ANTH_100_LECTURE_15_PART_2_SPRING_2023_

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ANTH 100 - LECTURE #15, PART 2 (SPRING, 2023).mp4 Speaker 1 [00:00:29] I'm. Just sort of wrapping up a little bit. Obviously learning a language or languages requires some competence. And that competence is based on grammar. It's difficult because in order to do this. You need to immerse yourself in a particular cultural context. And there might be differences in dialect which can throw people off. You know, I know perhaps like let's just say someone who's learning English in Ontario, if they are sorry, if they go to Newfoundland. They might be completely thrown off. Sorry. Ah, thrown off a little bit by some slight differences in dialect, in pronunciation. So, you know. Oh, it just I've. Speaker 2 [00:01:35] Come up. Speaker 1 [00:01:35] Against some limits of frustration in learning a language, let's say Norwegian or even Icelandic, because, you know, you're in a context for months and you've got formal language books alongside you. You're watching TV, you're trying to follow along, even though it's really difficult and, you know, you're open about reading signs, seeing busses go by, hearing snippets of conversation. But then as a native English speaker, the moment you open your mouth in a direct social context, let's say at the grocery store, people pick up on this and immediately they want to learn English so they can brush up on their English language skills, which I found more often than not, would just render it a moot point for me to to try and learn this language or these languages. There's always that issue, too. And I'll we'll talk about. The linguistic and perhaps cultural miscommunication in a little bit. I had a certain instance, well, Alexis and I did. Speaker 2 [00:02:43] In her. Speaker 1 [00:02:44] Daughter, Poppy, when she was a baby at a grocery store in Bergen, Norway. But anyways. So learning a language obviously involves linguistic competence, understanding how to all almost. Languages I find go by feel and you feel the words almost taste them in a way. But that sounds a little weird. And it's almost like you are enveloped by the words and the words envelop you. And it's like you clothed the words with your own style in your own meaning. And if you can't do that, sometimes you get that. You can't get a feel for grammar, how to string words together syntactically syntax medically in terms of a meaningful sentence or something that might appear or have an air of a sentence. You know, when we're speaking in everyday life, sometimes we don't speak in sentences because we get interrupted or cut off, but meaning is still established and we're still able to to understand it. You know, what's being conveyed or express to us mystically. And this is what I mean, you know, with the statement, adult speakers who are competent in a language do more than follow just pure grammatical rules, which is something that Ferdinand de Sousa thought with. Speaker 2 [00:04:21] A laying. Speaker 1 [00:04:22] In lateral. Right. Looking at grammar only was one way to really the only way to understand language scientifically. But then you had other people you know back teen and. His counterpart. The name is escaping me right now, as it oftentimes does. But who thought the one way, really the only way to fully understand language is not by looking at grammatical rules and syntax in sentence, but looking at context in how immediate social political context. Is what is it? Conditions, language it conditions meaning in it should be the conduit through which to really get a fix on how people are understanding the world, shaping the world linguistically and acting on it. Just a little note.

I'm wearing a thrasher shirt right now. And. I'm not trying to be cool by wearing it. And actually, I've been reading Thrasher since 1988, and I myself had a subscription. Speaker 2 [00:05:53] From. Speaker 1 [00:05:55] 88 on to 94. And then I didn't really like the direction Thrasher was taking, so I started getting Transworld Skateboarding magazine. But I see now that. Thrasher shirts are so popular that random people are wearing them who don't know who Jake Phelps is. The editor, really the person responsible for Thrasher magazine based out of San Francisco. Don't own any of the magazines. And I don't know, I ask. Well, I asked my class this when was it? Back in 2019. Why does so many people, so many people wear thrasher shirts when they've got zero connection to skateboarding or the magazine itself or Jake Phelps or San Francisco, or the differences in terms of skate mag ideology or let's say, between Thrasher, which is a little rougher, harder edged, maybe a bit more punk compared to something a little more slick in, how can I say streamlined with bigger budget like Transworld Skateboarding magazine, you know, zero connection there. But the students had said while people think they're edgy wearing thrasher shirts, maybe, I don't know, maybe because it's got the root of the word thrash in there. Let's thrash. I don't know. Who knows? I digress though, but yeah, I think. I was just trying to look up the. So it's interesting. We're going to be talking about black teen in a minute here. And. That's it. Oh, my gosh. I didn't know that teen wrote under an alias, supposedly. There's some argument. Anyways, this is really going off the rails here. Maybe. Okay, you know what? So as not to confuse everybody. I'll say this until we get to that. I'll talk about that. Anyways, getting back to normal and not talking about the pressure, but talking about linguistic competency. People are able to choose in select words and kind of settle on topics of conversation, although that can be quite random in gear it or match it to their own social position, but also the broader social context in which the interaction is taking place. Maybe I'll say it now, but. Okay. So this was. When was this? This was during our. The road trip where we were living in Norway for a little bit. And so this was before our son was born. It's going back to 2010. Quite some time ago now. Wow. Seems like just yesterday to me and Alexis and I and Poppy probably was still in her stroller, went down to Remo 1000, which is a grocery store right in the heart of downtown Bergen, my favorite city. And. I had you know, I had still been been trying to study Norwegian. I haven't for many years, admittedly. So I was looking at my formal books and, you know, trying to talk to friends we had made there. And always like I'm you know, I grew up in French immersion until I was grade two, and then we moved to London then. So I'm not super awesome at all. I second language is there you go. So I was trying though. And anyways, Poppy's shoe fell off right when I picked up a box of cereal called Fairy Nutter, which translates to for nuts. And I really love this sounds bizarre. Anyways, I loved the cereal. And then an older woman who was probably in her late seventies said something that did it to the school, and I was like, Oh, I know what that is. It's shoe. And I looked down and sure enough, Poppy had taken her shoe off and threw it. So I said to Sand top, which means thousand thanks. And then I said, Monger talk, which means many things. Speaker 2 [00:10:35] Um. Speaker 1 [00:10:36] And then I think I said, Horrible. Ah, which is you have it good. But then I think she thought that I was a sloppy Norwegian speaker. So then she started going did doo doo doo doo doo doo. And then Alexis came up and Alexis can read Norwegian better than I can. But I think you can read it better than maybe we can both understand. But we spent about 20 minutes having the strangest conversation where I was pulling out words that were kind of random and topics in interspersing with English. And while many,

