sucker: someone who drafts and never takes a pull
To hammer: pedaling hard
Hammerhead (pejorative): someone who likes to hammer a lot
Crit (abbreviation for criterium): a competition on a short distance course where cyclists do laps
Prime: prizes in a crit
Sandbagging: racing a category beneath one’s abilities to get a prime
Granny gear: lowest gear
Off the back: getting left behind by the group
On your wheel: riding close to the cyclist in front of you (often used to describe someone’s strategy in competition)
Clydesdale: a male cyclist over 220 pounds or a female cyclist over 160 poundsDo you have any social groups which have specific lexicons and, if so, what are the consequences of using or not using these terms in ingroup or outgroup interactions?
Language and Culture
There is a tradition of study in linguistic anthropology which addresses the relationship between language and culture. By ‘culture’ in this context we do not mean ‘high culture,’ that is, the appreciation of music, literature, the arts, and so on. Rather, we adopt Goodenough’s well‐known definition (1957, 167): ‘a society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves.’ Such knowledge is socially acquired: the necessary behaviors are learned and do not come from any kind of genetic endowment. Culture, therefore, is the ‘knowhow’ that a person must possess to get through the task of daily living; for language use, this is similar to the concept of communicative competence we introduced above. The key issue addressed here is the nature of the relationship between a specific language and the culture in which it is used. Of course, we must recognize that cultural norms are not static; they change over time and what is ‘normal’ is constantly negotiated by members of a society. Thus they do not just vary over space, but also over time.
Directions of influence
There are several possible relationships between language and culture. One is that social structure may either influence or determine linguistic structure and/or behavior. Certain evidence may be adduced to support this view. For instance, given the evidence of the age‐grading phenomenon (i.e., young children speak differently from older children, and, in turn, children speak differently from mature adults), we could argue that the social organization of age groups influences the language used in these groups. Another possible piece of evidence for this direction of influence is studies which show that the varieties of language that people use reflect such matters as their regional, social, or ethnic origin and possibly even their gender. In both cases it might be that social structures account for – possibly even determine – linguistic differences.
A second possibility is directly opposed to the first: linguistic structure and/or behavior may either influence or determine social structure or worldview. This is the view that is behind the Whorfian hypothesis, which we will discuss in more detail in the next section. Such a view is behind certain proposed language reforms: if we change the language we can change social behavior, for example, a deliberate reduction in sexist language not only reflects a desire to combat sexism, but is also aimed at raising consciousness about the prevalence of sexist attitudes.
A third possible relationship is that the influence is bi‐directional: language and society may influence each other. Certain language reforms can also be seen as relying on this perspective; the reforms are made because of changes in societal norms, for example, awareness that generic ‘he’ is not inclusive may increase the power of women and girls, enabling them to claim inclusion. Consequently, language change and a greater awareness of gender equality co‐occur, hand in glove as it were.
A fourth possibility is to assume that there is no relationship at all between linguistic structure and social structure and that each is independent of the other. A variant of this possibility would be to say that, although there might be some such relationship, present attempts to characterize it are essentially premature or unproveable, given what we know about both language and society.
The Whorfian hypothesis
The claim that the structure of a language influences how its users view the world is today most usually associated with the linguist Sapir and his student Whorf, a chemical engineer by training, a fire prevention engineer by vocation, and a linguist by avocation. However, it can be traced back to others, particularly to Humboldt in the nineteenth century. Today, the claim is usually referred to as ‘Linguistic Determinism,’ the ‘Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis,’ the ‘Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis,’ or the ‘Whorfian Hypothesis.’ We will use the last term since the claim seems to owe much more to Whorf than to anyone else.
Sapir acknowledged the close relationship between language and culture, maintaining that they were inextricably related so that you could not understand or appreciate the one without a knowledge of the other. Whorf took up Sapir’s ideas but went much further than saying that there was merely a ‘predisposition’; in Whorf’s view the relationship between language and culture was a deterministic one; the social categories we create and how we perceive events and actions are constrained by the language we speak. Different language users will therefore experience the world differently insofar as the languages they speak differ structurally.
One claim is that if users of one language have certain words to describe things and users of another language lack similar words, then users of the first language will find it easier to talk about those things. We can see how this might be the case if we consider the technical vocabulary of any trade, calling, or profession; for example, physicians talk more easily about medical phenomena than those without medical training because they have the vocabulary to do so. A stronger claim is that, if one language makes distinctions that another does not make, then those who use the first language will more readily perceive the relevant differences in their environment. If you must classify camels, boats, and automobiles in certain ways, you will perceive camels, boats, and automobiles differently from someone who is not required to make these differentiations. If your language classifies certain material objects as long and thin and others as roundish, you will perceive material objects that way; they will fall quite ‘naturally’ into those classes for you.
This extension into the area of grammar could be argued to be a further strengthening of Whorf’s claim, since classification systems pertaining to shape, substance, gender, number, time, and so on are both more subtle and more pervasive. Their effect is much stronger on language users than vocabulary differences alone. The strongest claim of all is that the grammatical categories available in a particular language not only help the users of that language to perceive the world in a certain way but also at the same time limit such perception. They act as blinkers: you perceive only what your language allows you, or predisposes you, to perceive. Your language controls your worldview. Users of different languages will, therefore, have different worldviews. (This idea also appears in popular culture; for instance, we can see it in a strong form in the science fiction movie Arrival, in which those who learn the aliens’ language also acquire the ability to see the future and past.)
Whorf’s work on Native American languages led him to make his strongest claims. He contrasted the linguistic structure of Hopi with the kinds of linguistic structure he associated with languages such as English, French,
