ANTHR101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Sociolinguistics

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTHR101
• Professor: Francois Larose

Document Summary

But difficult because many of these languages do not exist anymore: cannot determine accurately, how long ago have languages separated, can use dating methods to measure how long ago languages shared a common ancestor. Study languages in the same way we study living organisms. Sociolinguistics: the study of the use of language and how it reflects the social setting in which it is used, age, gender, ethnicity influence the use of language as does familiarity and relative status of speakers. Language reflexivity: language that you speak reflects your culture. Languages can also give us information about the culture of a people: vocabulary can tell us what is important to a culture, syntax can tell us about the values and worldviews. Language relativity: the belief that interpretations of reality are influence by the language one speaks, e. g.