many people in Norway, throughout their country have a an amazing command of English, it's generational. So the older generation often don't. And so this woman did not speak any English yet she was laughing. I was laughing. Alexis was laughing. Poppy was crying and it was odd. And then we we parted ways. And I think I muttered to Alexis, that was kind of weird, but it was really cool. And it was a conversation where grammatical rules went out the window. Convention linguistically went out the window, and yet there were still some meaning. It was choppy. Don't get me wrong, it was really choppy, but it was communication. And it was actually pretty beautiful, too, I have to say, regardless of how sort of seemingly strange it was, because due to my lack of command of it. Anyway. So context influences how people use language. This is a really interesting painting by a woman named Nicole Eisenman. It's called The Triumph of Poverty. I just realized someone's got a front, but they're. But that's be that as it may. It's. Speaker 2 [00:12:49] Not done. Speaker 1 [00:12:50] It's not abstract. It's not our brute art of the subconscious. Maybe it is. But it's, I think, maybe absurdism. Because you've got a context, it looks like, where people might not have access to a certain resource that is money, and they're making do with what they have. It is really difficult one. But this context of poverty and making do will condition how they use language, what they use it for, how they communicate and what points they're trying to get across, which really has a lot to do with what will we'll talk about in a little bit. Language, ideology. But anyways. Context really conditions how people communicate. Like I said, the words they draw on the linguistic, fun, diction, word choice. Yes, maybe that's a better, more direct word. And. This can be rendered into a hierarchy and have values affixed to it in moral judgments made. And so, you know, let's say here, the textbook makes reference to an undergraduate student who has a part time job. You know it. Hangs out with friends, hangs out with the parents. And so. You know, each social context and maybe I'll say in a very broad sense, each sociopolitical context will require a subtle tinkering and a subtle adjustment of language, even within the same language. And there's there's a term by Mikhail Bakunin. Or his possible alias Voloshin, which we'll talk about soon. But each contest will require the speaker to make subtle and sometimes not so subtle adjustments, and these can actually fall in line with what's called symbolic violence. Because if a value is made on a certain way of speaking, not only by the listener but by the person speaking, they become conscious like, oh, you know, I grew up, let's just say, in a very poor context, and now I'm, you know, in I'm used to to speaking a certain way, but now I'm in academia where, let's say I'm around white male professors who are very haughty and potentially very stuffy and arrogant. And I feel like I don't want to say anything because I don't want to come across as stupid because I don't have the Queen's English as it were. And I don't know. How to make adjustment adjustments. And this is how I felt growing up. I grew up. You know, in the east end of London, a very poor area in some ways. A lot of ways, actually, in the East End, if any of you are from London. East of Adelaide is a whole different city in some ways. And then when I got into skateboarding, you know, this whole sort of not speech community, but, you know. Very sort of practically oriented community. We used language in a very distinctive way, and I found it very jarring and disconnecting and disconcerting, actually, when I got to university and. You know, talking to the white male professors who I didn't like because they didn't represent what the hell I was or where I was from or how I was. Oh, guy was fractured. Right. And I struggled a lot and didn't do well at all because of my use of language. And I found it very confusing. Right. Speaker 2 [00:16:54] Um.

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Speaker 1 [00:16:55] So getting back to here, we'll talk about that a little bit more later. But some languages do have specific variants, you know, French, which I've had to because both of our kids were in French immersion. Our daughter still is. Our son hated it, so we had to pull him out. But he still is taking quite a lot of French. You know, I've had to kind of try and relearned this or I suck at it hard core, but that's fine, but. You know, there are different ways of addressing individuals depending on context, right? One can be formal, one can be informal or more familiar. Right. And the textbook gives view into as as examples. You know, the textbook also gives this Javanese example. I've never been there, so I can't speak about that in all honesty, in confidence. What I can say is in Norway, so we were eating breakfast on set in a mine, which is Norwegians National Holiday. It's Independence Day, and this was actually the day before I got really, really, really sick. And I will never forget it. It's going back to 2008. The very next day I had the I got hit with the worst sore throat I've ever had in my life. I was actually coughing up blood for two weeks, had conjunctivitis or pink eye with horrible yellow stuff oozing out of my eyes. And I was bedridden for two full weeks. And it's felt like somebody had taken a knife and cut one side of my throat. And I never went to the doctors because obviously it's a whole different health care system. We didn't know as a foreigner how we would pay for it if we had to, you know, if oh, gosh, we had Alexis's supervisor, who was super nice, who was her. Alexis is doing a guest researcher position there, and she would come down to see if I was okay and bring us stuff and. Oh, horrible. But anyways. Just the day before I got sick. Really sick. We were all eating breakfast at Alexis's Research Partners. Speaker 2 [00:19:26] Son's. Speaker 1 [00:19:27] House, who was the same age as us, or a little bit older. And he had two daughters, a little bit older than and then our daughter. And he said he was talking to them and he said something in Norwegian. It ended with your. And then the daughter went, Yeah. Anyway, you know, And then she went, you know, and I stopped and was like, oh, you know. Indra, What what do you because it sounds like you're saying. Yes, twice. But I don't understand it. And he said, Well, I am saying yes, actually, but I'm saying yes more formally, like you're going to clean your room. Yes. And he said the yo was more of a stronger form of light. You're going to clean your room? Yes. Rather than informal, like in the equivalent would be the equivalent of. Yeah. Yeah. You know, which is familiar, informal and sort of not as strong and direct. And so I really found that interesting about that sort of again, based on on the positions of the speaker, father and daughter and the social context in which those words are being uttered, in this case, the Norwegian context, you can have two. The two words that are actually technically different, but they mean the same thing, but they kind of don't because they're coming from really different positions, you know, of of almost strength of meaning. And I found that really, really interesting and dwelled on that for a little while. But obviously I got super sick after that. So I wasn't thinking of anything except for drinking this yogurt drink, which was the only thing I could drink for two weeks. I don't know if any of you have been in. Maybe you've had you've been stricken and I really sure as hell hope not. But with COVID or long COVID. But I mean, that was the sickest I've ever been in my life. And it was really sort of odd to be in this. We were living in a resort, a student residence at that point in time. And I remember I had never been bedridden in my life and I could get up and walk around, but I was dizzy. And then Alexis actually had to help me hold onto my arm and take me for walks. After that two weeks stretch, I felt so like I was so glad that she was there to help me. But it was odd to have to have someone hold you up like that usually, and pride myself on on being fit and healthy and stuff like that. But holy cow, that was a really odd experience I'll never forget. We thought we touched upon this last time. Does language really affect the way we see the world? People are still arguing about this, but it was Sapir, Edwards of here and

