Language, Culture and Communication: The Meaning of Messages

by Nancy Bonvillain

For courses in Language and Culture, and Sociolinguistics Using data from cultures and languages throughout the world to highlight both similarities and differences in human languages, Language, Culture and Communication explores the many interconnections among language, culture, and communicative meaning. It examines the multi-faceted meanings and uses of language and emphasizes the ways that language encapsulates speakers' meanings and intentions.

Genres: Anthropology, Linguistics, Nonfiction, Language, Education, Reference, Textbooks

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Dr. Bonvillain is an authority on Native American cultures and languages. She is the author of books on the Mohawk language and on the Huron, the Mohawk, the Hopi, the Teton Sioux, the Navajo, the Inuit, the Zuni, and the Santee Sioux and on Native American Religion and Native American medicine. She has written on gender, linguistics, and narrative.

Dr. Bonvillain has written four textbooks: Language, Culture and Communication; Women and Men: Cultural Constructs of Gender; Native Nations: Cultures and Histories of Native North America; and Cultural Anthropology. Her articles have appeared in Anthropological Linguistics, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, International Journal of American Linguistics, Dialectic Anthropology, Papers on Iroquoian Research, and in several collections. She has taught at Columbia University, SUNY Purchase and Stonybrook, the New School for Social Research, and Sarah Lawrence College. Dr. Bonvillain has received fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Her fieldwork has been with the Navajo and on the Akwesasne Mohawk Reserve.

Reviews

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the college textbook I am using for my Language and Culture class this summer. I do not have much to say about it, frankly. Several of the findings one will read here, albeit factual, are familiarly treaded territory. That does not make the book bad, exactly, though. The last chapter is about language and institutions and concerns the way in which language is used as a source of status and authority in everyday institutions, including courts of law, the media, and other publications. Ironically, this textbook itself sometimes uses charged, evaluative language or frames issues/topics in such a way that it leaves very little doubt for the reader as to what the author's beliefs about the subjects are. The book, then, is proof positive that linguistic expressions devoid of implicit evaluation or preference for schema biases are difficult to formulate, perhaps in some cases impossible.

[Adrienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

How we use language shows how we think.

I like this book because I have a soft-spot for psycholinguistics, and this book brings a nice little antropological twist to it.

The section on pronouns is especially interesting: did you know that the Native Americans use "she" as their third person pronoun, where in British English we use "he".

All around interesting read.....school is getting in my way of finishing this baby off!

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this text as part of my graduate level Language & Culture class at Winston-Salem State University. It has a tremendous amount of information and I love all the anthropological references. Linguistic anthropology is quickly becoming my favorite aspect of learning TESOL/Applied Linguistics.

[Rhonda Trumley · Rating 3 out of 5]

My other text book for my linguistics class. This one is a bit dry. It does, however, have an index that aids in using the information.