Culture, language and

communication
NOTES FOR CIVIL SERVICES EXAMINATION
ANTHROPOLOGY PAPER I, CHAPTER 7

1 | ANTHROPOLOGY PAPER I: UNIT 7

Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and
desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols. Language is one of the privileged
possessions of man.

"Humbolt" - “Man is the man through language alone”.

● The success of communication occurs in the cooperation between two parties, one active or at the
giving end and the other passive or at the receiving end and the success is measured in terms of
the achievement of not only the effective transmission of the message but also of the intended
result.
● Communication is thus a network of interactions in which the sender and the receiver keep on
changing their roles.

Language- Definition:

Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating

E. Sapir
ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols
A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which the
G. Trager
members of a society interact in terms of their total culture
A language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and
N. Chomsky
constructed of a finite set of elements
Language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each
R.A. Hall
other by means of habitually used oral - auditory arbitrary symbols
Language is the most sophisticated and versatile means available to human
Brown
beings for the communication of meaning
Language is a patterned system of arbitrary sound signals, characterized by
Aitchison
structure dependence, creativity, displacement, duality, and cultural transmission

Characteristics of Language:

S. No Characteristics
A language is a systematic means of communication by the use of sounds or conventional
1
symbols.
Language is the power of vocal communication and it is a system for communicating
2
ideas and feelings using sounds, gestures, signs or marks.
Any means of communicating ideas, specifically, human speech, the expression of ideas
3
by the voice and sounds articulated by the organs of the throat and mouth is a language.
A language is the written and spoken method of combining words to create meaning used
4
by a particular group of people.
Language is specific to humans, that is to say, that it distinguishes humans from all other
5
living beings.
Language remains potentially a communicative medium capable of expressing ideas and
6
concepts as well as moods, feelings and attitudes.
7 Teaching and Learning a language process is an art as well as a science.
8 According to linguists, language is learnt through use, through practice.

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Significance of Language:

S. No Significance of Language
Language plays a predominant role in human life towards communicating thoughts,
1
feelings, and ideas for the social development of a person.
2 Language has been identified as a tool of communication for centuries.
Language has enabled man to communicate with the environment and to regulate his
3
social behaviour.
All living creatures have to communicate with one another of their own group for their
4
survival on this universe.
Language is widely seen as a reflection of Culture. Anthropologists such as Levi Strauss
5
said that the language is Culture
The culture, habitat, ecosystem and environment of the people can be studied by
6
understanding the language of the people
Human beings have various needs “individual, social, emotional, economic, political and
7
cultural” and it is to fulfil these that human beings need language.

ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES

● At present, about 6 900 languages are spoken throughout the world– more than 2000 languages in
Africa, 1 000 in the Americas, more than 2250 in Asia, about 220 in Europe, and more than 1300 in
Australia and the Pacific.
● These languages can be grouped into more than 90 language families. A language family is
defined as a group of languages with a common origin. The common origin is postulated to have
been a single language, referred to as a proto-language, that was spoken at a certain time in the
past.
● Through the ages, that proto-language broke up into dialects. As time went by, these dialects
become increasingly more different from each other, ending up as different languages, primarily
due to geographical distance.
● The major language families in the world are:
Afro-Asiatic 353 languages spoken in Africa and Asia
Austronesian 1246 languages spoken in Asia and Oceania
430 languages spoken in Asia and Europe, and in European settlements in
Indo-European
other parts of the world
Niger-Congo 1495 languages spoken in Africa
Sino-Tibetan 399 languages spoken in Asia
Trans-New
561 languages spoken in New Guinea and adjacent islands
Guinea
● Most linguists do not think that it is possible to reconstruct proto-languages that were spoken
more than approximately 10 000 BP.
● Language could not develop until our ancestors had acquired certain anatomical features.
Necessary anatomical features are is called the articulatory organs – that is, a mouth, and throat
of a certain shape – a minimum brain size, while art is an important behavioural feature.
● Hence, many scholars believe that language emerged not earlier than the completed development
of anatomically modern humans, that is, 120000–100000 BP, and not later than the completed
development of behaviorally modern humans, 60000–40000 BP.
● Monogenesis is a hypothesis which implies that all languages in the world are related to each
other, in an ancient family of languages, all of which have descended from a proto-language.
● Whereas polygenesis is an approach which says several languages developed at several points of
time independently.
● The Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Western Asia from around 250000 years BP until
28000 years BP, might well have had some kind of language.

