Master 1/Linguistics Language and Culture / S1 Mrs.

Herizi

Lecture 1 : Language and Culture

Introduction (An overview)

Interest in studying language and culture can be traced back at least to the eighteenth century.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835), Franz Boas (1858 –1942), Edward Sapir (1884–1939), and
Benjamin Whorf (1897–1941) are prominent scholars who all emphasized t he relationship between
language, thought, and culture. However, a unified subdiscipline focusing on the relationship
between language and culture has never been fully developed. As Sharifian (2015) repots in his
“Handbook of Language and Culture”, Duranti (2003) distinguishes between three different
paradigms in the history of the study of language as culture. At first it was Anthropological
linguistics focusing on the description, and classification of indigenous languages. At that time,
language was stud ied in terms of lexicon and grammar. After, with the development of linguistic
anthropology and ethnography of speaking, scholars were interested in language use in context and
considered language as a culturally organized and culturally organizing domain. With social
constructivism, research was about identity formation, narrative, and ideology, and Language was
approached as an interactional achievement filled with indexical values.

In the twentieth century, however, views of language have ranged from language as a cognitive
system/faculty of the mind, to language as action, language as social practice, language as a
complex adaptive system, etc. Culture has similarly been viewed differently by different schools of
thought. It has been seen, for example, as a cognitive system, as a symbolic system, as social
practice, or as a construct. The challenge that has faced studies of language and culture is due to the
complexity of the two notions and of their relations too.

1. Language

If language is only viewed as a system made up of words and a series of rules that connect words
together, then language teaching just involves teaching vocabulary and the rules for constructing
sentences. Such narrow view of language does not explore the complexities involved in using
language for communication. Shohamy (2007, p. 5) argues that only viewing language as “open,
dynamic, energetic, constantly evolving and personal” can reflect the rich complexities of
communication. This expanded view of language also makes educational experience more engaging
for students. Language is not a thing to be studied but a way of seeing, understanding and
communicating about the world. Kramsch (1994) maintains that this understanding of language
considers a language not simply as a body of knowledge to be learnt but as a social practice in
which to participate.

1
2. Culture

culture has often been understood as a body of knowledge that people have about a particular
society. This body of knowledge can be seen in various wa ys: as knowledge about cultural artefacts
or works of art; as knowledge about places and institutions; as knowledge about events and
symbols; or as knowledge about ways of living. When translated into language teaching and
learning, this knowledge-based view of culture often takes the form of teaching information about
another country, its people, its institutions, and so on. However, culture is not simply a body of
knowledge but rather a framework in which people live their lives and communicate shared
meanings with each other. Nabi (2017, p. 92) gives a very inclusive definition to culture stating that
it is “fuzzy set of attitudes, beliefs, behavioral conventions, basic assumptions, and values that are
shared by a group of people and that influence each member’s behavior and each member’s
interpretations of the meanings of other people’s behavior”

3. Connections between Language and Culture

Seeing culture from linguistic lens presents culture as a kind of extension of language. However,
people trained in Anthropology studies would undoubtedly reject this language-bound view of
culture. Understanding the nature of the relationship between language and culture from a linguistic
and sociolinguistic perspective would suggest that it is central to the process of communication,
interaction, and learning another language. This requires understanding how language as code and
language as social practice are connected. Kramsch (2014) highlighted the relationship between
language and culture in terms of how language expresses one’s cultural reality. She explains that
language is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways. Thanks to the stock of
knowledge about the world that people share with other people, they can express facts, ideas or
events that are communicable. When speaking on the telephone or face to face, writing a letter or
sending an email message, or reading newspaper, they express and give meaning to their
experiences through language. Indeed, the way in which people use the spoken, written, the
speaker’s tone of voice, accent, conversational style, gestures and facial expression. Through all its
verbal and non–verbal aspects, language embodies cultural reality.

