Anthropology of Language An

Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology

3rd Edition Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer
Solutions Manual
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://testbankdeal.com/dow
nload/anthropology-of-language-an-introduction-to-linguistic-anthropology-3rd-edition-
harriet-joseph-ottenheimer-solutions-manual/
 The Anthropology of Language 3rd edition
Instructor's Manual
Chapter 6 – Language in Action

Chapter Summary
This chapter demonstrates that learning a language is more complex than merely
learning sounds and forming grammatically correct sentences. It discusses the
importance of learning how the language is used in real situations, by real people, and
of learning how those people think about the ways that language can and should be
used (in other words, of learning something about linguistic ideology). Students will
learn how social and cultural contexts can affect ideas about who should speak, when
they should speak, and how they should speak, as well as who should listen, and why
they should listen. Linguistic competence (knowing how to form grammatically correct
sentences) is introduced and contrasted with communicative competence (knowing
how to get the floor and speak appropriately in real situations, so that people will listen
to one’s words). The chapter reminds students that a goal of linguistic anthropology is
to describe and analyze communicative competence in different cultures and languages.
The chapter introduces Malinowski’s early work describing the contexts of
language use and explains how Hymes and others built on Malinowski’s work to develop
the ethnography of speaking as a research framework in the 1960s for describing
language in social and cultural contexts. The S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G acronym (setting/scene,
participants, ends, act sequences, keys, instrumentalities, norms, and genres) is
introduced and described in detail, along with examples that are accessible and
understandable and that students can relate to their own lives. Examples from recent
research help students to focus on how symbolic capital is deployed in discourse and to
gain greater insight into how language communicates gender, ethnicity, and power in
subtle ways.
Finally, students are introduces to Agar’s rich point model as a means of
resolving cross-language and cross-cultural misunderstandings. Learning how to repair
rich points is a key step in developing communicative competence in a new language, as
well as enabling students to gain greater cross-cultural awareness of linguistic ideologies
and how they affect language.

45
 Lecture Notes
This is a great chapter for exploring students' experiences with language and for helping them to
understand the complex intersection of language, gender, ethnicity, and power. The chapter has
been reorganized, and more examples have been added, to enhance students’ understanding of
communicative competence, symbolic capital and issues of power. Nearly every student has
stories to tell and you could spend all of your time coaching and counseling them with how a
linguistic anthropology perspective would help them to understand and improve their abilities
with using languages in everyday encounters. I find that if I bring some of my own stories in to
the classroom and show students how to analyze them then they can also gain a bit of
confidence analyzing their own encounters. They also can become more competent observers of
the ongoing language world around them.
One of the discussions that almost always becomes lively is when I contrast my own
New York rapid-fire-tiny-pause style with the majority of the students' gentler-long-pause style.
If you have or can demonstrate a style which is different from that of the majority of your
students, you can also experiment with talking about the contrasts and exploring some
hypothetical points for cross-style miscues. It is easy to essentialize these contrasts so you need
to be careful and to remind students that these are just generalizations and not every individual
in a particular group uses the same style. It is a good way to introduce the concepts of speech
community and community of practice.
If you have time, an excellent classroom exercise is to choose one particular speech
event that the students are familiar with (classroom lecture is one possibility) and to help them
to construct a quick S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G description of it. On the other hand, if the class is small or
you have assistance with grading, then students can be asked to use Hymes' acronym to
describe the classroom setting as part of an essay exam or quiz. Michael Agar's MAR acronym is
also a useful tool for beginning students, although it seems to take a bit of cajoling to get
students to admit to having made a "mistake" (Agar's word) so you may need to suggest that
students think of the M part of the acronym as "miscue" instead.
The discussion of standards and dialects is in this chapter because it impacts so
importantly on the ways that beginning students (and the lay public in general) seem to
mischaracterize differences of style and register as difference of dialect, and to see any form of
language use which seems "different" to them as part of a different dialect, as belonging to a
different group of people, or (in the case of English) simply as "bad" English. You should also
consider incorporating questions of gender, power, and positioning at this point. These issues
areas are revisited in Chapter 9 so if students are having difficulty with them at this point you
will have a chance to come back at them from the perspective of language change and identity
issues later on. I find that it is good practice to treat these issues from both perspectives, and it
helps the students to comprehend at least some of the complexities of language ideology and
use. It also whets their appetites for more advanced courses on language and gender, or
language and power, or even language, culture, and ethnicity.

