Posted: September 13th, 2017

Anthropology reading review

Anthropology reading review

Order Description

Read the attached reading and write 3 PCQs, which stands for Pros, Cons, and Questions. You can write it in any combination, (e.g. 3 questions, or 2 questions plus 1 pro etc..). This is professor’s requirement: Although brief, PCQs should demonstrate critical thinking about the topic through providing examples, application, and connections.

Deutscher, Guy. 2000. “Whorf revisited: You are what you speak.” In Conformity & conflict. Spradley, James and David W. McCurdy, eds. Boston: Pearson.

Questions
The author points out that a lot of languages, like French and Spanish have obvious feminine and masculine words that indicate these cultures’ idea on the subject the word represents. However in some other language—Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese, for instance—do not mark feminine and masculine genders at all, or at least orally. What are the possible causes on that? Is it possible that in these cultures people’s gender doesn’t play an important role, since these languages don’t require people to think about gender on every circumstance of references?

Pros
The author counters Wharfs view of language as a prison house for our reasoning lies in between with abundant evidences——he points that people language predisposes them to focus on some things rather than others by suggesting many languages project gender on objects and their speakers often come to think of them to be hat way, and using this and other example based on gender and direction.

Cons
This is not really a con, perhaps a suggestion that the author could also include the fact that collisions between cultures throughout history have been shaping a culture’s language (e.g. A lot of English words are originated from French, Japanese doesn’t have a word for things like “hotel” or “host family”) to counter Wharfs’ statement.