Benjamin Moore, who developed this idea of four four wanted to call it the linguistic relativity principle. When Sapir, who had spent some time in Canada, died in 1939, Wolf, really took this and pushed it even further. And he wanted to call it the linguistic relativity principle. But then he met an untimely death at 44, just five years after Sapir died from cancer, which is such a shame because it really would have been I think we all would have benefited. Speaker 2 [00:23:08] From a. Speaker 1 [00:23:09] More developed understanding of what they meant by this idea. But their sentiment that they formulated together in Warf was an odd one. So he was a chemical engineer by train, but had this deep interest in human language, particularly indigenous languages. Right? So he worked for an insurance company looking into fire and fire damage and risks, but then ended up doing a PhD with Sapir while he was still working, which is an incredible feat to do that at that doctoral level. I don't think anyone else you could do that in these days. But, you know, incredible dedication to is his what he wanted to learn and understand. There are two versions. One is, I guess, bluntly referred to as linguistic determinism. So the language you speak determines how you see the world and how you interpret it. And so as for a textbook, the strong version otherwise known as linguistic determinism, explains that our thought and our cognition. And our culture really in a very sort of rudimentary sense, are completely determined by our language or the grammatical patterns thereof. That has been disproven. I mean, both of these are really hard to disprove in test. But the rejoinder. So a negatively sort of tinged response to linguistic determinism is, well, if that were so, then our language could be nothing more than almost like a linguistic cage which traps us, which would render it pointless to learn another language because we see the world in such a distinctive way that we couldn't. Getting out of it would be really difficult because it determines everything, right? Language, experience. Perception, cognition. Right. So learning a different language, you know what happens to linguistic determinism when you've got people who know two languages, three languages, four languages, five languages, each time they utter a sentiment or a sentence, are they seeing the world differently? Well, they're not. A weaker version has been developed that explains that language has a role. We don't know 100% yet what that rule exactly is, but it does have a role in shaping cognition. And shaping culture. And so what? Of language then. From this weaker version. Well, the idea is that instead of language almost almost forming a cage around us in sneering or trapping us into one way of looking at things language from this weaker perspective or a weaker version of the linguistic relativity principle serves as a set of tools or a toolkit that people can draw on based. Speaker 2 [00:26:45] On. Speaker 1 [00:26:46] Their lived experience, you know, in terms of communicating, in terms of forming concepts within their own minds and conveying those concepts linguistically. And I get into this really heavily in Anthro 202. We've got a whole lecture on this and we get into some some more dynamics. But yeah, and another idea is that language from this sort of weaker version serves as what's called a category marker or a sort of category maker. So it slots. Our understandings of the world into these ideas and can classify our lived experience in living experience, but also the objects of the world. But it doesn't quite fully determine that. I think there's almost like, you know, mutually influential relationship in some ways, otherwise known as a dialectical relationship. And that sounds a little bit poncy between language, experience and culture. And it's this forever moving dynamic, right? We talked about language being an open system, so it's quite interesting

that way. So pragmatics then really is understanding language in action in particular contexts in how it's used. And it looks at different kinds of contexts. Really? Two of them. One is linguistic context. Right. So word choices, diction. Although I think really diction applies more to writing, meaning with word choices, the expressions turns of phrase that people use colloquialisms, but also sentences that one formulates when expressing meaning. The other. Yeah, and here's something context, really, in terms of language and language use can mean everything. And without having context, sometimes, you know, we don't know what's going on. So this is a really simple little cartoon here. But Sherlock saw them in using binoculars. So. But what does that mean? Right. So did Sherlock himself see a man because Sherlock was using binoculars? Or was Sherlock looking at a man who was using binoculars? And without this, you know, graphical or pictorial context, we don't know which is which. And this is where English is frustrating, Right? And can be really bizarre in many other languages, too. Right. Because we just don't know until you're given a little bit more context and individuals like back teen and the loss of as opposed to to sorcerer and. Explain that ideological context, socio political context is everything in trying to understand in such a language, in its use from a linguistic, pragmatic perspective, although they would never really use that term, pragmatics looks at linguistic contexts of the immediacy of those utterances, but it also looks at non linguistic contexts. So the environment, whether it's the raw physical environment or the social environment in which one is speaking, and these two taken together. Speaker 2 [00:30:31] Form. Speaker 1 [00:30:33] The objective of what pragmatics or linguistic pragmatics is looking at context to try and understand meaning. You can't just do it on grammar alone because you're only going to get, as you can see here, you're only going to get part of the picture. Right. Speaker 2 [00:30:49] So again. Speaker 1 [00:30:51] Following this. Why am I talking with my hands so much? I don't know. I'll sit on it, see if I can. Oh, there, Kenneth. Right. Try this. Well, it's not going to work. Context is everything. And as per sort of an anthropological truism, you know, to really understand others in social, cultural, biological, I suppose bio, cultural, linguistic context, you need context, context, context. Right. Yeah. And so. Pragmatics in general looks at discourse. Speaker 2 [00:31:39] In. Speaker 1 [00:31:39] Discourse. My goodness, I don't like this word because it's, Oh, here comes a hilarious word for you. It's poorly. SIMIC It's got multiple meanings, poorly meaning, multiple seeming based on semantics, meaning that it's policy. May. Maybe that sounds silly, but it is. It can pertain to knowledge and practice. If CO is doing the writing, I am writing about discourse or it can center on the ideological sort of. Content of talk. As for back teen, in this case here, it just means a stretch, a speech that's longer than a sentence and on a certain theme. Academics. Okay, so here's another little, little cartoon in terms of the necessity of looking at pragmatics or the immediacy of context. So band practice -6 to 8. Okay. Thanks for the reminder. And this is obviously a band mate. Band practice. My hope, 6 to 8. Thanks for the reminder. Another band, The band MI Band practice might have 6 to 8. Thanks for the reminder. But then you shift the context and then you shift the speaker. And then the meaning is completely different. So it can be the same utterance. Right. Band practice my house 6 to 8. We don't know what the inflection

