What is Anthropology?

Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present. To understand the

full sweep and complexity of cultures across all of human history,
anthropology draws and builds upon knowledge from the social and
biological sciences as well as the humanities and physical sciences. A
central concern of anthropologists is the application of knowledge to the
solution of human problems. Historically, anthropologists in the United
States (and Canada) have been trained in one of four areas: sociocultural
anthropology, biological/physical anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics.
The four fields of anthropology

The four fields of anthropology

Clifford Geertz - We
[anthropologists] were the
first to insist on a number of
things: that the world does
not divide into the pious and
the superstitious; that there
are sculptures in jungles and
paintings in deserts; that
political order is possible
without centralized power
and principled justice without
codified rules; that the norms
of reason were not fixed in
Greece, the evolution of
morality not consummated in
England. Most important, we
were the first to insist that
we see the lives of others
through lenses of our own
grinding and that they look
back on ours through ones of
their own.
(1) the world does not divide into the pious and the superstitious;
(2) there are sculptures in jungles and paintings in deserts;
(3) political order is possible without centralized power and
principled justice without codified rules;

(4) the norms of reason were not fixed in Greece,

(5) the evolution of morality not consummated in England.

(6) we see the lives of others through lenses of our own grinding
and that they look back on ours through ones of their own.

Classroom
Conduct

What is courtesy? Showing politeness

in one's attitude and behaviour toward
others. Etymology: having courtly
bearing or manners.
Are notions of politeness, respect and
courtesy culture specific? Or are they
universal? When we insist on courtesy
are we being ethnocentric?

No. Everywhere that

anthropologists have studied
they have found that people
have ideas about respect to
others, decorum, manners etc.
The content may vary but the
basic ideas are very similar

No phones in class,
No messaging,
No facebook,
No instagram etc.

We prefer that you do not use

your laptop.
 Syllabus

Evaluation
a. One test, one exam.
c. Midterm test will be on linguistic
anthropology. The final exam will be on socio-
cultural anthropology.
d. Anything covered in lecture, discussed in
the readings MAY be tested.
e. Missed test policy in syllabus

Readings
a. The required readings are available from
UTM bookstore.
b. We expect you to complete the
readings before the lecture for which they
are assigned.
Readings
a. The readings and lectures are meant to
complement rather than duplicate one
another the lecture will not include a
summary of the readings. In order to do
well in this class you will need to attend
lectures and do the readings.

Please consider
volunteering!!

Linguistic Anthropology
Language, communication and intention
What do animals communicate about?
Reference & joint attention
Action & inference
Duality of patterning & language structure
Language diversity
Linguistic relativity
Language & identity
Indexicality
Language & social relations
Linguistic Anthropology:
The role of language in
human social life

Language
consists of
signs / symbols

Charles Sanders Peirce

What is a sign?
Charles Sanders Peirce
A sign is anything which stands
to somebody for something else
in some respect or capacity. It
addresses somebody, that is,
creates in the mind of that
person an equivalent sign, or
perhaps a more developed sign.

Charles Sanders Peirce

A sign is anything which stands

to somebody for something else
in some respect or capacity. It
addresses somebody, that is,
creates in the mind of that
person an equivalent sign, or
perhaps a more developed sign.

Smoke is a sign of fire

natural meaning
 Pointing to fire
non-natural meaning

Image of fire
non-natural meaning

Saying the word fire

non-natural meaning
 The word fire is also a
sign but of a different
kind than smoke though
they may point to the
same thing.

So persons have the ablity to recognize natural signs

They also have the ability to produce (and to recognize)

non-natural signs
Humans exploit
the capacity of
other individuals
to recognize
signs

Non-natural meaning:
Humans get other humans
to recognize that they
intend to communicate by
means of signs

So language involves the use of signs or symbols

to communicate to other members of the
species.
 We will consider
language next class -
today something more
basic
 In all these cases
winking is the entire
communicative act.
In other cases winking
is combined with talk.
 Winking is uniquely
human - no other
animal winks.

