Definition and Examples of Kinship Terms

Kinship terms are words used in a speech community to identify relationships between individuals in a family (or a kinship unit). This is also called kinship terminology. A classification of persons related through kinship in a particular language or culture is called a kinship system. Examples and Observations Bailey was the greatest person in the world. And the fact that he was my brother, and I had no sisters to share him with, was such good fortune that it made me want to live a Christian life just to show God that I was grateful.(Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Random House, 1969)Two years later a note arrived from one of her daughters relating that Tata had died in childbirth. It was with one of Tatas sons whod moved to Omaha that Rocco went to live when he was eighteen. And when, six years later, hed moved to Ohio with a cousins cousins guarantee of a steel-mill job, which was never to materialize, hed promised himself this single luxury, once two or three years of careful saving had passed: to go to Niagara Falls.(Salvatore Scibona, The End. Graywolf Press, 2008)My Mom was an illegal alien, born out of wedlock in Mexico . . .. Once I told a neighbor her husband wasnt my real father. I didnt know I wasnt supposed to say this. I was sorry I embarrassed her. I didnt even care about my real father much, only saw him a couple of days a year, but the only times my mothers husbands were fathers were when others made that assumption.(Dagoberto Gilb, Mi Mommy. Grove Press, 2003) Lexicalized Categories Some of the clearest examples of lexicalized categories are words used to refer to people who are members of the same family, or kinship terms. All languages have kinship terms (e.g. brother, mother, grandmother), but they dont all put family members into categories in the same way. In some languages, the equivalent of the word father is used not only for male parent, but also for male parents brother. In English, we use the word uncle for this other type of individual. We have lexicalized the distinction between the two concepts. Yet we also use the same word (uncle) for female parents brother. That distinction isnt lexicalized in English, but it is in other languages.(George Yule, The Study of Language, 5th ed. Cambridge University Press, 2014) Kinship Terms in Sociolinguistics One of the attractions that kinship systems have for investigators is that these factors are fairly readily ascertainable. You can, therefore, relate them with considerable confidence to the actual words that people use to describe a particular kin relationship. There may be certain difficulties, of course. You can ask a particular person what he or she calls others who have known relationships to that person, for example, that person’s father (Fa), or mother’s brother (MoBr), or mother’s sister’s husband (MoSiHu), in an attempt to show how individuals employ various terms, but without trying to specify anything concerning the semantic composition of those terms: for example, in English, both your father’s father (FaFa) and your mother’s father (MoFa) are called grandfather, but that term includes another term, father. You will find, too, in English that your brother’s wife’s father (BrWiFa) cannot be referred to directly; brother’s wife’s father (or sister-in-law’s father) is a circumlocution rather than the kind of term that is of interest in kinship terminology.(Ronald Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 6th ed. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) More Difficulties [T[he English kinship term father is defined to imply a particular biological relationship. Yet in an actual case the term may be used when the biological relationship is not in fact present.(Austin L. Hughes, Evolution and Human Kinship. Oxford University Press, 1988) Kinship Terms in Indian English It is not uncommon to hear the term cousin sister or cousin brother, a common mistake that Indian speakers of English make since they are unable to say just cousin, which would be too vague since it does not distinguish gender.(Nandita Chaudhary, Mothers, Fathers, and Parents. Semiotic Rotations: Modes of Meanings in Cultural Worlds, ed. by Sunhee Kim Gertz, Jaan Valsiner, and Jean-Paul Breaux. Information Age Publishing, 2007)With Indian roots myself, I was, perhaps, more aware of the power of family here than in other Asian countries where it was no less suffocating or strong. . . . . I was amused to find that the Indians had smuggled into English such terms as co-brother (to designate ones sister-in-laws brother) and cousin brother (to denote the sex of a first cousin, and, better yet, to draw the cousin as close as a brother). In some of the local languages, the terms were even more precisely defined, with separate words for a fathers elder and younger brothers and special terms for uncles on ones mothers and ones fathers side, as well as words to distinguish between mothers sisters and uncles wives, blood uncles and uncles by marriage. Though India had a hunger for absolutes, it swarmed with relatives; before long, everyone came to seem related to everyone else.(Pico Iyer, Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East. Vintage, 1989)

The Gender Marker Debate Is Gender Needed On Government...

Jessica Heinemann Professor Hall ENC1102 April 12,2017 Final Assignment The gender marker debate: is gender needed on government-issued ID? Should Non-binary join male and female options for state IDs? As of 2017 the Gender Recognition Act would add â€Å"non-binary† to male and female gender boxes on official state documents making it easier for transgender people to change the gender in which they identify with. As of now, the federal government does not offer a third gender option for official documents such as passports. The issue drew national attention when a federal judge asked the U.S. State Department to reconsider its decision to deny a passport to a Colorado resident who does not identify as male or female. â€Å"The erosion of these†¦show more content†¦Not all intersex people will choose to identify legally as inter sex and not all parents will choose to have their intersex child identified as inter sex on birth documents. But for those who do, the option should exist for those who want to be identified. A handful of individuals are apparently permitted to opt out of the spectrum altogether by declaring themselves ‘agender’, saying that they feel neither female nor male, and don’t have any internal experience of gender. There is no known explanation as to why some people are able to refuse to define their personality in gendered terms while others are not, but one thing that is clear about the self-designation as ‘agender’: we cannot all do it, for the same reasons we cannot all call ourselves non-binary. The United States has never offered these options outside of male and female, until last December when Sara Kelly Keenan received the first ever U.S. birth certificate that read intersex. In other countries, the third option is available as an option on all government documents ranging from birth certificates to passports. 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Discriminate Against Race Free Essays

Abstract The issues of race and gender, and more precisely the issues of equal rights for everyone regardless of race and gender, continue to be controversial and never fully addressed. While programs like Affirmative Action have tried to provide equal opportunity, they have failed because of one main issue- if it is injustice to discriminate against racial minorities and women on the account of their race or sex, then it similarly unjust to give them preference for the same reason. This essay will prove this statement by showing specific examples of how preferential treatment increases rather than decreases the importance of race and gender in American society. We will write a custom essay sample on Discriminate Against Race or any similar topic only for you Order Now Basically, there are three main reasons why preferential treatment makes racial and gender differences important instead of eliminating them. First, preferential treatment gives the appearance that minority genders or races are inferior and need to be given advantage not on their merit or ability, but on their membership in a certain group (Cohen Sterba, 2003), actually putting them at a bigger disadvantage. Second, there is the issue of reverse discrimination, which basically means that by giving advantage to the minority, the majority is discriminated against in the long run. Lastly, the provision of programs like Affirmative Action and others create divisions between minority groups themselves, as each group vies for advantage over the others, which puts the minorities with the smallest numbers at the biggest disadvantage, as their voice cannot be heard clearly enough. Perhaps the bottom line in racial/gender discrimination, ironically enough, is that true equality can probably never be realized, for one group will always come up with less than another if a program exists to provide advantages which are not strictly merit based. In closing, it is fair to say that until a â€Å"magic bullet† is developed for true equality, the scales will always be askew.   References Cohen, C., Sterba, J. P. (2003). Affirmative Action and Racial Preference: A Debate. New York: Oxford University Press. How to cite Discriminate Against Race, Papers