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is or the intonation. It could be like band practice -6 to 8. And then the adults who surrounded by this parent, probably they take it as a warning or thanks to the warning, you know, let's go get her earplugs because they're playing death thrash as principal, hein? We don't want to be anywhere near this, this band. Maybe I would, but these people know, so. Yeah. Now plunging a little bit deeper into the contextual features of language use. Now we've got this fancy $11 term ethno pragmatics. Say that three times fast and then once backwards maybe can. But this is looking at language use ethno graphically. And this is really I never use the term right. But this is what really I looked at when I was doing my dissertation research. You know, I was at the YAC Youth Action Center every single day. Speaker 2 [00:34:31] From. Speaker 1 [00:34:32] Opening hours until close. And I would hang out with these the youth whom I got to know after hours. Speaker 2 [00:34:42] See them out. Speaker 1 [00:34:43] On the street on weekends. You know, so I really got a sense of the and this is going to sound weird maybe, but the everyday ness of language use and the sort of, I guess. Oh, what am I trying to say? Like the mundane as to of everyday language use. And I got a sense for how people were using language, the words they were choosing, the stories they chose to go to, to narrate. And, you know, I don't know if any of you will find any of this interesting, but I have. A paper somewhere on one of my computers that I haven't published yet. I've been teaching so much over the last few years, sometimes three and four courses a semester. My gosh, as a sessional, that I just sometimes it's really difficult to get these things out to journals. But so paper, based on this idea of tall tale telling amongst homeless youth in London during the time I was doing my fieldwork, and a lot of it was based on, you know, an ethno pragmatic, you know. Perspective on why it was that many of these youth. Almost always the male youth would tell lies and tell tall tales. And at first, you know, I was like, Oh, what? This is ridiculous. You know, I would have once I got to know people better, you know, they would tell me these stories. Some of them seem so outlandish, right? Like this one guy who I named Scout just as a pseudonym was like, Yeah, you know, I killed the dude once. And I was like, You did. And usually it's just a matter of factly, Yeah, yeah, I killed the do once, and it was like, Oh, well, can you tell me what happened? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was. I was fishing down at the forks of the Thames. For any, any of you who are from London, right behind the art gallery, Riverside. And I can't remember what the other road is, that kind of forks. But anyways, he said that he was fishing, and then a homeless guy came up to him and said, Give me a ride. And this kid was 17 at the time, had said, you know, if you I'm not giving you my rod, and then jerk the rod ate and then the hook came out really quickly and apparently caught the homeless fellow on the neck in sliced through his carotid artery in his jugular vein, and he started bleeding profusely at the height of his neck. And then the kid scout pushed him in the water and then he sink to the bottom. I never found it. Other stories and I'm going to give you the context in a minute, but other stories involved, you know. Oh, yeah. I lit half of the town of Stratford on fire. Oh, this was another individual. Okay. How did you do that? Oh, you know, I was playing with matches with a couple of friends, and we got super drunk and we were super high and we're just flicking matches. And then before I knew it, most of the buildings in the city were on fire. Okay, Another person. I am originally from Ireland. He says, You know, my day to day experience with violence was, you know, extreme. A rocket propelled grenade would hit my house and then one blew up the family car. And I was like, okay, that's, you know, and I never, ever out of respect would say, you guys are full of shit, you know, Come on. And some of the stories

were just, you know, another one was like, Yeah, when I was in grade three, I used to get drunk and high in class and, you know, he said this one particular individual said that I would go to class when I was eight. And I, you know, the teacher would be doing math and I'd take out a huge bottle of Orange Crush and then start chugging it. Then I'd light up a blunt and then start smoking it, and then she'd be like, Get out of here. And then the student apparently would be like, Fuck you. And then the teacher be like, Okay. And then I guess he'd piss on the floor. Anything you can think of, you know, in terms of wildly outlandish stories I heard. And I always. Speaker 2 [00:39:19] Took them. Speaker 1 [00:39:20] Not as truth, because I realized very early on that truth in that context didn't exist as such, meaning an ad equation or a correspondence between an utterance like a sentence, a statement and its match up or correspondence with something. In the world or in history, Right. There is a fractured, splintered disconnect between the two. And through my notes, I was like, Well, this is really interesting. And so now I'll provide you context. All of these stories were always recounted in front of other people. And so, in essence, there was always an audience. There was me. But then there was an audience of other homeless youth. And at first, I got annoyed. And I never let anyone know this, but I would go home and say to Alexis, Poppy was just a baby at that time. I would say, All God. These guys are always so full of shit, like they're making this stuff up and they don't ever stop. And it's a constant stream of these stories. Speaker 2 [00:40:28] And then. Speaker 1 [00:40:29] We realized, you know. The question is not about truth. It's about the work of stories. And what are stories do write? What is the language doing in this case? It's doing some kind of work. But what is it? After a few months, I started to realize, Oh, it's affording people some sense of power or social positioning. Now, as everyone probably knows, street life is pretty rough and people are battling suicide constantly. They're battling addiction constantly. They're battling all kinds of terrible things. Parents committing suicide, parents dying. Speaker 2 [00:41:12] Friends. Speaker 1 [00:41:12] You know, backstabbing them, having to steal to get by, getting caught, getting cut from Ontario works, having no money, then being forced to steal, then getting caught. It's a horrible, vicious cycle. Sometimes getting beaten up, sometimes having to deal with aggression and people stealing. And so one way to afford some kind of purchase, some kind of social traction in the flow of experience, everyday experience of being homeless is to paint oneself. As tough, write as mean and tough and worthy of not being. Pardon the expression, but not being fucked with. And if you can do that and do it consistently. The idea was that people will leave you alone. Do not fuck with that guy. He actually killed somebody. Or this guy is so crazy that he'll. He'll do stuff to you. You know, he'll take like, who knows? He'll. It'll pull a screwdriver and a hammer out of his backpack and start working on your face. That sounds silly, but anyways, you get the point, right? So. What I refer to it in this paper was that language in this context, a very particular context afforded experiential capital. So capital being being something that one can of mass in use for something. Right. Like a fund. But monetary capital, financial capital was nonexistent. Right. People didn't have any money. So to work with. But what they did have was their experience to modify to to build on, to expand by way of hyperbole or exaggeration. And that's what was what was happening here. And it was really interesting

