Ottenheimer describes using the tools of linguistic anthropology while serving on a
committee writing policy
a. establishing a curriculum for foreign language instruction.
b. regulating the use of laptops and cell phones in the classroom.
c. prohibiting racial and ethnic harassment.
d. designating appropriate terms of address for faculty.
Efforts to standardize the spelling of a language
a. are apolitical, and generally only of interest to linguists.
b. reveal the language ideology of the standardizers.
c. inevitably result in improvements appreciated by all users of the language.
d. are completely separate from standardization of pronunciation
A creole is a language which:
a. developed as a trade language.
b. developed from a pidgin.
c. has no grammar.
d. is native to no one.
The following sets of English language words would be used to identify
_____________ .
[ od]/[ ot] road/roteɹ ɹ
[tin]/[din] teen/dean
[d]/[t] add/at
a) allophones of a phoneme.
b) morphological rules.
c) cultural focus.
d) phonemes.
The fact that many of our linguistic choices are unconsciously made
a. does not mean that they are not based on language ideology.
b. is a clear indication that ideology does not play an important role in language choice.
c. illustrates the absence of economic considerations in language choice.
d. indicates that we do not make conscious efforts to change our language .
If I understand and laugh along with Thai friends at a joke told in Thai, I will have
achieved some degree of
a. linguistic competence.
b. communicative competence.
c. gestalt.
d. nirvana.
Which of the following best describes linguistic anthropology?
a. holistic, comparative, and fieldwork-based
b. focused, specific, and intuitive
c. holistic, comparative, and intuitive
d. focused, specific, and fieldwork-based
The S of Dell Hymes’ S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G mnemonic refers to:
a. sense.
b. setting/situation.
c. syllables.
d. signs.
Which of the following are most easily borrowed between languages?
a. words
b. sounds
c. grammatical forms
d. phonemes
The first evidence of the evolution of Broca’s and Wernike’s areas of the brain was
found in the fossil remains of:
a. archaic Homo sapiens, 8,000 to 12,000 years ago.
b. Australopithicenes, 1.26 to 1.8 million years ago.
c. Neanderthals, 100,000 to 150,000 years ago.
d. Homo habilis, 1.8 to 2 million years ago.
The autonomous approach to literacy assumes that once you master the technology of
reading you should be able to:
a. decode the meaning of any piece of writing unambiguously.
b. decode a piece of writing in context only.
c. discover alternate meanings in a piece of writing.
d. read additional background into a piece of writing.
Linguistic anthropology is interested primarily in the social and cultural contexts in
which language is used, and for the most part leaves study of the structure of language
to structural linguists.
A. True
B. False
Research into “African” scam letters reveals that most authors of such letters live in
Nigeria.
A. True
B. False
Regarding ideas about language in children, the “active construction of a grammar (or
theory) theory” argues that:
a. as children develop their linguistic abilities, their intellectual abilities follow suit.
b. as children develop their intellectual abilities, their linguistic abilities follow suit.
c. children need to hear language from others around them (stimulus) and to receive
praise (positive feedback) from parents and/or caretakers in order to develop their
linguistic abilities.
d. children observe and interact with the world around them and form theories about
their experiences.
In the 1960s, a linguistic-based approach to ethnography used language to explore a
culture’s system of categorization. What was this approach called?
a. cognitive anthropology
b. ethnoscience
c. ethnosemantics
e. componential analysis
The gradual loss in English of the “ly ending on adverbs such as quickly and slowly are
examples of which of the following kinds of language change?
a. internal change
b. external change
c. language degradation
d. reanalysis
The existence of a large number of words about a particular topic is a strong indication
of
a) cultural focus.
b) ethnocentrism.
c) linguistic relativism.
d) idiosyncrasy.
The story Ottenheimer describes, told by blues musician Cousin Joe told about his
encounter with a police officer in Mississippi illustrates the idea that
a) we are trapped within our frames.
b) a speaker can shift the frame of an encounter to accomplish a goal.
c) frames remain unchanged despite the passage of time.
d) it is always a mistake to tell a joke to a police officer.
The design feature of language that refers to the fact that specific sound signals can be
directly linked to specific meanings is:
a. specialization.
b. semanticity.
c. arbitrariness.
d. rapid fading.
An egocentric deictic system is associated with
a) a relativistic spatial reckoning system.
b) a profoundly ethnocentric frame of reference.
c) controversial captions on photographs.
d) the analysis of topographic features.
The design feature of language that refers specifically to the use of speaking and
hearing as a key feature of language is:
a. vocal auditory channel.
b. interchangeability.
c. total feedback.
d. duality of patterning.
Which of the following best defines the meaning of “genetically related” languages?
a. languages spoken by people who are genetically related
b. languages spoken by members of the same race
c. languages thought to have developed from a common ancestor language
d. languages belonging to the a single language community.
The close study of actual conversational exchanges is called:
a. symbolic analysis (SA).
b. phonological analysis (PA).
c. morphological analysis (MA).
d. conversation analysis (CA).
The design feature of language that refers to the fact that language signals don”t last
very long is:
a. specialization.
b. semanticity.
c. arbitrariness.
d. rapid fading.
The theory which asserts that literacy is a set of habitual behaviors exercised in specific
contexts is the:
a. ideological approach.
b. autonomous approach.
c. contextual approach.
d. practice approach.
Which of the following refers to the idea that differences exist among cultural systems,
that different cultural systems can make as much sense as our own, and that we can
learn to understand these different systems?
a. ethnocentrism
b. cultural relativity
c. frames of reference
d. cultural determinism
Linguistic anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath, in her study of literacy events in a small
city US southeast, discovered
a. no significant difference in reading and writing between the communities studied.
b. clear evidence that most parents in some communities were functionally illiterate.
c. different communities approach reading in very different ways.
d. learning to read and write gave students a very different perspective on language.
Which of the following uses graphic signs to represent words, or the ideas associated
with words? For example, the graphic sign “2” represents the English word two.
a. syllabic writing
b. rebus writing
c. logographic writing
d. pictographic “writing”
Harriet and Davi Ottenheimer have presented their research at corporate security
training sessions.
A. True
B. False
A creole is a language which:
a. developed as a trade language.
b. developed from a pidgin.
c. has no grammar.
d. is native to no one.
A generative grammar relies takes ___________________ as a given
a. linguistic relativity
b. the difficulty of translating from one language to another
c. the importance of correct or “proper” speech
d. a connection between abstract ideas and sentence structure
The English word ‘shadow” has _____ phonemes.
a) 2
b) 3
c) 4
d) 6
When you are traveling in a country with a different monetary system and you decide
how expensive something is by translating it into “real” money (the money in your own
country) you are engaging in a sort of
a. relativism.
b. fieldwork.
c. globalization.
d. ethnocentrism.