THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

 

Questions for Discussion
What’s language?
What is culture?
What is the interrelationship between language and culture?
Why culture study is so important to language study?

WHAT IS CULTURE

In 1871, in his classic book Primitive Culture, British anthropologist Edward Tylor first gave the definition of culture which is widely quoted: “Culture… is that complex whole which has knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, law, custom, and the other capacities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”.

Culture, argued by many anthropologists, most notably Clifford Geertz, may be a symbolic meaning system. it's a semiotic system during which symbols function to speak meaning from one mind to a different. Cultural symbols encode the connection between a signifying form and a signaled meaning. From the standpoint of latest cultural anthropologists, culture is characterized by the subsequent four basic features:

1) Culture could be a quite social inheritance rather than biological heritage;
2) Culture is shared by the entire community, not belonging to any particular individual;
3) Culture could be a symbolic meaning system within which language is one among the foremost important ones;
4) Culture may be a unified system, the integral parts of which are closely associated with each other.

Various definitions of culture are given by scholars from different points of view. Some treated culture superficially as a collection of specific artifacts, man-made environments, patterns of social organisation, and overt varieties of behavior. Others treated culture in an exceedingly more abstract way because the shared knowledge of members of social communities like world views, value orientations, norms, manners, customs, preferred forms of thinking and arguing, etc. Being taken as “socially acquired knowledge” (Hudson, 1980: 74), culture is classed by some scholars into cultural knowledge information and cultural communication information. the previous refers to the factual information which doesn't exert an on the spot influence on cross-cultural communication, including a nation’s history, geography, and so on. The latter points to the socio-pragmatic rules in daily communication which entail not only ways of greeting, thanking, apologizing, and addressing, but also attention to taboos, euphemisms, modesty, and polite formula in use, etc. The factual information provides the non-native speakers with no direct dilemmas.

CULTURE AND LANGUAGE

 

THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN COMMUNICATION

According to Sapir (1921), “language could be a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desire by means of voluntarily produced symbols.” Language could be a a part of the culture and an element of human behavior.

It is often held that the function of language is to specific thought and to speak information. The language also fulfills many other tasks like greeting people, conducting religious ceremony, etc.

Krech（1962）explained the main functions of language from the subsequent three aspects:

1）Language is that the primary vehicle of communication;
2）Language reflects both the personality of the individual and also the culture of his history. In turn, it helps shape both personality and culture;
3）Language makes possible the expansion and transmission of culture, the continuity of societies, and also the effective functioning and control of the group.

It is obvious that language plays a paramount role in developing, elaborating, and transmitting culture and language, enabling us to store meanings and experiences to facilitate communication. The function of language is so important in communication that's even exaggerated by some scholars. the foremost famous one is that the hypothesis of linguistic determinism concerning the link between language and culture, which Nida regards as misconceptions constituting serious difficulties for cross-cultural understanding.

THE INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CULTURE AND LANGUAGE

Each culture has its own peculiarities and throws a special influence on the scheme. for instance, relating the identical common animal, English chooses the word “dog”, while Chinese has its own character“狗”; Chinese has the phrase“走狗” while English has the expression “running dog”, but the meanings attributed to the 2 expressions are completely different per Chinese culture and Western culture respectively. To Westerners, “running dog” includes a positive meaning since the word “dog”, in most cases, is related to a picture of an animal pet－the favorite friend, thus they need the phrases “lucky dog”（幸运儿）, “top dog”（胜利者）, “old dog”（老手）, “gay dog”（快乐的人）, and it's usually accustomed describe daily life and behavior, as in “Love me, love my dog”（爱屋及乌），“Every dog has its day”（凡人皆有得意日）. But in Chinese“走狗” refers to a lackey, an obsequious person. Since Chinese associates derogatory intending to the character“狗” counting on the cultural difference, Chinese has such expressions as “狗东西”，“狗腿子”，“狗仗人势”，“狗胆包天”，“狗嘴里吐不出象牙”，“狼心狗肺”，“痛打落水狗”，“狗急跳墙”.

We can obviously see that the meaning attributed to language is cultural-specific. a good deal of cross-cultural misunderstanding occurs when the “meanings” of words in two languages are assumed to be the identical but actually reflect different cultural patterns. Some are humorous as when a Turkish visitor to The U.S. refused to eat a hot dog because it had been against his beliefs to eating dog meat. Some are far more serious as when a French attach a visit to China took their pet poodle into a restaurant and requested some pet food. The dog was cooked and returned to their table on a platter!