because for almost all of them, I would, you know, in different contexts, I would say, and you're always having to, you know, make sure that things are coming out politely and respectfully. And when people are starting to trust you. And at the same time impress you by doing crazy things you don't want to, you know. How can I say betray them by being like, I think you're a liar. And then even though that might be the gruesome truth, you don't want people like, it's just sort of disrespectful in that context. So I would say, you know, if I was talking to one about something and I would say, Oh, yeah, you know, Scout had said he killed somebody, you know, how do you feel about that? And it 9.5 times out of ten, it would be like, yeah, I believe it. So, you know. Don't do not fuck around with that guy. And or it's like, okay, so-and-so said that he got into a gang fight at the Exeter Juvenile Detention Center where there are 200 people with chains and whips. How do you feel about that? Yeah, I believe it because that guy is nuts. Like, do not fuck around with him. He's. He's done some crazy stuff. I'm not. And then you start to realize language is literally clothing people enveloping people in. In these perceptions that can actually be adaptive and protective. So, you know, maybe some of your board in the law do. I'm going to fast forward you or put you on like two times a 1.5 times speed. But it's really interesting and important actually to take this seriously as the pragmatics. Again, just like my example, focus, focus is on practice and. Every Dana's right and you've got not so much the rules of grammar. And again, this is I'm trying to build on what the textbook emphasizes here, but definitely some cultural values and action. These are all linked together, right? In inform, I guess, what we could call, for all intents and purposes now a linguistic imperative. What are you trying to do with language? Right. What's the communicative point? Yeah. Meaning it is located in everyday activity. And the textbook got this term wrong. Habitus is a term for the most part coming from Pierre Bourdieu, which really means. How one embodies social values, including language. It means how you hold your body, how you are. It's not just everyday activity. It's. Oh. Yeah. And again, following this weaker version of the linguistic relativity principle or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language forms a resource that people draw on and almost, you know, there's another fancy term here in Sorry, sorry. But the French structural anthropologist started using this word bricolage or BRIC allure, which really is what we all do in language. We pull things from different places and inform things out of what is available to us, and we make things out of them in that thing that we make as meaning, right. But people from different. Social spaces or social positions, whether gender and sexuality, whether gender, gosh, whether class have certain things available to them in their horizon of meanings and pull on those to form things which are ideas and meanings and use those to understand themselves, the world and others. Communicative practices. Of course, these are shared and shaped by people speaking and interacting with one another. As for this painting, and it's not Diga, and why didn't I list who it was by? I do not know. They don't only involve language, but as I said, just using that really quick example. You know, these practices are based on values in shared habitual knowledge. Right. Or knowledge is, I think. Speaker 2 [00:48:02] And I. Speaker 1 [00:48:02] Think the word understandings is probably even better than that. Yeah. There, there, definitely. Anyways. So through, let's just say these communities of speech practice, individuals who are partaking or involved within them through these everyday activities. You know, might build up a certain idea of how to speak. Certain way of speaking, drawing on certain words. Skateboarders, for sure. You know. And this can be called like a discourse genre, which is a very Bactrian type of words or term to use. So it's almost like, you know, to break it down and get rid of the academic language. It's like a style of speaking. Right. So, you know, I mentioned my son. Right. Gaming And that he the the kid is hilarious. So when he's speaking with us, it's like, you know, he wanted

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something to do. So it's like, oh, mommy, can I have this thing for my Transformers game? And, you know, obviously it's that intentional use of language, the instrumental use of language. I'm going to get some that want something, so I'm going to use something a little bit more formal or, you know, Dad, can you can you do this for me? Can you do that for me? But when he's with his friends online or even at the park, it's like, you know, bro, this come on, bro or not, dude. But like, bro, that's cap. You're a sweat. Oh, there are a couple other terms, you know, nice fits, meaning, clothes, whatever. It's. It's hilarious. And this is like a style. That team, we call it the discourse genre is like a style of speaking. You know, based on these shared values and this idea of habitual knowledge is of video games. And yeah, now there's a different term here. And I you know what? This is a first year course. This is kind of getting into some potentially like it glosses it no pun intended in a hetero glossier way but this is something I made use of backed into my, my dissertation quite a lot. He's really interesting, maybe a bit dry in some areas, but anyways they mention that in in this idea of hetero glossier in our textbook. So we'll talk about it briefly. But it's really, you know, let's just say you've got one language right, which is let's just say there are many languages spoken. Speaker 2 [00:51:03] In this. Speaker 1 [00:51:03] This really great country of ours, some of which in terms of indigenous languages get ignored, which is ridiculous, some not so much, but being the main sort of. Focus of of linguistic ideology. There's English and French. Even then, most provinces have English as the dominant language, so it almost supersedes French, unfortunately. So let's just say in English you've got one language, but within that language you've got different styles of using English. Right. So some would say, you know, there's like our daughter has been looking at this, you know, into this there's the Brampton style of of English and she knows a few people from Brampton and she says they've been using the word brave a lot which is borrowed from British. Like what's going on, brother? And so, you know, that's a style. Some might say Indigenous Indigenous individuals living on a rez or resident reservation sorry, use a different kind of English called Rez English. Then you've got academic English and let's say you've got gamer English. Right. Using interesting words like that's cap using a lot of Brose in there. You know, a lot of you're a sweat. Give me a break. Well, that but anyways, you know what I mean. And then you've got political English rate of political employees obviously very formal. No slang in terms of written correspondence. Let's say if you get a letter from the government. So it's like there's one language, but within it, there are many styles of speaking that language. And although back 18. Being a philosopher. And I'll talk a little bit about him in a literary critic in a very politicized regime. You know, writing in the twenties, thirties, forties and fifties in Russia. You know, was a result of political violence himself. He was really sensitive to the different kinds of different ways that Russian, in his instance, was being spoken. But he's not super clear sometimes. So, again, this this term really both terms. But, you know, this is just kind of dropped in hanging there. But we'll focus on what the textbook focuses on. Hetero Glacier, the term developed in coined by Mikhail Bardeen. This is vaccine here. You'll note a crutch here. So he was sent to a gulag by Stalin. In the 19 did did due to thirties or forties contracted a disease called osteomyelitis in his leg, left or right? I do not know. And why would I? This causes the marrow inside the bone to start separating or producing pus, and it can be quite painful. So he had to have a full leg amputated. Speaker 2 [00:54:28] And. Speaker 1 [00:54:29] Was really forced to walk and use crutches for the rest of his life. And he left us with this legacy of. Amazingly complex writings. I have all of his books

