ANTH Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is primarily concerned with what relationship?
- Language and thought (Correct answer)
- Kinship and marriage
- Ritual and economy
- Race and biology
Correct answer: Language and thought
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis proposes that the structure of a language shapes how its speakers perceive and think about the world.
Question 2: A researcher lives in a village for a year, learning the language and participating in daily life. This method is called:
- Participant observation (Correct answer)
- Survey sampling
- Content analysis
- Controlled experiment
Correct answer: Participant observation
Participant observation involves the ethnographer immersing themselves in a community while both observing and taking part in its activities.
Question 3: The idea that a culture should be understood on its own terms rather than judged by another culture's standards is called:
- Cultural relativism (Correct answer)
- Ethnocentrism
- Diffusionism
- Structuralism
Correct answer: Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism holds that beliefs and practices should be evaluated within their own cultural context.
Question 4: In linguistics, the smallest unit of sound that can distinguish meaning is a:
- Phoneme (Correct answer)
- Morpheme
- Syntax
- Lexeme
Correct answer: Phoneme
A phoneme is the smallest contrastive sound unit that can change the meaning of a word, such as /b/ versus /p/ in bat and pat.
Question 5: The smallest unit of language that carries meaning is a:
- Morpheme (Correct answer)
- Phoneme
- Allophone
- Grapheme
Correct answer: Morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit, such as the '-s' that marks plural in 'cats.'
Question 6: Bronisław Malinowski is best known for pioneering intensive fieldwork among which people?
- Trobriand Islanders (Correct answer)
- Nuer of Sudan
- Yanomami of Brazil
- Balinese
Correct answer: Trobriand Islanders
Malinowski's long-term fieldwork among the Trobriand Islanders helped establish participant observation as a core anthropological method.
Question 7: The tendency to view one's own culture as superior and to judge others by its standards is:
- Ethnocentrism (Correct answer)
- Cultural relativism
- Holism
- Reflexivity
Correct answer: Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the practice of evaluating other cultures according to the assumptions and values of one's own.
ANTH Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology 2
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is primarily concerned with what relationship?