language culture and society

Chapter Seven Language, Culture, and SocietyPresented by Quan Lihong

1. Language, Culture and thought

1.1 What is culture?

Broadly speaking, it means the total way of life of a people, including the patterns of belief, customs, objects, institutions, techniques, and language. In a narrow sense, it refers to local or specific practice, beliefs or customs.

1.1 The relationship between L & C

Generally, the relation of language to culture is that of part to whole, for language is part of culture. The knowledge and beliefs that constitute a people’s culture are habitually encoded and transmitted in language.

England school: Anthropological study of linguistics: study of language in a socio-cultural context. 1. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) (p.147):

1) The meaning of a word greatly depends upon its occurrence in a given context, or rather, upon a real language situation in life. 2) Language functions as a link in human activity, a mode of action.5

2. J. R. Firth (1890-1960): theory of the Context of Situation语境学说 Firth: a leading figure in a linguistic tradition known as the London School1.

2. 3.

The relevant features of the participants, persons, personalities. The relevant objects. The effects of the verbal action.

What Firth emphasized in this theory is quite similar to a more updating sociological axiom in language use, namely ―who speaks what to whom and when and to what end‖.6

3. The funder of systemic-functional grammar: M.A.K. Halliday The metafunctions of language

North American school: 3. Dell Hymes (1927- ): Ethnography of communication 交际民族学模式 Framework: 1.

2.

3.

Speech community: a group of people who share not only the same rules of speaking, but at least one linguistic variety as well. Situation, event, and act: speech acts are part of speech events which are, in turn, part of speech situations. SPEAKING

S --- setting and scene P --- participants E --- ends: expected outcomes; participants’ personal goals A --- act sequence: actual form and content of what is said K --- key: tone, manner, spirit (serious, light-hearted, joke) I --- instrumentalities: choice of channel (written-spoken; English-Chinese) N --- norms of interaction and interpretation (in church service) G --- genre (lectures, poems) (Setting, Topic and Participant are three main factors in communication.)9

1.2 language and thought

To what extent, and in what ways does language determine thought?

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Edward Sapir (1884 - 1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941)

Our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express speakers’ unique ways of understanding the world.Linguistic determinism: Language may determine our thinking patterns. Linguistic relativity: Different languages offer people differe

nt ways of expressing the world around. 11

EvidenceE.g. One of the features that separates Hopi language from other languages is that it does not use the same means to express time, hence it is metaphorically dubbed a “timeless language”. English: He runs fast. Hopi: similar to: He very runs. This is a supporting evidence to Linguistic relativity. 12

More evidence?

In some languages, there may be only a single word for a certain object, creature or concept, whereas, in another language, there may be several words. In Chinese, 骆驼 In English, one-humped camel: camel or dromedary; two-humped: Bactrian In Arabic: over 400 words for this animal13

Linguistic evidence of cultural differences

Terms of address

GreetingsThanks and compliments Privacy and taboos Color words

Culture-loaded expressions

kill the goose that lays the golden eggs‖ vs.―杀鸡取卵” Cold words vs. 冷言冷语 Constant dropping wears the stone. 滴水穿 石 Diamond cut diamond. 棋逢对手 Kill a man when he is down. 落井下石

Cultural overlap and diffusion

Through communication, some elements of culture A enter culture B and becomes part of culture B. Loan words in Chinese and English.肥皂剧、卡通、布丁、苹果派、雀巢、巴士、 耐克、因特网、KTV、EMAIL Typhoon, Kongfu, etc.