Reading Notes
Jimm Good Tracks: Native American Non-Interference.
One of the clearest descriptions of non-interference and of the cross-language miscues that can
emerge between Natives and Anglos in the U.S., this article has the additional advantage of
having been written from a Native point of view by a Native social worker. Students find this
article engaging and understandable. It provides an excellent springboard for a classroom

46
discussion of indirection and can also lead to discussions of cross-language miscues resulting
from other kinds of stylistic differences in language use.

Exercise Notes
The writing/discussion exercises for this chapter ask students to focus on different ways that
language is used in everyday conversation and in different speech communities. Some questions
draw directly on Good Tracks' essay and ask the students to apply the insights to potential "real"
situations. Others ask the students to explore the contrast between direct and indirect speech
styles more generally. A good classroom discussion could point out the implications of mapping
directness and indirectness onto different groups of peoples. If, for example, "directness" is
expected of Anglo-American males in the U.S., and if it furthermore is valued as the "norm" or
"default" speech style, what are the implications for women and others from whom indirectness
is expected, or is the norm? Additional writing/discussion exercises take the students further
and ask them to explore cross-language miscues that they themselves have experienced due to
differences in indirectness between participants. One exercise invites the students to use a
combination of Hymes and Agar to analyze a cross-language miscue, or Rich Point. You can
assign as many or as few of these as fit into your schedule. They can also serve as launching
points for students who want to explore further on their own.

Web Exercises
The companion web site will be the place to find the most up-to-date links for each chapter. If
you have access to the internet from your teaching classroom then it is a good idea to follow
one or more of the links during lecture and to discuss the points that you find most compelling.
If you have online access in the classroom it is good to take the students to some of the sites in
class and show them some of what is possible. It is a little more difficult to explore these issues
on the web, as they are difficult to write about, and are often more personal.

47
 Guided Projects
Language Creating
If your students are creating languages, they should be instructed now to think of some social
difference that they can create and mark in their social group. This can be based on physical
characteristics (hair color, for example) or on status in school (senior, junior, etc.) or something
else. The point is not to create hierarchies, only to create some difference that can be marked
by language use. (Although, if hierarchies do develop — and they often do — this is a great way
to remind students of the complex interrelationship between language and power!) The kind of
language use is up to them and it can range from assigning a special ending to words used by
one sub-group or the other, to expecting each sub-group to use different words for the same
items, or expecting each subgroup to use a different and distinctive kind of intonation. Do not
tell them that they should create a different style for each sub-group, or that they should create
a different style for one sub-group and not the other. Leave them to their own interpretation of
"creating and marking a social difference with language." It will be interesting, at the end of the
semester, to see how many of them established marked and unmarked varieties, as opposed to
marking every sub-group in some way. This will make for an interesting discussion in class and
will help to drive home the meaning of markedness in language (which appears most clearly in
Chapter 10).
It should only take them a few minutes to make a decision about all of this. Be sure to
remind them to write up their decision in detail (and perhaps even to justify it and to discuss
why they chose the difference they chose, and why they chose to mark it in the way they did) in
their project books. Again, by this point it is generally ok to let them progress on their own with
maintaining their project books, although you can certainly ask to spot check project books from
time to time to make sure that everything is being written down. Note that there is a page in the
workbook/reader that they can use for recording their work.

Conversation Partnering
It is possible to ask students to reflect and to write about cross-language miscues that they are
having (or have had) with their conversation partners and to analyze those miscues from the
point of view of language style, using Hymes' acronym or Agar's concept of Rich Points and
frames. Such writing will of necessity be highly subjective and relativistic, but if the class is small
you may have time to read and comment on this sort of writing exercise. It can provide you with
a great platform from which to help your students learn to understand alternative frames,
alternative ways of using language, and the various ideological implications involved.
Help the students to understand that these miscues are about discourse and style and
not about grammatical mistakes. Remind them that they must not use their conversation
partners' names in any writing exercises; the point of the exercise is to practice new skills by
applying them to real languages, not to write about individual conversation partners. There is a
page in the workbook/reader that they can use for their write-ups.