Speakers identify themselves and others through their use of language, they view their language as
a symbol of their social identity. The prohibition of its use is often perceived by its speakers as a
rejection of their social group and their culture. Therefore, to interact with a language means to do
so with the culture which is its reference point. We could not understand a culture without having
direct access to its language because of their intimate connection. The nature of the relationship
between language and culture according to Wardhaugh (2002, pp. 219- 220) has been analysed
under three main claims.

The first of these claims is disputed by many sociolinguists. It is commonly associated with Sapir
and Whorf, and regarded as the basis for much research on the relationship between language and
culture. Accordingly, the structure of a language either determines the way in which speakers of
that language view the world, or does not determine the world-view but is still extremely
influential in predisposing speakers of a language toward adopting their world-view.
2
 The second claim goes against Sapir and Whorf’s hypothesis and proposes that culture is
reflected in language because people value certain things and do them in a certain way. They
come to use their language in ways that reflect what they value and what they do. Therefore, the
‘thoughts’ of a culture which are reflected in the language and not the language which determines
the thought.

The third claim, however, is a neutral one suggesting that there is little or no relationship between
language and culture. it can be argued that it is possible to analyze a language and/or culture
without regard for the other. Yet, the fact that language is used to convey and to understand
information would imply a relationship in which both the language giver and receiver assume one
or more roles. In considering such communication in its most minimal of forms – i.e. the
immediate setting – it would be difficult to conclude that culture would in no way have an impact
on the interaction even on the smallest of scale.

Conclusion
Language is one of the most powerful signs of social behaviour. It is more than just a code or a
means for communication; it goes beyond what we say or write. In the normal transfer of
information through language, we use language to send vital social messages about who we are,
where we come from, and who we associate with. It is often shocking to realize how extensively we
may judge a person's background, character, and intentions based simply upon the person's
language, dialect, or, in some instances, even the choice of a single word (Peter, 1995). Indeed,
language always carries meanings and references beyond itself: The meanings of a particular
language represent the culture of a particular social group.

Further reading

The Relationship between Language and Culture by David ELMES (2013). National Institute of
Fitness and Sports in Kanoya International Exchange and Language Education Center, pp.11-18.

http://www.lib.nifs-k.ac.jp/nii/46-11.pdf

3
 Lecture 2 : Language, Culture and Two Other Paradigms

Language, Culture and Nature

Ongoing questions about language, culture and nature

- Are human beings mainly what nature determines them to be from birth or what culture enables
them to become through socialization and schooling?

- Do language shapes culture or is it culture that shapes linguistic behaviour?

Kramsch (1988) argues that culture, in a way, forces nature to reveal its ‘essential’ potentialities.
Particular meanings, for example using red roses to express love, are adopted by the speech
community and imposed in turn on its members, who find it then difficult to change them. The
screws that language and culture impose on nature correspond to various form of socialization or
acculturation. Etiquette, expressions of politeness, social do and don’ts shape people’s behaviour
through child rearing, schooling, and professional training. Growing up in a particular society, we
informally learn how to use gestures, glances, slight changes in tone or voice, and other auxiliary
communication devices to alter or to emphasize what we say and do. We learn these culturally
specific techniques over many years, largely by observing and imitating.

The use of written is also shaped and socialized through culture. Not only what it is proper to write
but also which text genres are appropriate (the application form, the business letter, the political
pamphlet), because they are sanctioned by cultural conventions. These ways with language, or
norms of interaction and interpretation, form part of the invisible ritual imposed by culture on
language users. This is culture’s way of bringing order and predictability into people’s use of
language.

Language, Culture and Speech Community

Social conventions and norms of social appropriateness are the product of communities of language
users. Culture liberates people from the randomness of nature, and constraints them by imposing on
them a structure on the individual on liberating and constraining itself on the social. As an example,
people who identify themselves as members of a social group (family, neighbourhood, professional
ethnic affiliation, or nation) acquire common ways of viewing the world through their interactions
with other members of the same group. These views are reinforced through institutions like the
family, the school, the workplace, the mosque/or the church, the government, and other sites of
socialization throughout their lives. Common attitudes, beliefs and values are reflected in the way
members of the group use language, for example, what they choose to say or not to say and how
they say it. Therefore, in addition to the notion of speech community composed of people who use
the same linguistic code, we can speak of discourse communities to refer to the common ways in
which members of a social group use language to meet their social needs.