3 | ANTHROPOLOGY PAPER I: UNIT 7

● The American linguist Philip Lieberman, who has played a central role in the research on the
Neanderthal vocal tract, writes: "Neanderthals clearly possessed language and speech, but their
speech capabilities were intermediate between those of still earlier hominids and those of modern
humans".

Theories of Origin of Language:

1. Divine Theory:
● In the early part of the eighteenth century, theories of the origin of language proposed that
language was of Divine Origin.
● For example, The Egyptians considered themselves the oldest civilization and therefore theirs
was the original language, passed down through their god-ancestor.

2. Darwinian Hypothesis:
● Darwin argued against any distinctly “human” quality of language.
● He said that there is only a difference of degree between the language of man and the cries of
animals.
● According to him, the human language came from a more primitive form, probably
expressions of emotions.
● For example, a feeling of contempt is accompanied by the action of puffing air out through
the nose or mouth and this makes sounds such as “pooh”, or “pish”.

3. Max Muller:
● Darwin’s contemporary Max Muller disagreed with Darwin.
● Muller proposed the Ding-Dong theory of the origin of language. According to his theory,
there was a mystic correlation between sound and meaning.
● Primitive man had an instinct by which every impression can be understood from without
received vocal expression from within.
● However, Muller later rejected his own theory.
● Muller proposed another theory called the Bow-Wow theory, which is also referred to as
Onomatopoetic or Echoic theory. The theory suggests that first words were imitative of
natural sounds – the cry of birds, the call of animals, etc.
● But it is true that virtually every language has some percentage of echoic words in its
vocabulary – ‘babble’, ‘rattle’, ‘ripple’, etc., are some English examples.
● An argument against this has been that we hear and imitate the sounds of nature within the
limitations of our first language. Ex: The roosters crowing – in English, it is cock-a-doodle-
doo; in French, coquerico; in German, kakariki, etc.

4. The La-La Theory:

● The Danish linguist Otto Jespersen suggested that language may have developed from
sounds associated with love, play, and (especially) song
● This theory fails to account for "the gap between the emotional and the rational aspects of
speech expression."

5. Modern theories:
● Modern theorists propose that speech is not simply a manipulation of physical organs.
● Concomitant psychological development was essential to the development of language.
● Each person has different impressions of the world that he perceives.
● Therefore, in order to formulate a credible theory of the origin of language, it is important to
learn about the psychological development of early man.
● Anthropologists believe that the factors that led to the development of the species Homo
sapiens, also led to the development of language – the upright posture gave humans
additional visual range, their eyes became stereoscopic, further improving their vision.
● The cerebral cortex, virtually non-existent in the lower creatures, developed tremendously in
the evolving human. It was with this major development that the human being graduated to
reasoning powers and began to speak.

4 | ANTHROPOLOGY PAPER I: UNIT 7

 ● Language evolved from the human need to communicate. It developed in a social situation
and was needed to spread information amongst the members of a group.
● Each benefitted from the others’ experience and communicated through language.
● Hence, the whole working of human society, through a division of labour has been due to
language.
● With an increase in the complexity in society, there was a concomitant increase in the
development of language.

Six Functions of Language:

Roman Jakobson defined six primary functions of language according to which an effective act of
verbal communication can be described.

To convey information, descriptions of situations, objects and even

The referential function
The expressive function
The directive function
The phatic function
The poetic function
The multilingual function
mental states
To express the feelings or attitudes of the speaker
For the purpose of causing or preventing an action.
For the sake of social interaction
It focuses on the message
This function is used to talk about language itself

VERBAL COMMUNICATION

Communication by means of language may be referred to as linguistic communication. This is Verbal

Communication. Among the characteristics that make a relatively clear distinction between linguistic
and nonlinguistic communication meaningful, two are particularly important: double articulation and
syntax.

Double Articulation:
● Languages consist of a number of signs, which are combinations of form and meaning.
● Form in spoken languages is a sequence of sounds, in written languages for example a sequence
of letters.
● For example, the English word "sit", which has the form /sIt/. Speakers of English associate a
certain meaning with this form: ‘to assume a position of rest in which the weight is distributed by
the glutes’.
● The form and the meaning together constitute a sign.
● Languages have tens of thousands of signs, and double articulation refers to the fact that the
formal sides of these sign are built from a relatively small repertoire – usually between 10 and 100
– of meaningless sounds.
● For example, In English, the number of sounds is around 50 – almost equally divided between
consonants and vowels – varying somewhat between dialects and between different ways of
analyzing the English phonological system.
● In a “language” without double articulation, the formal sides of all signs would be constituted by
individual sounds, and the number of different sounds would be equal to the number of signs.
● For example, a system of communication where the formal side of each sign is a specific cry- A
human being would probably be able to distinguish several hundreds of cries, but such a system
would not only be poor, but also uneconomical, and extremely vulnerable to noise

Syntax:
● The principle of double articulation has enabled human beings to create languages with an
impressively large number of signs, but the inventory of signs in a language is by necessity finite.
● Since the number of sounds in a language usually is between 10 and 100, we could not have
hundreds of thousands of different signs.
● Even there are such a long number of signs, it would be extremely long, and there is any way an
upper limit to the number of signs that a human being is able to remember.