Further Reading
For students who are interested in reading further, here is a selection of books and articles
chosen for their readability, as well as for their timeliness and relevance.

About Linguistic and Communicative Competence

Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. This contains
Chomsky's discussion of linguistic competence.

48
Hymes, Dell H. 1972b. On communicative competence. In Sociolinguistics: Selected readings, ed.
J. B. Pride and J. Holmes, 269–93. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. This contains Hymes's
discussion of communicative competence.

About the Ethnography of Communication

Brenneis, Donald, and Ronald K. S. Macaulay, eds. 1996. The matrix of language: Contemporary
linguistic anthropology. Boulder, CO: Westview. This is an excellent collection of recent articles
on language as social practice, with special emphasis on issues of gender, ethnicity, culture, and
power.

Gumperz, John J., and Dell H. Hymes, eds. 1972. Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography
of communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. In particular, appendix 2, "Outline
guide for the ethnographic study of speech use," by Joel Sherzer and Regna Darnell, is an
excellent and accessible introduction to the methodology.

Hymes, Dell H. 1974. Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press. This is one of Hymes's classic presentations of the approach.

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1935/1978. An ethnographic theory of language and some practical

corollaries. Supplement to Coral gardens and their magic. New York: Dover. This is a reasonably
readable discussion of the ways in which language takes on meaning in specific situations, and a
great introduction to Malinowski’s ideas about language in context.

Moerman, Michael. 1988. Talking culture: Ethnography and conversational analysis.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. This is a good presentation of the field of
conversation analysis, with examples from Thai and U.S. conversations.

Saville-Troike, M. 1989. The ethnography of communication: An introduction. Oxford: Basil

Blackwell. This is another good introduction to the ethnography of communication.

About Culture, Ethnicity, and Language

Basso, Keith. 1979. Portraits of the whiteman. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. This
is a well-written introduction to Native American views of Anglo speech behavior.

Condon, John. 1985. Good neighbors: Communicating with the Mexicans. Yarmouth, ME:
Intercultural Press. This is about Mexican-U.S. intercultural communication.

Scollon, Ron, and Suzanne Wong Scollon. 1981. Narrative, literacy and face in interethnic
communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. This book includes interesting material on Athabascan-
Anglo communication.

Tannen, Deborah. 1984. Conversational style. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. This book includes Tannen’s
engaging analysis of a Thanksgiving dinner among friends.

Yamada, Haru. 1997. Different games, different rules. New York: Oxford University Press. A

49
highly readable introduction to the ways that Japanese and Americans misunderstand one
another, from the point of view of linguistic anthropology.

About Gender and Language

Cameron, Deborah. 2007. The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do men and women really speak
different languages? Oxford: Oxford University Press. This delightful book uses ethnographic
insights to explore the role of stereotypes in attitudes toward communication.

Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 2003. Language and gender. New York: Cambridge
University Press. This is a thorough introduction to issues in language and gender studies.

Tannen, Deborah. 1990. You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation. New York:
William Morrow. This is one of the most widely read books on the subject.

About Identity, Status, Power and Language

Irvine, Judith. 1974. Strategies of status manipulation in the Wolof greeting. In Explorations in
the ethnography of speaking, ed. Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer, 167–91. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press. This provides an excellent example of using the ethnography of
communication to understand a specific situation.

LaDousa, Chaise. 2011. House signs and collegiate fun: Sex, race, and faith in a college town.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press. More about inclusiveness and identity than about power
per se, this is an engaging and readable ethnography of the house signs that students erect in a
college town to identify their houses and, by extension, their selves.

Lakoff, Robin Tolmach. 1990. Talking power: The politics of language. New York: Basic Books.
This is a readable book about how language differences can be attributed to differences in social
identity.

About Rich Points

Agar, Michael. 1994. Language shock: Understanding the culture of conversation. New York:
William Morrow. This is an engaging, well-written introduction to the idea of rich points: how to
recognize them and what to do about them. This is also an excellent survey of the history of
linguistic anthropology and a good introduction to the field of conversation analysis.

50
51