ABOUT LINGUISTIC ANTROPOLOGY

Linguistics is a broad term that refers to the study of languages. Linguistics is the study of language's structure and meaning, as well as its context. Person communication is difficult without the use of language, whether in the form of sign language, written or spoken words, and symbols. Language is also essential in establishing and sustaining social relationships. People who speak the same language can speak it differently due to factors such as social status, gender, or history. Language has a wide range of relationships with significant facets of daily life, so it is important to examine how linguistics applies to culture. In an attempt to understand how language relates to society, a number of questions arise such as; What is the relationship between language and gender, race, power, social class, or the internet? This essay intends to answer those questions using theories such as multilingualism, code-switching, translanguaging and language shift as well as by analyzing concepts like pidgins and creoles.
Multilingualism refers to the ability of an individual to speak more than one language. According to research and surveys done by both individuals and institutions such as the European Commission, people who speak more than one language outnumber those that can only speak a single dialect. Multilingualism is a result of the relationship between people of different cultures either through trade or normal day-to-day activities. In the global village, there is a constant need for interaction between people of different races, languages and cultures because of the increased geographical mobility facilitated by improved means of transport and communication. High mobility rates have made it possible for businesses and organizations to expand their operations beyond their national borders. Migration of people to different geographical regions in search for better employment or living standards has also resulted from increase in mobility. When immigrants and expatriates move to new regions, they carry their traditions, cultures and languages with them. In order for them to co-exist with the people they find living in those regions, learning a new language or teaching people their language is necessary. Individuals have adapted to the multicultural world by learning languages other than their own to make them more useful in the business and social world hence multilingualism. Nations may have more than one national language because of the cultural diversity of its people for example countries like Scotland, India, and Switzerland to mention but a few. The members of different cultures may in some instances live in different regions of a country but the major towns and cities have a mixture of all these individuals therefore there arises a need to recognize the most spoken languages. A multilingual country could have more than one national language and more than one local language spoken in its individual regions. Switzerland for instance has four national languages which are French, German, Romansh, and Italian. In addition to having four national languages, individual areas of the country may speak more than one official language for example the city of Novi Sad has four official languages; Serbian, Pannonian Rusyn, Slovak, and Hungarian.
Translanguaging is the ability by an individual to transition from one language to another depending on their environment or circumstance. Translanguaging can explain the relationship between language and power in a political aspect for example a political aspirant may switch from speaking the country’s national language to using the local language used in the area where he or she is campaigning. Speaking a language that other people speak creates a sense of belonging therefore the politician is able to coarse people to vote him or her into the government. Translanguaging may eliminate linguistic hierarchies that have emerged over time in schools and society. Using one language to explain another and alternating the input and output languages helps individuals to learn both the languages thereby eliminating hierarchies created by having a larger number of people speaking one language than those speaking another.
Code-switching is a tactic used by individuals to alternate between two or more languages in one conversation. It is also used with reference to literary styles that have elements of more than one language for example Latina/o, Anglo-Indian or Chinese-American novel writers. The term may describe an informal mixture of two or more languages for example Hinglish, Spanglish, or Taglish, that is relatively stable. Code-switching is subdivided into intra-sentential switching, intra-word switching, extrasentential switching, and tag-switching. Intra-word switching refers to switching that occurs within a word for example “ma-day-s” in Shona-English used to mean “these days”. Extrasentential switching occurs outside the sentence for example “El es de France. You can tell by his accent” in Spanish-English; Spanglish, to mean “He is from France. You can tell by his accent”. Intra-sentential switching takes place within a sentence and this type of switching is responsible for emergence of new dialects. In Hong Kong, code-switching involves juxtaposition of Cantonese and English through assimilating English lexical terms or words into Cantonese for example “loeng5 paat1” to mean “two parts”. In that phrase, the English word “parts” loses the plural morpheme “s”. English phrases that contain two or more words do not alter the Cantonese grammar and they retain their grammatical features when used in the assimilation of the two languages.
Language shift is when a community completely abandons the native language and collectively take up the use of a different one instead. A language shift takes place in a short time span and is preceded by multilingualism in most instances. During the slave trade era, almost all of the African languages spoken by the slaves were lost in 1-2 generations leading to the development of pidgin languages and creoles in the process. The possibilities of a language shift occurring when two peoples with different languages come into close contact with each other is very high. In most scenarios, the weaker group of people shift from their language to using the language that is used by the more powerful group but in rare occasions, the powerful group does the shift. After the Muslim invasion of Morocco in Northern Africa, the native Berber population shifted to Arabic. An example of a situation where the powerful group shifted their language is the invasion of the British Isles by the Vikings in 787. The Vikings originally spoke Old Norse and they maintained their native language for centuries but as the English language evolved, they dropped their own and took up the use of English. The Vikings then moved to Northern France where they became bilingual but eventually made a shift to French.