We can summarize the link between culture and language because the following: language may be a key component of culture. it's the first medium for transmitting much of culture. Without language, culture wouldn't be possible. Children learning their linguistic communication are learning their own culture; learning a second language also involves learning a second culture to varying degrees. On the opposite hand, language is influenced and shaped by culture. It reflects culture. Cultural differences are the foremost serious areas causing misunderstanding, unpleasantness, and even conflict in cross-cultural communication.

CULTURAL UNIVERSALS AND CULTURAL DIVERSITIES

“By nature men are nearly alike, by practicability they get to be wide apart” （Confucius）. Men are naturally alike because, at the foremost basic level, human behavior is motivated by a desire to satisfy certain needs: physiological needs, security needs, love, self-esteem, and self-actualization, etc. Men are social animals, and that they live together in groups to satisfy their desires, forming certain styles of behaviors. Our life process are often considered a culturalized process to regulate ourselves to the environment. Men are cultured animals. Different cultures have developed other ways of satisfying these needs－different patterns of life. it's the various ways in which frequently puzzle and sometimes alienate those who are looking in from the skin. that's the cultural peculiarity or diversity.

No culture is wholly isolated, self-contained, and unique. There are important resemblances that stem partially from diffusion and partly from the very fact that each one cultures are built around biological, psychological, and social characteristics common to any or all mankind. Lyons refers to such common biological and cultural features as biological and cultural universals. that's why there's a greater or less degree of cultural overlap between any two societies and why people from different cultures have the chance to speak with one another. Cultural similarities and differences are central to the study of communication between members of various cultural groups because they affect all intercultural and cross-cultural communication.

It has been clear that language could be a a part of the culture and influenced by culture. If languages are molded partly by the ideas processing capacities and social factors all people have in common, they ought to have certain features in common---linguistic universals. But to the extent that language is molded by accidental properties of thought, technology, and culture, features also will differ from language to language. for instance, the ancients lacked dissection and medicine knowledge and mistook “heart” because the centre of human thoughts and emotions, which is unavoidably reflected in languages, like in Chinese and English: 伤心欲绝－heartbreaking,铭记在心－to learn by memory, 发自内心－from the underside of one’s heart, 铁石心肠－stone-hearted, （心情）轻松愉快－with a lightweight heart, and so on. Other shared expressions in both Chinese and English like Walls have ears. 隔墙有耳; Spread money like water. 花钱如流水; Man proposes, God, disposes. 谋事在人，成事在天; Castle within the air 空中楼阁，etc.

Every nation has its own cultural focus. Every culture values what to them is very important and closely relevant, which are reflected in their languages. for instance, land on sport, notably on the crazy cricket words, the French on wines and cheeses, the Arabs on camels, Eskimos on snows, and Chinese on food and cooking, etc.

Nowadays in America, the matter of “family” has become a hot topic. the everyday “kernel family” within the fifties is dying out. within the nineties, over 33 percent of families resulted in divorce. quite 25 percent of yank families with a baby younger than seven or eight years old are supported by unmarried girls, and only 50 percent of yankee families are formed by married husband and wife. Consequently, the concept of family and also the viewpoint on the family have greatly changed. within the nineties, many new terms occurred in American social life reflecting this social phenomenon, like single-parent family（离婚后的单亲家庭；未婚女子和孩子组成的家庭），biological parents （生身父母，有血缘关系的父母），teen mother （未成年母亲），same sex marriage（同性婚姻），gay/lesbian family adoption（同性婚姻家庭收养），dead beat father（不尽赡养孩子义务的父母），soragate mother（替身母亲），Sunday father（夫妻离婚后，星期天回家探望子女的父亲）. However, these words rarely occur in Chinese. So in cross-cultural communication, this type of phenomenon will cause difficulties in understanding.

CONCLUSION

Language may be a major component and supporter of culture further as a primary tool for transferring messages, which is inextricably bound with culture. Learning a second language also involves learning a second culture to varying degrees. On the opposite hand, language is influenced and shaped by culture. It reflects culture. Cultural differences are the foremost serious areas causing misunderstanding, unpleasantness, and even conflict in cross-cultural communication. So both foreign language learners and teachers should pay more attention to cultural communication information.