upstairs about language. And so he was a philosopher, really, of experience, almost an existential philosopher, almost in line, you know, in terms of Martin Heidegger. I don't know who's calling me right now, but I can't really answer that. Remind me in one hour and then focus on language. But how had to write? In a double way. And so. All he had to write. About novels and about literary criticism. And so he's writing about the discourse of the novel. He's writing about how novels are written, how characters are developed, how ideas in the novel are written according to certain patterns, how time and space are organized in the novel. But he's also talking about everyday life, too. And he did this because he was under political stress and duress. Because as a marxist thinker. You know, his he was quite critical of power structures around him. And the government was on this and was very critical of academics who were critical of then the government or in this case, a dictator. So he had to try and evade any kind of enduring political violence which caught up with him in the end. But he taught high school for quite a long time, failed his dissertation. What? It didn't pass it his defense multiple times. I think it was finally awarded to him in one of his books, his first book, which I have, which is more existential. His philosophy was the original manuscript was burned, and so they had to train. Right. I think the last quarter of it, based on what they thought, which is kind of weird to do. But anyways, this is how back in. Define head or glossier. And this is a first year course, so I'm not going to put this on an exam. But Petro Glossier refers to distinctive links in interrelationships between utterances and languages within a single language. This movement of the theme through different languages and speech types its dispersions dispersion into the rivulets and droplets of social header. Vasya it's dial education really complicated, but I think our textbook actually does a really good job saying hetero glossier is a set of coexisting linguistic norms and forms, each representing a different social subgroup. Because we all participate in more than one of these subgroups, we inevitably become fluent in many varieties of language, even if we speak only English. Right. So it's talking about different styles of one language, which are all politically inflected, according to Martin. And this is his book that came out in 81. I've got this one upstairs. This is a favorite, I think now maybe sometimes a graduate student interested in language called the dialogic imagination. And that came out in University of Texas Press in 81. Oh. Okay. Speaker 2 [00:58:18] Um. Speaker 1 [00:58:20] Pidgin. So languages that affect other languages you've all heard of of a pigeon. Being a kind of language. This really develops this kind of language when two distinct native languages need to communicate. So this happens sometimes in terms of colonial encounters. I know in Papua New Guinea in Taboo, another taboo story in other locations there. Individuals speak a pigeon, which is a mix between their indigenous language and English. So it's a confrontation between these two language languages and they kind of mutually influences. I can't speak anymore, influenced each other. Just some examples of why is it spinning like that of. Pigeon, Right. So pigeon has no native speakers. And because it's a confrontation between two languages, it involves in the negotiation there, we're in there between. And what's interesting is like a true sort of dialectic. You have a thesis, right? Which is in indigenous language, let's say, and then an antithesis or antithesis, which is a dominant language. They come together in form, a synthesis, which is a new language that's not reducible to either of the two. So they literally combine to sometimes form something really new. But the vocabulary oftentimes is that fund is drawn from a dominant groups language, let's say English A. So, you know, it's a really interesting idea here. And there are many different versions of pidgin across the you know, across this planet. I know Nigeria has a form of pidgin. You know, obviously, you have been sitting here in this. Um. Oh, there it is. So. Or it happen. Technical difficulties here, there, here. What's interesting, though, is you've got a pigeon which has no native

