word and culture

2. 1. kinship system are a universal feature of
language, because kinship is so important in
social organization.
2. Example: your father’s father(FaFa) and your
mother’s father (MoFa) are called
grandfather,

3. 1. People use language to classify and categorize
various aspects of the world in which they live,
but they do not classify things the why scientists
do. They use folk taxonomies rather than
scientific classifications.
2. A folk taxonomy is a way of classifying a certain
part of reality so that it makes some kind of
sense to those who have to deal with it. It is
useful because it helps people organize data in
ways that appear to indicate how speakers use
their languages to organize the world around
them. They also show how systematic much of
that behavior is.

4. 1. The terms people use to describe color give
us another means of exploring the
relationships between different languages
and cultures.
2. All languages make use of basic color terms.
A basic color term must be a single word,
e.g., blue or yellow, not some combination of
words, e.g., light blue or pale yellow., e.g.,
pink, young red.

5. 1. Rosch (1976) proposed that concepts are best
viewed as prototypes. We constantly ‘type’
things and events in the world around us as
we manage our lives.
2. For example, a ‘bird’ is best defined
according to typical instances rather than
wings, warm-bloodedness, and egg-laying
characteristics. Thus when one says “bird”
we think of robin rather than toucan,
penguin, ostrich, etc.

6. 1. Taboo is the prohibition or avoidance in any
society of behavior believed to be harmful to
its members in that it would cause them
anxiety, embarrassment, or shame. Certain
things are not to be said or certain objects can
only be referred to in certain instances.