• Scientists have noticed that dialects differ not 
   only for social variations but also for other 
   ‘cultural’ factors.
  • This approach to the study of Language 
   originated in the work of Anthropologists who 
   have used ‘language as a source of 
   information in cultural studies.
                Culture
   • Culture:
    –All the ideas and assumptions about the nature of things and 
     people that we learn when we become members of social groups.
    –Def. “socially acquired knowledge”
    –We acquire without conscious awareness
    –The ‘language’ we learn provides us with a ready-made system of 
     ‘categorizing’ the world around us and shaping our experience.
    –We learn by time how to categorize the distinction between 
     different concepts./ thus, we develop a more elaborated 
     conceptual system that is relevant in our social world/culture.
      • E.g. ‘dog’ or ‘horse’ for a child is just a ‘bow-wow’
      • Some of the cultures do not have horses so they don’t have that concept 
       in their language
               Categories 
   • Category:
    –A group with certain features in common.
    –The vocabulary we learn through our first language is the set of 
     category labels we inherent./ they r the words we use for referring 
     to concepts.
    –Organization of external reality varies according to the language 
     being used to talk about it.
      • E.g. ‘rain’ ‘coconuts’  ‘dates’
      • Colors for New Guinea speakers and English speakers.
      • Clip # 2 (colors, directions, & snow)
    –Thus, there are conceptual distinctions that are  Lexicalized: 
     “expressed as a single word” in one language and not in the other.
             Kinship terms 
   • Kinship terms:
     –One of the examples of lexicalized categories: words we 
      use to refer to members of the family.
      • E.g. ‘father’ & ‘uncle’ in English vs. other languages lexicalized 
       the distinction in English
      •  ‘female parent’s brother’ /the distinction isn’t lexicalized in 
       English./ but it is in Arabic (مع ل\ اااخ)
      • Age is also important in some languages for the distinction 
       between family members./ Mayan e.g.
      • Norwegian the distinction between ‘male parent’s mother’ & 
       ‘female parent’s mother’ is lexicalized but not in English nor in 
       Arabic.
        Time Concepts 
  • An abstract e.g. of conceptual system.
  • English has words for units of time “two 
   days”/ shows that we think of time in amounts 
   the same way we treat physical things “two 
   people”
  • In Hopi lang. time is not treated the same/ no 
   terms 
  • Clip # 3 (Hopi and their time concept)