4
It is not only a matter of grammatical, lexical or phonological choices, but also a matter of selecting
appropriate topics to talk about, ways to present information, and styles to interact. Americans, for
instance, have been socialized into responding ‘Thank you’ to any compliment: “I like your hat!”
….. “Oh, thank you”. The French, who tend to perceive such compliment as an intrusion into their
privacy, would rather downplay the compliment and minimize its value: ‘Oh really? It’s already
quite old !’

The reactions of both groups are based on the differing degrees of embarrassment caused by
personal comments. This is a view of culture that focuses on the way of thinking, behaving, and
valuing currently shared by members of the same discourse community. It is the social
(synchronic) aspect of culture,

Another aspect/view of culture has to do with the historical (diachronic) one. The culture of
everyday practices draws on the culture of shared history and traditions. People identify themselves
as members of a society to the extent that they can have a place in that society’s history (the past,
present, and future). Culture consists of precisely that historical dimension in a group’s identity.
This diachronic view of culture focuses on the way in which a social group represents itself and
others through its material productions over time (technological achievement, its monuments, its
works of art, its popular culture) that punctuate the development of its historical identity. This
material culture is reproduced and preserved through institutional mechanisms that are also part of
the culture, like museums, schools, and public libraries. Language play a major role in the
perpetuation of culture, particularly in its printed form. Both the social (synchronic) and the
historical (diachronic) aspect of the culture are relevant to the sociocultural context of language
study.

Further reading

Language and Culture in Sociolinguistics by Meredith Marra (chapter 25, pp. 373- 385). In
Sharifian, F. (2015). The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. Routledge. Taylor &
Francis Group.

5
 Lecture 2 : Language, Culture and Thought

Introduction
Human beings live in language; they speak and listen constantly to speech, and at least an
important part of their silent thinking, imagining, and problem solving takes place in some
transform of spoken language. Communication through reading, writing, speaking, listening to
speech, and thinking in words can take place only in the medium of a particular language and must
bear the imprint of that language’s peculiarities.

Relativism vs. Determinism

Sapir and Whorf Hypothesis

The term relativity is associated with the American linguist Edward Sapir (1884–1939) and his
student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941), who developed the ideas of Sapir’s teacher Franz Boas
(1858–1942). Sapir and Whorf hypothesis, that came with the positivistic trend, proposed a
‘principle of linguistic relativity’ with an explicit reference to Einstein’s theory of relativity. Sapir
and Whorf focussed on Amerindian languages in which the physical world was encoded in ways
that differed markedly from the more extensively studied languages of Indo-European stock. They
concluded from their observations that languages function as perceptual and conceptual filters, a
notion which subsequently became known as the “linguistic relativity hypothesis.” A rigid
interpretation of this hypothesis sees speakers’ cognition strongly influenced, if not wholly
determined, by the language they speak. Sapir believes on the dependence of the individual on
conceptual patterning that is derived from the language that he or she speaks. The Sapir–Whorf
hypothesis, makes the claim that the structure of the language one habitually uses influences the
manner in which one thinks and behaves. According to this principle, the way in which we think
about the world is directly influenced by the language we use to talk about it. The passage most
commonly quoted to demonstrate the supposed linguistic determinism of Sapir and his student
Whorf is the following:

the “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of
the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same
social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are different worlds, not merely the same
world with different labels attached. (Sapir, 1929).

