P & Q
Glossary of Terms Used in My Lectures
P & Q
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Paralanguage Aspects of communication which affect the meaning of a vocal message, which strictly speaking, is not language. Tone of voice, inflection, pauses, etc. are examples of processes which affect how a message is received by a listener.
Participant Observation A data collection process which entails engaging in the activities of the people in the community in which the ethnographer is working. The ethnographer immerse himself/herself into the life of the community becoming integrated into it.
Patrilineal Descent A system of tracing kinship relatedness exclusively through males. A consequence of such a system is that membership in a patrilineage is unambiguous and exclusive. That is, one belongs to one and only one group. If the group "owns" intellectual or real property, the group is also corporate.
Patrilocal Residence A residence pattern in which a newly married couple goes to live with, or near, the husband's father's household.
Personage (jen) The term introduced by Francis L. K. Hsu to replace personality in studies of social psychology. It is a concept of the self that includes what Hsu refers to as the inexpressible conscious, the expressible conscious, and intimate society and culture. The latter includes other individuals and artefacts that are significant to a person.
Personality The organisation of behaviour of the individual by conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mental processes. A social person is defined by reference to how individuals interact with one another as independent elements in a social network.
Phatic Communication This is communication, usually speech, in which the primary function of the communication is to form or maintain social bonds rather than to transmit information which is implied by the words or signs of the message. Example: "Hi, how are you?" "Fine thank you, and you?" This exchange is not about the well-being of the speakers, it is simply acknowledging that they have a social relationship with each other.
Phone The minimal unit of sound in a language based on characteristics of sound production as developed by linguists.
Phoneme The minimal unit of meaningful sound to a native speaker of any given language.
Phonemic A description of the sounds of a language based on phonemes.
Phonetic A description of the sounds of a language based on phones.
Polanyi, Karl The economic historian who suggested that reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange are the modes of goods allocation in human societies and that these modes occured in a developmental sequence.
Politics Decision making about group goals and the implementation of those goals. An older definition stressing the legitimate use of force within a well-defined territory will be encountered in ethnographies and theoretical works prior to the 1960s.
Power A form of political leadership in which the leader gets others to do his/her will by recourse to sanctions, either positive or negative. Power can only exist in societies in which there is deferential access to the means of a livelihood.
Proxemics The cultural study of the use of space. The term was introduced by Edward T. Hall in the late 1950s to suggest that the study of the human use of space could be patterned on the linguistic study of language. He identified three types of space: fixed, semi-fixed, and dynamic. The latter he divided into four dimensions: intimate, personal, social-consultive, and public. He argued that all societies employ these spaces but that the linear dimensions associated with them varied depending upon the culture of the particular society. See the appropriate overhead for ANT 202.
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