5 | ANTHROPOLOGY PAPER I: UNIT 7

● The total number of isolated signs in a human language is generally limited to roughly 10 000–20
000, and with this number of signs human being cannot talk about an infinite number of
meanings. Hence, human combine them.
● The ingenious invention that enabled human beings to talk about everything they can imagine, is
syntax.
● The syntax is used to put together signs expressing relatively simple meanings into sign
combinations expressing more complex meanings.
● For example, to express a meaning like ‘man killed lion’, in the English language, we combine
signs meaning ‘man’, ‘kill’, ‘past’, and ‘lion’, and we combine the same signs in a different way to
express the meaning ‘lion killed a man’.
● The syntax is a mechanism that enables human beings to utter or understand an infinite number
of sentences constructed from a finite number of building blocks.
● Without syntax, we would not be able to express other meanings than those associated with
isolated signs, and the number of different meanings we would be able to express would be equal
to the number of signs in the “language”.

NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION

1. Personal Appearance:
● The first impact on the audience/listener is created by the ‘personal appearance’ of the active
part played by a speaker.
● Personal appearance may put the audience into a resistant or even an enmity attitude or
induce in them a receptive mood which is essential for the success of communication.

2. Posture:
● ‘Posture’ also conveys meaning to a certain extent.
● It generally refers to the way one stand, sit and walk.
● A speaker can also analyse whether his communication is understood by observing the
posture of the listener.

3. Gestures:
● ‘Gestures’ too play a significant part in making communication effective.
● Playing with a ring, twisting a key-chain etc., are some of the gestures which show a
speaker’s attitude of communication.
● On the other side, Gestures are used to communicate short messages (“yes”, “no”, “go there”,
“be silent”) and other discourse markers.
● These gestures enhance the impact and add a greater value impact on the listener.
● In sign language articulation, the analogue of the movable articulator in speech (the tongue)
is the hand or hands. These may adopt several basic shapes: open, clenched, one or more
fingers extended with the others closed, one or more fingers curved, etc.,
● No other part of the body is used as an articulator: even the rare full arm motions are
accompanied by a distinctive hand gesture, and signs for actions characteristic of the feet,
such as walking and dancing are made with the hand.
● The hands may be used in a stationary position or moved up, down, forward, back, to the
left, to the right, in concert, parallel to each other, or crossing over each other.
● Gestures are formed by movements of the facial muscles, head, limbs or body. These
movements may express or emphasize a thought, feeling, or mood.
● While the ordinary language can be used in its written medium even when the addressee is
absent whereas the performance of gesture requires an audience.
● Oral speech is produced manually; this manual production of speech is different from the
manual production of gestural signs.
● In the case of gestural signs, the medium is manual in the sense that manipulation of hands,
fingers, palms, elbows, and other body parts is made.
● By ‘gesture’ Poyotos means conscious or unconscious body movement made mainly with the
head, the face alone, or the limbs, learned or somatogenic, and serving as a primary
communicative tool, dependent or independent from, verbal language; either simultaneous

6 | ANTHROPOLOGY PAPER I: UNIT 7

 or alternating with it, and modified by the conditioning background (smiles, eye movements,
a gesture of beckoning, etc.,).
● There are at least three major divisions like the use of gesture as an accompaniment to oral
language:
1. Use of gesture by itself as the language, as in the case of deaf-mutes
2. Use of gesture as an independent means of communication
3. Gesturing as an inevitable part of the language

● Some common gestures used:

1. Clapping our hands for approbation
2. Wring our hands in distress, raise them in wonder and astonishment
3. Snap the fingers for calling the attention of the other
4. Use the palm of the right hand for blessing
5. Wink at others in collusion and glare at others and exchange meaningful,
understanding with conspiratorial looks and connivance.
6. We raise our brow in a frown and in wonder, use our fist to threaten, and raise the
hand with the fist to convey solidarity

4. Facial expression:
● The face is the most expressive of all the parts of the human body.
● A smile (friendliness), a frown (discontent), raising the eyebrows (disbelief) can add to the
meaning being conveyed through verbal means.