The results of language interactions such as code-switching, language shifting, Translanguaging and multilingualism, language death may occur. Language death is when a language completely disappears leaving no native or fluent speakers. A language is considered effectively dead when there are very few, mostly elderly, native speakers of a language who no longer use it in their communication. The language may become extinct through gradual death, sudden death, radical death, top-to-bottom, linguicide, and bottom-to-top death. Gradual death is the most common process of language extinction and it happens over an extended period of time. Under gradual death, a community of speakers of a language get into contact with speakers of a different language and become bilingual with the new language. As more and more cultures interact with the community, the people learn new languages, become multilingual and as time goes on, they whole community shifts to the use of a new language. Once the shift has taken place, the people’s allegiance also shifts to the new language causing them to cease the use of their native language entirely. This process of assimilation may be forced upon a people or entirely voluntary. In the slave trade era, language death was forceful as slaves were not allowed to speak in their heritage language and instead were forced to learn the language of their masters. Language death occurs voluntarily when people decide to abandon their native language for a new language that they deem more favorable economically, socially, or even political. An example of voluntary death is when an Australian actor abandons his native language to learn English to make him more marketable in the Hollywood movie industry. Bottom-to-top language death is extinction of a language from the house hold level to where the number of children being taught the native language is decreasing to the government level. Top-to-bottom death takes place from the government to the household level for example through banishment of the use of the language. Radical death of a language occurs when an entire population of native speakers of a language are killed by a genocide, disease, or the death of the last native speaker. Examples of radical language death are the demise of the last wild Indian, Ishi, in North America and death of the Australian Aboriginal languages after the landing of Captain Cook in 1770. In Australia, over three hundred and fifty Aboriginal languages were spoken before the arrival of the captain and after 200 years only 90 viable languages had survived.
The relationship between language and social class occurs due to physical distance and barriers as well as social ones. Physical barriers such as rivers, mountains, swamps, and lakes match with the regional dialects for example the people north of river Humber use “house” while those south of the river use “haus”. Social stratification also explains the link between social class and language for example members of the higher class use phrases like “He did it yesterday” while those of a lower class may use the phrase “He done it yesterday”. Social stratification results from the hierarchical ordering of groups in terms of their social status, wealth, or power. In India, the social stratification is hereditary through the strict isolation of people into distinct groups thus making the social rift more distinct than the physical one within the nation. In the English speaking society however, the linguistic distinction according to social class is not very clear because definition of the social class is not clear and there is mobility uo or down the social ladder. After the World War II, linguists noted that in order to gather important linguistic information about the vast majority, they must carry out dialect studies in both the rural areas and the towns. A sample survey to explore how the English dialect was socially stratified in New York carried out by a linguist named William Labov in 1966 showed that linguistic variation was not random. The survey showed that linguistic variation was as a result of extra-linguistic factors that were predictable and also that New Yorkers have no free variation of speech when using words like ‘bad’, ‘guard’, and ‘beard’. The sample survey proved that the highest social class use a standard dialect while the lowest class use the most localized nonstandard dialect.
Linguistic distinction in an ethnically diverse community is very obvious but studies and experiments carried out on the relationship provide concrete measurable links such as the use of language as a form of ethnic group membership and as a means of distinguishing different groups. In the multilingual world, people identify with certain individuals or groups of individuals on the basis of the language spoken. In Africa, specifically in countries like Tanzania where more than two languages are spoken, people base on the language they speak to identify themselves as belonging to a particular ethnic group. In cities like New York, individuals speaking the same language may identify themselves as belonging to different subgroups based on their dialect for example the Jewish people and the Italians within the city. Ethnic groupings are not necessarily bound by physical boundaries because such boundaries change constantly over time. An example of a change in these boundaries is Serbo-Croatian that was subdivided into four distinct dialects namely; Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin, and Bosnian, after the nation of Yugoslavia broke up.
Many linguists have carried out research with the aim of establish links between language and gender in order to try and find out whether distinct variations in dialect are present among members of different genders. According to Whittaker Gordon, Sumerian women used a language known as Emesal that was different from the local native language used by the entire society known as Emegir. Emesal was present in ancient religious texts with the speeches of goddesses and rituals specifically meant to be performed by women. In ancient India, plays in the formal language of Sanskrit were recorded with the male speakers using Sanskrit and the female speakers using Prakrit. Sanskrit diverged from Prakrit which was the popular language. Another example of a language that has different dialects for men and women is the Australian tongue known as Yanyuwa.
The link between language and the internet is hard to ignore in this techno-savvy century. The most popular trends on internet social media platforms are abbreviations of words and phrases, as well as formulation of new ones. Abbreviations such as “lol” to mean “laugh out loud” are prevalent in almost all internet users. New words such as “selfie” and “meme” were added in the Oxford English Dictionary after they gained popularity on the internet. Internet users have extended their use of such words to real life situations when having conversations with each other.


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