in different ways is
recognized as more correct and acceptable than other varieties. In many ways,
standard variety is an equally appropriate designation. It has the following
prototypical properties:
1. It is the variety of used by educated users, e.g. those in the professions,
the media, and so on.
2. It is the variety defined in dictionaries, grammars, and usage guides.
3. It is regarded as more correct and socially acceptable than other varieties.

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4. It enjoys greater prestige than dialects and non-standard varieties:
nonstandard varieties are felt to be the province of the less educated.
5. It is used as a written language.
6. It is used in important functions in the society – in the government, the
parliament, courts, bureaucracy, education, literature, trade, and industry.

SOCIAL VARIATION
It should have come as no surprise that language varies geographically. We are not
surprised to hear that people who live far from each other speak more differently than
people who live close to each other, because those who live close to each other have
more contact with each other than those who live far away from each other. The terms
closeness and distance originally come from the spatial domain, but metaphorically
they have been transferred to the social domain. For example, we talk about the varying
social distance between individuals in a society, and differences in social distance
correlate strongly with language variation.
● Social organization- the organization of society can be approached from to
opposing angles, the angles of social network and social stratification. Social
stratification concerns the hierarchical structure of a society, arising from
inequalities of wealth and power. On the other hand, social network concerns the
dimensions of solidarity between individuals in their everyday contacts.
1. Social Networks. An individual is a part of a social network and has
stronger and looser ties with other individuals. Networks vary in strength,
which primarily is based upon density and multiplexity.
2. Social Stratification. There are hierarchical social structures in most or all
societies, but not everywhere of the same type. In large parts of Europe,
for example, society started to change about 200 years ago from a
hierarchy of rank or station to a hierarchy of class. In the rank society,
people are born with a certain rank, and there is low social mobility. In the
class society, people are also born into a certain class, but there is a high
social mobility.
● Sociolects- Language varieties that are used by particular societal strata are
referred to as sociolects. It should be emphasized, however, that most language
varieties have a particular geographical as well as social distribution, although
the geographical variation is generally larger among the lower classes than
among the middle and upper classes.
● Slang may be characterized as a very informal language variety that includes
new and sometimes not polite words and meanings. It is often used among

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particular groups of people, for example groups of teen-agers or professional
groups, and is usually not used in serious speech or writing.
● Jargon is a set of vocabulary items used by members of particular professions,
that is, their technical terms. For example, linguists have a large vocabulary that
is not well understood by non-linguists. This book is full of examples, and it
should not be necessary to repeat any of them here.

CONTEXTUAL VARIATION
While social variation to a large extent—although not exclusively—is variation
between individuals belonging to different societal groups, contextual variation is
variation within the individual: we all vary our language between contexts. There are
very many phenomena that could be treated here, but due to space limitations we shall
just take a look at a few typical cases. First, we shall look at a language, Korean, where
degrees of formality are integrated into the grammatical system.
Korean has not less than six politeness levels, that are realized inter alia in the
pronoun system and in verbal inflections. Sohn (1999) defines the politeness levels as
follows (some details are left out):
● The plain level, which is the lowest level, is used, in general, by any speaker to any
child, to one’s own younger sibling, child, or grandchild regardless of age, and to one’s
daughter-in-law, and also between intimate adult friends whose friendship began in
childhood.
● The intimate level is between close friends whose friendship began in childhood or
adolescence.
● The familiar level is slightly more formal than the intimate level, typically used by a male
adult to an adolescent such as a high school or college student or to one’s son-in-law, or
between two close adult friends whose friendship began in adolescence.
● The blunt level, which is gradually disappearing from daily usage probably due to its
authoritative connotations, is sometimes used by a boss to his subordinates or by an old
generation husband to wife.
● The polite level is the most popular level towards an adult, and is used by both males
and females in daily conversations. It is less formal than the derential level.
● The deferential level is used in formal situations such as news reports and public
lectures.

DIACHRONIC AND SYNCHRONIC

Since we have concentrated on the variation of language, we can view variation


diachronically, that is, from the historical perspective of change through time. The type
of variation that can be viewed synchronically, that is, in terms of differences within
one language in different places and among different groups at the same time.

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1. Jourdan, C. and Tuite K. (eds). (2006). Language, Culture, and Society: An
introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.
40-65; 192-215.
2. Kramsch, C. (ed.). (2002). Language Acquisition and Language Socialization:
Ecological Perspective. New York: Continuum. pp. 31-172

3. Schieffelin, B. B. and Ochs, E. (eds.). (1995). Language Socialization across Cultures.


Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.80-96.

Let’s Check

Activity 1. State the differences of the following terms:

1. Diachronic and Synchronic Variation of Language


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2. Slang and Jargon
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3. Dialect and a Standard language
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___________________________________________________________________
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___________________________________________________________________
_________.

Let’s Analyze
Activity 1. In this activity, you are required to do a research at least 20 dialects in the
Philippines and their location where most people speak them.

Dialect Region/Places
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

In a Nutshell

Your turn. What did you learn about language and social relations?
1. ___________________________________________________________________
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___________________________________________________________________
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2. ___________________________________________________________________
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3. ___________________________________________________________________
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Q & A List
This section is a place for you to raise your questions and queries that you feel the
instructor should give attention to. Feel free to ask relevant questions related from the
course here. This Q & A portion helps in the review of concepts and essential
knowledge.
Do you have any question for clarification?
Questions/Issues Answer
f.

g.

h.

i.