5. Eye Contact:
● ‘Eye contact’ enables the communicator to alter, adjust and reframe his message while
transmitting it.
● Studies have shown that better eye-contact leads to more effective communication.

6. Space Distancing:
● ‘Space distancing’ differs from culture to culture.
● For example, in India, two male adults may hug each other and walk hand in hand simply
because they are friends, whereas in another country their relationship may be misconstrued.
Therefore, ‘Space distancing’ can cause trouble to a communicator.

STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE

Though the languages differ in their structure, most of the languages in the world share some basic
components as follows:

1 A sound-system (the phonological component).

2 A set of vocabulary items (the "lexicon").
A grammatical system ("morphology") which puts meaningful elements together into
3
'words'.
A syntax, or set of rules to state what the order of elements is in larger utterances, such as
4
'sentences.'
5 A semantic component, where meanings are interpreted.

1. The Phonological component:

● It is capable of infinite minute differences in sound.
● No language uses all or even a large part of the possible differences.
● Sound systems divide things up into finite units (called "phonemes" or classes of sounds)
● Hence, the number of sound units is finite. For example, English has a finite number of
vowels and consonants
● The number of vowels is around 11 or 12, varying by dialect.

7 | ANTHROPOLOGY PAPER I: UNIT 7

 ● Phonetic alphabets are wonderful linguistic inventions.
● The success of the phonetic alphabets has led people, including linguists, to presume that the
basic building blocks of a language are the individual phonemes.
● However, recent researches proved that the fundamental building blocks of a language are
the syllables.
● In the case of the tonal language such as Chinese the tone is tied to the syllable rather than the
phoneme. Thus the basic chunks of a language are the syllables.

2. The lexicon:
● The set of meaningful units in a language is finite.
● There are usually 'old' (archaic/ obsolete) words floating around in a language. Some may be
used by older speakers; some may be recognized for their meaning in context, but wouldn't
be 'known' in isolation.
● Hence in every language, old meanings are going out, and new words are constantly being
invented.
● The set of meaningful units in the lexicon is therefore more or less finite.
● Some meaningful units have only grammatical meaning, e.g. suffixes on words such as -ing, -
s, -ed, -th (as in width etc.) and so on.
● Hence, there can be a distinction between lexical meaning and grammatical meaningful units.

3. Morphology:
● A grammatical system, which is called the "morphology" puts meaningful elements together
into 'words'.
● The grammar of a language is finite.

4. Syntax:
● The syntax is a set of rules to state what the order of elements is in larger utterances, such as
'sentences.'
● The output of the syntax, i.e. the sentences people know and recognize, is infinite.

5. Semantic component:
● The semantic component is where meanings are interpreted.
● A number of possible meanings are probably infinite.

Linguistic development of a child:

● A child's linguistic development covers three periods as follows:
1. The screaming time,
2. The crowing or babbling time, and
3. The talking time.
● The screaming time is a reflex action, and the blabbering is a voluntary action.
● Blabbering time produces pleasanter sounds which are more adapted for the purposes of speech.
● Cooing, crowing, babbling — i.e. uttering meaningless sounds and series of sounds—is a
delightful exercise like sprawling with outstretched arms and legs or trying to move the tiny
fingers.
● Babbling or crowing begins not earlier than the third week; it may be, not till the seventh or
eighth week.
● The talking time is a long one, and must again be divided into two periods—that of the '' little
language," the child's own language, and that of the common language or language of the
community.
● In the little language stage, the child is linguistically an individualist, in the common language
stage he is more and more socialized
● During talking time, first comes the single vowels or vowels with a single consonant preceding
them, as la, la, Id, etc.,
● It is generally said that the order in which the child learns to utter the different sounds depends
on their difficulty: the easiest sounds are produced first.

8 | ANTHROPOLOGY PAPER I: UNIT 7

● Among the consonants, the labials, p, b and m, are early sounds, if not the earliest. The
explanation has been given that the child can see the working of his mother's lips in these sounds
and therefore imitates her movements.

