Anthropoloy, Language and

Communication
David Parkin
Zhejian University Summer School in Anthropology July 2023
• a) Language as a tool of anthropological fieldwork
• versus
• b) Language as the essence of culture
• a) The anthropologist needs to speak the language of the people
being studied in order to gather data on the people’s customs,
history, ideas and behaviour.
• B) But language is not just a tool: it is itself at the core of culture, for it
is through language that people identify each other and form
relationships.
Language classification: language family tree
versus
Language as participant observation: social
interaction.
• Classifying languages is part of the search for their origins and whether
they are related to each other. For instance, there is the Sino-Tibetan
family of languages in East Asia which includes the many Chinese
languages. There is also the Indo-European family of languages in Europe
and South Asia which includes English, French , German and Sanskrit-
based Urdu and Hindi.

• But instead of just classifying languages, anthropologists can focus on the

social contexts in which language is spoken and on how people can be
understood culturally through the prism of their language. People speak
differently in different social contexts. We all alter our speech to match the
context.
Linguistic anthropology and its sub-divisions
• Propositional speech and social speech or phatic union
• The distinction between these two is not water-tight. Most speech
has both elements but to varying degrees.
• Propositional talk asserts a point of view while phatic union is small
talk such as friendly greetings or unimportant comments.
Propositional speech aims to make things happen. Phatic union aims
to make the interlocuters feel convivial and socially at ease with each
other but is less concerned with making things happen.
• In fact the distinction between propositional and convivial speech can
be exaggerated . This is because convivial speech may smooth the
path to more direct, hard talk about socially mportant matters.
Diglossia: two or more ‘diatypes’ making up a
language.
• Some languages have contrasting ‘currents’ or ‘diatypes. This may happen
when a speech community is , for example, conquered by an alien
community speaking a different language from the indigenous people.
Over time, the invading community’s language becomes dominant, while
the indigenous language becomes subservient.
• English, for example , has two currents or diatypes: French and German.
This dates from the 11th century when French-speaking invaders
conquered England and dominated the Germanic –speaking Anglo-Saxon
inhabitants. Even today there are two ways of saying things in English –
one using mainly French –derived words and the other using mainly
German-derived words.
• This can create a speech hierarchy. But over time this speech hierarchy can
change .
Phatic union: the social importance of so-
called unimportant speech.
• Small talk is thought of as unimportant . It consists of friendly verbal
exchanges which are conventional and therefore repetitive.
• “Good morning. How are you today” is an obvious example of phatic
communion found in most societies.
• But the fact that it is repetitive and not expected to lead to ‘serious’
propositional speech means that it can contain an element of
surprise. For instance, if the speaker says “It is a terrible morning and
you look terrible also”, this may surprise the hearer who then has to
find an appropriate response, perhaps by explaining what has been
going on in his/her life.
Transactionalism:a key mode of exchanging
words.
• We here enter the field of microscopic speech encounters. We can
see conversations as verbal exchanges. These may be like the market
exchange of commodities in which speakers try to outwit each other
to get the most benefit.
• Examples are language games or competitive verbal exchanges
which may be jocular but which may antagonistic or may have
alternating elements of both jocularity and aggression.
• The theories of Marcel Mauss is the main basis of such
transactionalism. He said there is no such thing as a free or ‘pure’ gift.
One must always be under an obligation to return a gift . Speech
events can be treated in the same way.
Politeness and impoliteness: humour and
insult.
• Competitive interpersonal speech exchanges may mark out the socilal
groups that challenge each other . Are they based on socio-economic
class differences, or on ethnic and national differences? Are women’s
language games different from men’s and do men and women also
compete linguistically with each other?
• It is clear that these kinds of verbal transactions tell us about the
wider social environment as well as containing messages between
individual speakers.
From the micropolitics of transactional speech to
political language, rhetoric and oratory.
• The interpersonal micropolitics of language games and competitive
verbal jousting is the ground on which large-scale speech-making is
developed.
• Political and religious leaders have to find ways for their words to
reach out to large populations, whether live in front of a huge
audience or on television, film and radio.
• Rhetoric and oratory are skills acquired by successful leaders to
persuade their many listeners to accept their point of view.
• But leaders do not always succeed in persuading audiences. So what
do they get wrong? Why does communication sometimes break
down?
Communication beyond speech
• We communicate in many more ways than just speech.
• Written communication is nowadays one of the most persuasive
modes. It now extends to the internet via texting and not just
posters as used to be the case.
• It is interesting that although old-fashioned letter-writing has almost
disappeared, text-messaging has flourished enormously. We don’t in
factc write less than before the interet, but we write in a different
style and much more rapidly.
• Communication is in fact everywhere: in art, in music , in dancing and
through the infinite interpretation of ordinary objects around us.
The material basis of communication.

Speech uses many parts of the human body to express itself. We use the
voice, face , touch and include hand-waving and moving body posture.
Like the objects used in communication, the human body is a material
means of saying things.
The people who hear us are part of that human materiality.
This means we can think of communication as always multi-modal in the
sense of there being infinite modes of giving and interpreting meaning.
In other words , we can revise the idea that communication is an abstract
image which exists in our heads. It is part of our own materiality which
includes but goes beyond our heads.