When

we look at real language we quickly see that rules can be considered as prototypes that are frequently amended, adapted, or ignored (Lyon, Sato, Saunders, Nehaniv 2008:7).

 I thought more consciously about the world I was pushing through with speech. Was I talking about a world of results orprocesses, a finished world or an ongoing world? (Agar 2002:65)

Wild Herds of Sentences on Open Range The tendency is to draw a circle around language, to herd neat sentences into the corral and wrangle parts of speech. But most problems with language, the problems that come up when you try to use it to communicate, arent about sentences and parts of speech. They have to do with wild herds of sentences, out on the open range (Agar 2002:16). differences in language go well beyond what you find in the grammar and the dictionary (Agar 2002:16). Culture erases the circle around language. You can master grammar and the dictionary, but without culture you wont communicate (Agar 2002:29).
Excerpts from Michael Agar. 2002. Culture Blends. In Language Shock. New York: Perennial HarperCollins Publishers.

In cultural and linguistic anthropology, FIELDWORK is conducted using the methods of ETHNOGRAPHY

The Father of Modern Anthropology FRANZ BOAS July 9, 1858 December 21, 1942

Getting us out of the armchair and into the field BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI 1884 1942

Ethnographic Fieldwork The primary method for understanding cultural variation and social change. Involves months to decades of observation, interviews, and participation in peoples everyday lives. Combined this is known as PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION. Fieldwork puts us there and gives us the holistic perspective we must seek to understand how things work among human populations.

LANGUAGE AND WORLDVIEW Language points to our ability to think and experience the world in certain ways. And it is evidence of how we classify those thoughts and experiences. It incorporates Expressions for human emotion Spatial and temporal relations o Sequencing events o Relating past to present o Planning for the future The logic of cause and effect Understanding relationships

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis AKA Linguistic Relativity Language plays a role in our habitual thoughts and behaviors. It doesnt determine how we will think or act but it does oblige us to think about certain things in certain ways. Example 1. Lexicon: The Empty Paint Drum Example 2. Syntax: Time and tense markers in English (I am going to the store. I went to the store.) Evidential verbs in Hopi (Wari He runs I saw him). Gendered articles in French

Linguistic Relativity Language carries with it patterns of seeing, knowing, talking, and actingand shapes ways of seeing and acting, ways of thinking and feeling. Language lays down (these) comfortable ruts of perception and people by and large stay inside them (Agar 2002:71).

Language ACQUISITION & Language SOCIALIZATION

Teaching using language acquisition models COG Interview Video 2:49;00 to END (as tie in and as lead in to language acquisition) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olvHuifsI7I&fea ture=related

Language is about more than WORDS AND RULES.

COMPETENCE v. PERFORMANCE
There is a difference between having the knowledge necessary to produce sentences of a language and applying this knowledge. It is a difference between what you know (competence) and how you use this knowledge in actual speech production and comprehension (performance).

What happens when competence falls flat in the performance?

Neck O' The Woods

Home Store Bio Photos Quotes Threesome

MICHELLE SHOCKED

Arkansas Traveler

Hey farmer! You been livin' here all your life? Not yet. Hey farmer! Where does this road go? Been livin' here all my life, it ain't gone nowhere yet.
New expanded store with music, shirts and more! Check it out

Hey farmer! How do you get to Little Rock? Listen stranger, you can't get there from here. Hey farmer! Thought you said that mud-hole weren't very deep? Only comes up to here on me ducks.

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Hey farmer! When you gonna fix that leakin' roof? Ah stranger, when it's a rainin' it's too wet to fix it and when it's dry it's just as good as any mans house. Hey farmer! You're not too far from a fool are you? Just a barbed-wire fence between us. Hey farmer! You don't know very much do you? No, but I ain't lost.
Arkansas Traveler (Mercury 1992) / Arkansas Traveler (Mighty Sound 2004)

Mutual orientations are made through speech.

Example. Javanese: Lha iki rak Jemuah, tur bojoku agek hamil. English: Its Friday, and besides, my wife is pregnant. Example. John walked into the restaurant. He ordered a hamburger. When he finished, he started to leave, and the waiter shouted, Hey, you forgot something. John pulled out his wallet.

Language as embodied conduct: ex. 1

Lost in Translation at the F.B.I. By GEOFF D. PORTER In announcing his restructuring of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, its director, stressed the importance of upgrading the F.B.I.'s intelligence capabilities by recruiting "the right people with the right experience." If my own experience with the agency is any guide, that should include an urgent recruiting drive for people with the right Arabic language skills. Less than a week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I responded to the F.B.I.'s calls for Arabic translators. I know of a half-dozen other Middle Eastern studies graduates who also applied Ph.D.s who, like me, are proficient in one or more Arabic dialects, as well as in Modern Standard Arabic. Ultimately (dismayed by what seemed to us the agency's flawed understanding of what proficiency in Arabic means) none of us pursued our candidacies. I applied less than a week after Sept. 11 but wasn't called for the four-and-a-half hour translation test until January. It wasn't until February that I sat for a four-hour interview and polygraph test. The F.B.I. was then to begin a six- to eight-month background check. At the earliest, I might have started translating more than a year after I applied. The slow pace, however, wasn't the most unsettling characteristic of the process. There was something more worrisome: The F.B.I.'s Arabic translation test simply does not measure all the language skills needed for intelligence gathering focused on Arabic speakers. The Arabic-language test (copyrighted in 1994 by the Defense Language Institute, according to the back of my exam booklet) was solely in Modern Standard Arabic, the Arabic most frequently studied at American universities. This is the form used for official speeches and in the news media in Arab countries but almost never in conversation. It differs substantially from the spoken varieties of Arabic in vocabulary, syntax and idioms enough so that a non-native speaker who learned only Modern Standard Arabic would not be able to understand Arabic speakers talking to one another. The regional dialects also differ from one another, varying considerably from one end of the Arabic-speaking world (in Morocco) to the other (in Oman). The dialects are, for some Arabic speakers, mutually unintelligible. (Once, I mistakenly gave a Cairo taxi driver directions in Moroccan Arabic, and he responded: "Ich spreche kein Deutsch.") These varieties of the street for the colloquial Arabic, Arabic translation section. Arabic are the language of the market, the home and world's 200 million Arabic speakers. Yet no in any dialect, appeared anywhere on the F.B.I.'s test, which included a listening-comprehension

During my post-exam interview, I tried to offer some feedback about the test's failure to measure skills in everyday spoken Arabic, but the

interviewer brusquely moved on to his next question. Nor was there a chance for me to name the two Arabic dialects in which I am proficient. The interview is scripted; there is no room for unscripted interaction. All the other Middle East studies applicants with whom I spoke said they, too, noticed the test's shortcoming but couldn't find an opening to comment on it. As the F.B.I. reorganizes, it should improve its recruitment of Arabic translators by adding tests that measure fluency in one or more of these numerous Arabic dialects. Otherwise, its translators may be limited to reading Arabic newspapers or listening to Al Jazeera broadcasts. They may misunderstand wiretapped phone conversations or be unable to identify crucial information. Until the F.B.I. shows more willingness to listen to the experts it is trying to attract, it will not get the expertise it needs. *********************************************************************** *** Geoff D. Porter teaches Middle Eastern studies at New York University.

The process of language acquisition involves socialization to language & socialization through language.