We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our
community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

The idea that language determines the way we think about the world around us and that difference
in language results in difference in thought, is known as linguistic determinism. A look at how
users of different languages view colour, linguistic etiquette and kinship systems helps to
illustrate this point. As an example, Hanunóo, a language from the Philippines, has four terms to
6
refer to white, black, green, and red, but under further analysis it turns out to mean roughly
lightness, darkness, wetness, and dryness. Such observations imply that some cultures interpret
colours based on their language. Kinship systems have similarly been studied to discover how
language is related to thought through the ways in which the use of terms like father, brother, or
older brother reflect how people behave toward these people (Wardhaugh, 2002, p. 229). A typical
example comes from Algerian context where people in certain regions used to recognize “the eldest
brother” as “dada”, which is also labelled to “a father’s brother” and sometimes to “father”. The
grand father is called sometimes just as the father “baba”. The use of the term ‘father/baba’ in a
conversation between a native English speaker and an Algerian would logically produce a different
image for both people, as culturally each may classify the roles and image of this person differently.

When extending determinism claim to languages that are, for example, structured to reflect social
hierarchy such as with Japanese and its numerous levels of politeness, the issue of whether the
language actually controls the thoughts of the user is difficult to confirm. The fact that translation
from one language to totally a different language weakens the determinism claim that the structure
of the native language determines the way in which native speakers perceive the world. In addition,
universalists who argue that there exist common shared features between different languages would
also oppose Sapir’s strong view. Unfortunately, determinism ignores about the role of individual
cognitive processes and schemata. People retrieve from their previous knowledge and experiences
to confront familiar as well as unfamiliar situations and to find appropriate strategies and
behaviours to deal with these situations.

Kramsch (1988) encounters for other limitations in the strong version of Sapir and Whorf work
stating that the generic semantic meanings of the code that have established themselves over time
within a given discourse community are subject to the various and variable uses made of them in
social contexts (e.g., concepts like terrorism, revolution and literacy has been changed over time to
cope with other political, social and scientific changes). We are, then, not prisoners of the cultural
meanings offered to us by our language, but can enrich them in our pragmatic interactions with
other language users.

A weak version of the hypothesis suggests that our thought is merely influenced by our language
(linguistic relativism). Such weak determinism allows for additional influences to enter into the
relationship between language and culture. Notwithstanding individual cognitive processes or
general knowledge, it is fair to assume that worldviews may be influenced by culture and not just
language. The belief that there are cultural differences in the semantic associations evoked by
seemingly concepts. The way a given language encodes experience semantically makes aspects of
that experience not exclusively accessible, but just more salient for the users of that language. That
is, the linguistic structure does not constrain what people can think or perceive; it only tends to
influence what they routinely do and think. Elmes (2013, p. 14) asserts that although language
structure provides us with phrasings for our understanding and can manipulate our thoughts in this
respect, if pre-existing knowledge does not supply a foundation for general understanding, the ways
in which we define and evaluate each individual encounter would be left solely to linguistic
knowledge.

Kramsch (1988) points out that the work of Sapir and Whorf, in its weak version (relativity) has
led to two important insights :

7
1. There is nowadays a recognition that language, as code, reflects cultural preoccupations and
constraints the way people think since culture is semantically encoded in the language itself. In this
way language is linked to culture through what it says or w hat it refers to as an encoded sign
(semantics).

2. More than in Whorf’s days, however, we recognize how important context is in complementing
the meanings encoded in the language. Here, we refer to culture as expressed through the actual use
of the language. In this way language is linked to culture through what it does as an action in
context (pragmatics). it is frequently difficult to draw a clear line between the generic semantic
meanings of the code and the pragmatic meanings of code in various contexts of use.

Conclusion
To what extent the structure of one's language shapes one's view of the world thus

remains an unresolved issue. Yet, the idea that language has an influence on people's

perception and concepts is still espoused by many researchers and often forms the underlying

paradigm for describing the relation between language and society. How speech habits

interact with ways of thinking, then, remains one of the many intricate questions into which

empirical research is needed.

Further reading

Linguistic relativity: precursors and transformations by John Leavitt (Chapter 2, pp. 18-30) in
Sharifian, F. (2015). The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. Routledge.

Taylor & Francis Group.