speaker, but that's to be contrasted with a Creole language like, let's say in Louisiana, which is a combination, but it does have native speakers, right? So it seems that pigeons as languages are kind of like. You know, used for I don't want to say like an ad hoc purpose, but more and some technical difficulties here. Yeah. There we go. Okay. Yeah. No native speaker. So pigeons are usually typically used as second languages. So you've got an individual who speaks one language. They get introduced to a pigeon and they kind of adapt to it again by drawing on this fusion between a dominant language in a lesser dominant language. A Creole, though, is something that people learn right off the bat as a first language. Right. So there's that that sort of interesting difference there. A lot of this, though, is based on language, ideology or linguistic ideology, which oftentimes leads to ethnocentrism. So linguistic ethnocentrism is based on this root idea or principle of ethnocentrism. So it's this idea that there are certain ways of speaking that are understood as proper and others as defective or inferior. So. RAZ English as. An example. Right. Among indigenous peoples living on a reservation. It's going to be different than academic English. But why? There's a value there. I wouldn't. It's just a different way of speaking the same language. I was told in Norway that saw me who learn Norwegian don't speak it properly and are often seen as inferior in their use because they never learned how to do how to speak proper Norwegian. But isn't that an ideological judgment there? Right. So ethnocentrism just for those as a refresher, it's a belief, an attitude or mindset. As for this definition that holds that one's group is superior to all others. And so it's this tendency of people to judge other cultures by one's own. And so linguistic approach ethnocentrism is the same. Right. So African-American vernacular English is another sort of way of speaking English, which has its own, you know, its own rules, its own set of pronunciations, its own terms, which is just another way of speaking. But sometimes, depending on who you're talking to, somebody might rank it and render it on hierarchy by saying what's not proper. Well, give me a break. It is. Yeah. And so, you know, from a linguistic ethnocentric perspective, you know, whether it's Sami speaking Norwegian or African American vernacular English or what have you, it could be, you know, an entirely different linguistic context of a pigeon or a Creole. They're often devalued in comparison to this supposed gold standard of proper, more academic oriented English. But, you know, one should not be valued over another. They're just different ways of speaking this just lively, hetero, glossy you. Right. I this is always a bit difficult, right? But you've got ethnic side and genocide that happened. With many indigenous people in this country. In many of them. Were forced to send their children to Horrible. 19th century called industrial schools. Early 20th century and on called residential schools where people basically were forced to become white. And you know, you can't kill the I-word. In terms of adults, but you can kill it in children. And that's what the idea was. I don't like showing this picture. I'm only doing it for pedagogical reasons. This is probably the most notorious residential school in Canada, maybe the world over. Perhaps that's a big claim. They're all terrible. But this is the Cecilia B Jeffries Residential School in Kenora, Ontario. Since been. Speaker 2 [01:06:07] Torn down. Speaker 1 [01:06:11] Experiments were nutritional experiments were undertaken on children. Here to see how. A human body could survive. One. A base amount of calories. These were experiments undertaken under the watchful eye of the government. These schools were oftentimes funded by the Church of Canada or Presbyterian Church, Anglican Church, whatever, whatever denomination had its own separate channels of funding or with a partnership with the government of Canada. So the unspeakable things took place at the school and many others. You know. Here as well as Saint ends and Manitoba nuns as women of God would construct electric chairs and put indigenous kids First Nation in these chairs and shock them for fun at a punishment. There are many

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instances of children. Contracting, the influenza, the flu and in throwing up into their food. And the nuns would take the food and put it in a fridge and then bring it out the next day or a week later and say, well, this is all you have, so you're going to eat it and would force them to eat it. These are these. This is. Like the unspeakable shit that people do to each other, which I find unbelievable is why I always think we're such a paradoxical species. We're capable of such beauty and kindness, but at the same time we're capable of things like this and it's horrible. But these were contexts where children were forbidden to speak their language, and if they did, they would get whipped, caned, beaten, oftentimes clothing. Pins would get placed in the mouth and pierce right through the tongue. And we know about intergenerational trauma and all the things that come with this. And I mean, if this doesn't get you mad as hell, I don't know what's going on. It's always, you know, it's nice. It's always difficult, right? Because as a white male ally, what do you do with this? And I think in some ways, the respectful thing to do is to become silently upset. And realize. How this should never have happened. But it did to never forget. And if you're in a position like me, which is in a position of absolute. Privileged to be able to. Speak with students like you and teach you. You know, I can't represent the experiences of individuals or family members who went through this. I can only start a conversation, but. At the end of the day, languages were were the intention. Was to destroy them into murder language and then culture. And then. People as well. But what I. What I can say. Because I'm angry now. Is that. You know, they were not successful. And thankfully right, owing to the resilience of many individuals in owing to their. I don't even want to say importance like language is life. Culture is life. So owing to these things, they never gave up. And brought some languages back. And, you know, I show a documentary in 202. I won't show it here and repeat it called We Still Live Here, which was essentially how colonialism destroyed the Wampanoag or Mashpee Native American language in Massachusetts and New England. But they weren't successful in destroying it because they brought it back. And it's such a beautiful documentary and it's a necessity to see. And I never get tired of it. And I've been using it for like six years now. So in part with responsible for this? Well, ethnocentrism, obviously, and linguistic ethnocentrism based on this idea of a linguistic ideology. I don't know why this is the standard linguist language ideology. I've never heard of that. But language ideology. I'll read this for Zena B Green. Is a bias toward an abstract, idealized, homogenous language based on an imagined community which is imposed and maintained by dominant institutions in which has as its model the written language. Take English, but which is drawn primarily from the spoken language of the upper middle class. Here's your gold standard, right? And that becomes an unquestioned dominance and becomes hegemonic in many ways. Its unquestioning to the point where you let's say you've got an interview right with a young student who might not come from a privileged family, who had family members who had gone to university and so doesn't know what to expect in the robes. And they speak a certain way and they're interviewed, let's say, by a white male academic, and they walk away from the interview feeling stupid and thinking, Oh, my gosh, you know, and I'm not I'm not talking to me. I'm just making this up. But they walk away feeling stupid. This is actually an example from Pierre Georges notion of a certain concept, which I'll tell you in one second, but they walk away feeling. Like their esteem has been questioned. They feel stupid. They feel now they're questioning their value and they think, Oh my gosh, I didn't talk well. And now he thinks I'm an idiot and I'm not going to get a job. This by way of language. Ideology is what's called symbolic violence, Right? And it's bullshit. But. This is what we have sometimes. Got a lot of work to do. But anyways. Language ideology often is at the forefront of of struggle. Here. We've got this Marxist idea of class struggle, right. But now it's a linguistic struggle between different kinds of speaking one language, between social groups who might very well have different interests in this always reveals itself this differential and this disconnect in what people say and how they say it know. In. A lot of people sometimes can be quite snobby