Wait! What about this

video I saw on
youtube?
Or these!?
According to youtube
cats also wink!
So whats the difference
here? These all look
pretty much the same!

INTENTION
All animals blink without
communicative intention.

Only humans wink with

communicative intention.

A wink is addressed to
someone.
 To interviewer
Our fans arent gonna let us relax.

To fans
Yall not gonna let us relax. WINK

Yall hear me WINK

To interviewer
Our fans arent gonna let us relax.

To fans
Yall not gonna let us relax. WINK

Yall hear me WINK

And thats what makes
the dog and cat
examples LOOK like
winking.

In each case the animal

is looking directly at
the camera when it
contracts an eyelid!
Geertz writes, The winker is communicating,
and indeed communicating in a quite precise
and special way:

(I) deliberately,
(2) to someone in particular,
(3) to impart a particular message,
(4) according to a socially established code,
(5) without cognizance of the rest of the
company.

Obviously theres a big

difference between a
wink and a twitch/
blink.
 Geertz, the
difference, however
unphotographable,
between a twitch
and a wink is vast; as
anyone unfortunate
enough to have had
the first taken for
the second knows.

Geertz tells us a wink is

a piece of culture. What
does he mean?
A wink, Geertz tells us,
is a symbol and has a
meaning.

In that sense its a bit of

CULTURE in a way that
a twitch is not.

But thats just the

beginning
 Charles Sanders Peirce

Symbols grow. They come

into being by development
out of other signs... We
think only in signs...A
symbol, once in being,
spreads among the
peoples. In use and in
experience, its meaning
grows.

We know that human

winking is voluntary and
intentional

So we can ask of any

wink: what did the
winker intend?
 And so a tiny symbol
like Sarah Palins wink...
...can blossom into a
much bigger thing...
From The Los Angeles Times
Sarah Palin stirs up controversy in the wink of an eye

She's a winker. She winks on rope lines and at rallies. She winked
at least six times at 70 million viewers on the vice presidential
debate platform opposite her rival, Sen. Joe Biden, who weighed in
on the nonverbal communication scale by grinning like a
nutcracker.

But it was the wink that ricocheted like a bullet

across America, leaving some voters smitten, some
confused and others nauseated.

Sarah Palins winking

became a sign of her
character.
 The media treated it as
a sign of what kind of
person she was... and
what kind of politician
shed make.

Palins wink thus served as a communicative sign

in the context of the debate (and other public
appearances).

With it she was, presumably, attempting to

establish a more initmate form of address with
the viewing audience.
> Remember, winking is addressed to someone
in particular, i.e. the person looked at.

In other words, each individual wink

functioned as a communicative sign.
But newspaper reports reveal another
dimension to this.

Repeatedly winking (engaging in the very

activity of winking) became a sign of Palins
charcater, the kind of person she is, the kind of
vice-president she would make if elected, and
so on.

Each particular wink

(context is some particular set of words etc.)

Vs.
Repeatedly winking, the very act of
winking
(context is the larger debate, i.e. a formal,
serious occasion etc.)

Still other developments of this:

Geertz again.

Suppose, he continues, there is a third boy,

who, "to give malicious amusement to his
cronies," parodies the first boy's wink, as
amateurish, clumsy, obvious, and so on. He,
of course, does this in the same way the
second boy winked and the first twitched:
by contracting his right eyelids. Only this
boy is neither winking nor twitching, he is
parodying someone else's, as he takes it,
laughable, attempt at winking.

Tina Fey
as
Sarah Palin
So a tiny sign like a wink
can grow to become
something much bigger
and important.
Names and people mentioned

Charles Sanders Peirce - Definition of a sign

Clifford Geertz - Winking vs. Blinking/Twitching
Sarah Palin - Ran for US Vice President with John McCain,
notorious winker.

Ideas considered

Natual and non-natural meaning

Triadic structure of the sign
Communicative intention
Address
Recontextualization (particular wink, activity of winking, parody)