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Course Schedule

Activity Date Where to Submit

Week 1-3
Big Picture A: Let’s Check Activities CF’s email/Quipper
Big Picture A: Let’s Analyze Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture A: In a Nutshell Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture B: Let’s Check Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture B: Let’s Analyze Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture B: In A Nutshell Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Week 4-5
Big Picture A: Let’s Check Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture A: Let’s Analyze Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture A: In a Nutshell Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture B: Let’s Analyze Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture B: In a Nutshell Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Week 6-7
Big Picture A: Let’s Check Activities CF’s email/Quipper
Big Picture A: Let’s Analyze Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture A: In a Nutshell Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture B: Let’s Check Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture B: Let’s Analyze Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture B: In A Nutshell Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Week 8-9
Big Picture A: Let’s Check Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture A: Let’s Analyze Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
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Big Picture A: In a Nutshell Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture B: Let’s Check Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture B: Let’s Analyze Activities CF’s email/ Quipper
Big Picture B: In A Nutshell Activities CF’s email/ Quipper

Online Code of Conduct

1. (1)  All teachers/Course Facilitators and students are expected to abide by an


honor code of conduct, and thus everyone and all are exhorted to exercise self-
management and self-regulation.
2. (2)  Faculty members are guided by utmost professional conduct as learning
facilitators in holding OBD and DED conduct. Any breach and violation shall be
dealt with properly under existing guidelines, specifically on social media conduct
(OPM 21.15) and personnel discipline (OPM 21.11).
3. (3)  All students are likewise guided by professional conduct as learners in
attending OBD or DED courses. Any breach and violation shall be dealt with
properly under existing guidelines, specifically in Section 7 (Student Discipline) in
the Student Handbook.
4. (4)  Professional conduct refers to the embodiment and exercise of the
University’s Core Values, specifically in the adherence to intellectual honesty and
integrity; academic excellence by giving due diligence in virtual class participation
in all lectures and activities, as well as fidelity in doing and submitting
performance tasks and assignments; personal discipline in complying with all
deadlines; and observance of data privacy.
5. (5)  Plagiarism is a serious intellectual crime and shall be dealt with accordingly.
The University shall institute monitoring mechanisms online to detect and
penalize plagiarism.
6. (6)  All borrowed materials uploaded by the teachers/Course Facilitators shall be
properly acknowledged and cited; the teachers/Course Facilitators shall be
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professionally and personally responsible for all the materials uploaded in the
online classes or published in SIM/SDL manuals.
7. (7)  Teachers/Course Facilitators shall devote time to handle OBD or DED
courses and shall honestly exercise due assessment of student performance.
8. (8)  Teachers/Course Facilitators shall never engage in quarrels with students
online. While contentions intellectual discussions are allowed, the
teachers/Course Facilitators shall take the higher ground in facilitating and
moderating these discussions. Foul, lewd, vulgar and discriminatory languages
are absolutely prohibited.
9. (9)  Students shall independently and honestly take examinations and do
assignments, unless collaboration is clearly required or permitted. Students shall
not resort to dishonesty to improve the result of their assessments (e.g.
examinations, assignments).
10. Students shall not allow anyone else to access their personal LMS account.
Students shall not post or share their answers, assignment or examinations to
others to further academic fraudulence online.
11. By handling OBD or DED courses, teachers/Course Facilitators agree and abide
by all the provisions of the Online Code of Conduct, as well as all the
requirements and protocols in handling online courses.
12. By enrolling in OBD or DED courses, students agree and abide by all the
provisions of the Online Code of Conduct, as well as all the requirements and
protocols in handling online courses.

Monitoring of OBD and DED


(1) The Deans, Asst. Deans, Discipline Chairs and Program Heads shall be responsible in
monitoring the conduct of their respective OBD classes through the Blackboard LMS. The LMS
monitoring protocols shall be followed, i.e. monitoring of the conduct of Teacher Activities (Views
and Posts) with generated utilization graphs and data. Individual faculty PDF utilization reports
shall be generated and consolidated by program and by college.
(2) The Academic Affairs and Academic Planning & Services shall monitor the conduct of LMS
sessions. The Academic Vice Presidents and the Deans shall collaborate to conduct virtual
CETA by randomly joining LMS classes to check and review online the status and interaction of
the faculty and the students.
(3) For DED, the Deans and Program Heads shall come up with monitoring instruments, taking
into consideration how the programs go about the conduct of DED classes. Consolidated
reports shall be submitted to Academic Affairs for endorsement to the Chief Operating Officer.

Course prepared by: Course reviewed by:

JIVINA V. LUMAKANG, LPT TOMAS E. DIQUITO, MS, Bio, Mast.


Name of Course Facilitator/Faculty Name of Program Head

ANA MARIE V. VILLANEVA, LPT


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Name of Course Facilitator/Faculty

Recommending Approval:

EDUARD L. PULVERA, MSIS


Name of Dean

Approved by:

___________________________
VP, APS

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