about this, right? Like if you're talking to someone, let's say an older generation Canadian who might use who might plurals, the word youth like, oh, use youth. Guys aren't doing that. I mean, some people might get quite snobby, be like, Oh, well, how low class, but whatever. It's like, let's, let's not get left up by these stupid little judgments that we all make to distinguish ourselves from others based on our own silly little insecurities, right? It's just, you know, hetero classic dynamism. It's just different ways. I think people become A-hole sometimes when they value these distinctions in law, them over people too much. That really bugs me. Bugs me, Like I'll say. Just as an aside, I'm going to go off on a mini rant here before I end. I had to attend with my arts first class. Rate before the pandemic. Like literally two weeks before the university canceled classes, I did attend a library workshop on how to use, how to use library resources and how to do research. And so I went with my students. It was at night, and this fellow named Tim Ireland was doing the session and he was like, okay. And I had never met him before. So he was like, okay, it's really great that Dr. Tolson came along with everyone and I put my hand up and I was like, No, my name. I was actually my name is Mark. And he was like, What? And I said, Yeah. Like, my name is Mark. And he was like, Oh. I said, Yeah, just call me Mark. I think the doctor stuff sounds really silly. And he's like, What? He said, You know what? That's really interesting because I get people coming in here with their students and they insist that I call them doctor. And I was like, No, why? And then we kind of talked about it for a little bit. And he was like, some people are kind of jerks about it. And they're like, You will call me doctor, and I insist on this. And they said, They'll email him and stuff. And I'm like, What? That, again, clinging to these little insecurities based on distinctions that really don't matter. Shucks. Okay. I want to know the rather. Yeah. And so, you know, this last point here for a second. Last point. One language variety is the standard in which all other varieties are measured. We've been talking about this for a little bit anyways, and it does make value judgments about other speech in the context of domination and subordination. This always needs to be questioned, always let's accept and respect rather than devalue and make judgments. I think that's now I'm sounding like a public service announcement. Just a quick example before we cut out your language. Ideology here in this country centers on bilingualism. You know, and. Depending on where you are, right, it can affect your life. So if you live in Ottawa to get a job, you have to be bilingual, depending on what that job is. But all of our food here is in two languages. And in some senses, this imagined sense of nation building and belonging in Canada, and I should say were framed in the image, ideological image of bilingualism. But what's interesting, when I flew to the Arctic, you know, to start my first real ethnographic four way foray into. You know, real research. When I flew to Michael Vick and Nancy Abbott, when I got to the the airport in Happy Valley, Goose Bay, Labrador, Newfoundland and Labrador, now all the signage there in the airport, which is very small because it's an old military base at Happy Valley State, was written in six indigenous languages, some of which I had never seen before, and I was blown away and I was looking at them and I didn't want to be disrespectful being there. I'm taking a picture. So I didn't. And I kind of wish I had. I suppose you could could probably Google it, but it just it was one of those things where, you know, you always know that there are so many more languages in this country that are spoken on a daily basis, you know, French, Arabic, English, what, what have you. I mean, Ojibway, ogi, cry, cry. But it's when you see in a different place other than Ontario that there's a sign in the signs are are everywhere. In these six indigenous languages, you're like that's incredibly beautiful and so interesting. But owing to this, really interesting. Linguistic ideology based on bi lingual. It's a binary. And it sort of snuffs out the other languages and makes you think, oh, they're just not as important. But that's not true, right? Obviously not at all. Yeah. And so in reality, outside of this imagined sense, again, borrowing that term from Benedict Anderson. English and French aren't treated equally across the country. And so, you know, I remember feeling a little bit of heat sometimes when I was living in Montreal. And it's, you know, outside of

Paris, I think it has the largest number of English speakers in a French speaking nation. But I would go to probably go there grocery store chain, and I would try and speak what little French I was comfortable with. And people could always tell through my accent. And a couple of times people were kind of rude back to me and they'd be like, Yeah, nice try. But he wouldn't say anything because I'd be like, Oh, how's it going? And I'd say, Thank you, merci, blah, blah, blah. And a couple of times I got called the Blockhead and I had to ask somebody, a friend of a heavy metal friend, like, why am I? Why do people keep calling me a blockhead? It's like, Oh, that's a term for someone from Ontario. It's like, Oh, okay, okay. It's very interesting. Languages, language, death, they can disappear. And I guess Latin is is one of those sort of, you know, oh, my gosh, it's getting late here. I got to finish this last line. One of those examples. But this is when people in a community stop using language. Lingua franca is, or world languages like English can threaten smaller languages and snuff them out. And so what happens is that in reaction to language loss and I told you that we still live here, and if any of you want to take 202, I will definitely be showing that. I think I'm teaching it in September. I think there are always attempts at revitalizing languages and language. Revitalization is a term for bringing these languages back by way of various means. So you might have one or two speakers and you can compile a compendium or a dictionary based on those words. In the case of the Wampanoag or Mashpee Native Americans, the language was lost and there were no native speakers. So they had to reconstruct the language based on a Bible that had been translated from English into Wampanoag in other court documents. So they had to they had to compile a dictionary of words and then put the grammar and syntax together and approximate it based on other related Indigenous languages from the area. And so it's not going to sound exactly like it did. But now there are people who are speaking Wampanoag, Mashpee, and I think that's that's amazingly beautiful and quite a brave thing to do. Yeah. And language loss and the creation of new languages. It's not new. Speaker 2 [01:22:06] Um. Speaker 1 [01:22:07] You know, it's just part of the process of. Of life, I guess. Okay, Last slide. I feed Thomas KUHN. This guy, he's the guy who developed this idea of paradigm shifts in science. How new ways of thinking can sort of take precedence over old ways based on language and experience. So he explained that reality and our understanding thereof is really the product of this. I'm not going to say reconciliation, but this dynamic between language and experience. So languages aren't neutral from this perspective. They're always political and they allow us to understand in some ways whether some theories are right or wrong and how things can give way to paradigm shifts in thinking, particularly in science. He was a physicist and philosopher of science. So our textbook explains to us that this ability that we all have to reflect our reflexivity is a whole other term that we learn about in 202. I don't know why it drops it here, but it does. Speaker 2 [01:23:25] Um. Speaker 1 [01:23:26] But once we reflect on ourselves, we can become aware of potential alternatives. And this is a dynamic and really beautiful thing about language. It's a completely open system. It's always changing. It's always in a state of of shift, in dynamism. And we can bend it. It's plastic. We can bend it for for new ways, create new terms. And, you know, the youth drive this in youth are the drivers of language change, I think, which is really, really interesting. That's all. He went to boot.

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