linguistics chapter 9

linguistics chapter 9 Chapter 9 Language and Culture Question 1, 2, 5 1. Try to sum up the relationship between language and culture. Can you find a similar relationship between local dialect and regional culture? (1) The relationship between language and culture a) Language expresses cultural reality. A language, as a system of signs with their own cultural substances and values, may be viewed as a symbol of social identity. In this sense, language symbolizes cultural reality. b) Language is not culture-free, but plays a major role in socializing the people and in perpetuating of culture, especially in print form, written form or even in digital form. c) Language is intrinsically related to what the culture is and what it was and is also related to the culture of imagination, which governs people’s decisions as well as actions. d) Although language and culture are inextricably intertwined, this relationship is not simply analogous to that of structures and processes. Rather, culture is a wider system that completely includes language as a subsystem. Just as speech behavior is one variety of social behavior, linguistic competence is a variety of cultural competence. The relation of language to culture is that of part to whole. e) Since the knowledge and beliefs that constitute a people's culture are imperceptibly encoded and transmitted in the language of the people, it is extremely difficult to separate the two. On the one hand, language as an integral part of human being permeates his thinking and way of viewing the world. It both expresses and embodies cultural reality. On the other, language, as a system of spoken or written symbols used by people in a shared culture to communicate with each other, reflects and affects a culture’s way of thinking and helps perpetuate and change the culture and its influence, which also facilitates the development of this language at the same time. (2) A similar relationship between local dialect and regional culture People in a local community identify themselves as members of a social group and have acquired common ways of viewing the world through their interactions with other members within the group. Such commonness is constantly reinforced mainly through their life. They speak of discourse communities, e.g. the common ways in which members of the social group use similar language to meet their needs. For example, people in the West End in London speak differently from the East Enders. The uniqueness of each group’s language uses in grammatical, lexical and phonological aspects, the ways they talk and the style with which they talk, etc. constitute different discourse accents. 2. What do you think of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Give examples or proof to support your point of view. Now there are mainly two different interpretations about Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: a strong version and a weak one. While the strong version believes that language patterns determine people’s thinking and behavior, the weak one holds that the former influences the later. I believe that people tend to sort out and distinguish experiences differently according to the semantic categories provided by their different codes in their culture. Here is an example. English-speaking culture tends to teach its people to name what is practical, useful and important. In a general sense, the important things take on specific names while the less important things have general names that must be modified through additional words to become specific. A good illustration of this point is the word snow in Eskimo and English. The Eskimos have countless words for snow. For them snow is extremely important and so crucial to life that each of its various forms and conditions is named. In English-speaking cultures, snow is far less important and simple word snow usually suffices the need. When some needs become more specific, however, longer phrases can be made up to meet these needs: “corn snow”, “fine powder snow”, and “drifting snow”. Once again this proves that there is a connection between the words a culture selects and the ideas and things of that culture. In short, each culture presents to its members, either consciously or subconsciously through words, the ideas and concepts that the culture transmits from generation to generation. 5. What do you think of linguistic imperialism and cultural imperialism? Is it nonsense or something worth consideration? (1) Recently with the increasing culture diffusion a tendency of cultural imperialism, owing to linguistic imperialism, has been recognized. Linguistic imperialism is a kind of linguicism which can be defined as the promulgation of global ideologies through the worldwide expansion of one language. With the monopoly of one language over others, its accompanied ideologies, structures and practices will be a potential threat to the individual cultural identity and culture integrity. (2) I think that it is worth consideration. As English is spreading rapidly as a world language, some countries have adopted special language policy to protect the purity of their languages. For example, France has made special efforts to protect its language from being corrupted by other languages, especially American English. This is a kind of linguistic nationalism against the linguistic imperialism.