CULTURE AND LANGUAGE

● Culture is a product of the human mind. It is defined, propagated and sustained through
language. The relation between language and culture is symbiotic.
● Language serves as an expression of culture. It acts as a basis for ethnic, regional, national or
international identity.
● Language can be defined as a system of signs (verbal or otherwise) intended for communication.
● Culture includes the “customs, civilization and achievements of a particular time or people.”
Hence, culture defines people’s way of life. It is the sum total of norms and values espoused and
cherished by particular people.
● Language encodes the values and norms in a given society. As a culture changes, so do the
language.
● For example, the early Christians in colonial Kenya spearheaded the condemnation of female
circumcision. Also, later the practice has been dealt a deathblow by modernity. Thus the change
in people’s thinking, whether influenced by the new religion or by modern thinking, can render
obsolete a cultural practice or value. Once rendered obsolete, language starts dropping some
terms related to the value.
● Cultural values, have the characteristics of appearing, then waxing and waning. Languages also
have the same characteristic. A language can appear, mostly from contact with other languages,
blossom, then die altogether.
● When a civilization disintegrates, so does its language since language is the medium that purveys
the values of that civilization. The result of the collapse of a civilization is the death of a language.
For example, the classical Greek and Latin are today termed “dead” languages as opposed to
Modern Greek and Italian. etc.
● Values and norms are etched in human minds due to the language. The language also helps in
formulating values and norms. Human minds and behaviours are greatly influenced by
language.

SOCIAL CONTEXT OF LANGUAGE USE

Social context recognises that people use language and that language is a part of society. Social
context tries to describe, and account for, the different ways that different people use language. Social
context looks at relationships between language and society and looks at language as people use it. It
considers the relationship between a person’s language and social identity.

The communicative aspect of language:

● The social aspects of language are predominantly contained in those of communication between
individuals or groups.
● The concept of communication has been narrowed down to its practical component of transfer
and exchange of information and ideas.
● Language appears as a system of significant symbols, referring to a social context.
● The manipulation of these symbols makes out the main body of social activities.
● Language is a social activity. It is as a form of behaviour- a symbolic behaviour

Margaret Mead- Gestures including language or vocal gesture "become significant symbols
when they implicitly arouse in an individual making them the same responses which they
explicitly arouse or are supposed to arouse in other individuals."

● The interpretation of a language by a person is based on the recurrence of a similar social

situation or a whole series of similar situations in the past. When both the speaker and the listener
have internalized in their experience a social situation and the symbol used as an abstraction of
that situation, then it will be easier for them to understand.

9 | ANTHROPOLOGY PAPER I: UNIT 7

● An example of the above statement: If an American would say that he was travelling with his
"family," the Dutch translation would not be familiar but gezin the latter word indicating the
nuclear or simple family, whereas the word familie is used to indicate wider kin relations and
would therefore have to be translated by "relatives."
The play element in language:
● Malinowsky says that the bonds between speaker and hearer created by linguistic communication
are not necessarily symmetrical.
● The speaker giving the information or uttering his ideas derives a far greater satisfaction from this
act than the hearer.
● However, there is always an opportunity to reverse the roles so that the flow of words goes in the
other direction, which will also change the pattern of satisfaction.
● In this context, it is also worth noting the importance of the play element in language.
● The play element is a function of culture
● Not only is language pre-eminently suitable to convey humour and lightheartedness, but in many
languages, a playful element can be detected in some morphological aspects. Thus in Indonesian
languages reiteration of words with or without vowel and/or consonant changes, often seem to
reflect this play element.
Internal communication:
● There is also the communication between an individual and himself, or between man and the
supernatural in prayer or exhortation.
● Such communication between an individual and himself is based on the existence of a system of
linguistic symbols.

Margret Mead: Only in terms of gestures which are significant symbols can think- which is
simply an internalized or implicit conversation of the individual with himself by means of
gestures- take place.

The memory aspect of language:

● By means of language, the individual can reach back into the past and generally, he cannot reach
further back than the period at which signs became available to him.
● Habits, feelings, sensations, experiences generally become associated with language symbols. By
reorganizing these symbols past experiences can be called back and future experiences imagined.
● Remembering and especially recalling is an act of reconstruction- of reorganizing symbols.
Ordering and Labeling:

Dewey: "The chief intellectual classifications that constitute the working capital of thought, have
been built up for us by our mother tongue."

Whorf: "The forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of patterns of which he
is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematization of his own language."

● By naming or at least by attempts to describe things, human beings seem to get a hold on things.
● Things, which cannot be named, cannot be compared to other known things and cannot be
described.
● The process of labelling is fundamental to all social life.
Language and social structure:
● Language is an integral part of social structure. Any attempt to study either of the two in isolation
entails a certain amount of distortion.
● Language as an integral part of the social process gives meaning to and at the same time derives
its meaning from social behaviour.
● The relationship between language, systems of thought, and other patterns of behaviour can be
traced back to each culture.
● Each society has its own model of the universe and all observable phenomena of the universe can
be accounted for and accurately described in the language of its people.

10 | ANTHROPOLOGY PAPER I: UNIT 7

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