CHAPTER 1:

LANGUAGE
AND CULTURE
STUDIES
Imagine an enthusiastic traveler to a new land – excited and eager for novel
experience and new knowledge, well-equipped with phrase-books, perhaps even
a translating software gadget, under the impression that he is able to find his way
around, being, more or less, able to find translation equivalents. Yet, his situation
seems a bit (or even more than a bit) surreal, not unlikely to that in which Alice
found herself in Wonderland. Although there may be, etc. that bear resemble a
words, objects, institutions, beliefs, aspects of behavior etc., to our own world,
and can be expressed in terms of our own language, there are many things that
cause wonder, because either the language is used in a way different from ours, or
the whole integrated pattern of the world around us is totally different.
We do not have to follow Alice down the rabbit-hole or even our curious traveler on his
journey to be in the situation described above. As human beings, we seem to be constantly
wondering at the world around us, creating, re-creating and comprehending it, and trying to
translate our thoughts into language. Therefore, it is no wonder that the
relationship between language and the world has always been an intriguing area of thought.
And from the first part of the 20th century, booming into the past few decades, the study of
language and the study of culture has become a legitimate, popular and thriving academic
pursuit. The key issues here are whether and how language might influence culture, and what
we can find out about a particular culture by studying its language.
WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
• Language plays a vital role in establishing and maintaining what we call culture,
including conventions, habits and interpretive practices of individuals and
communities. Through language we create and share with others identities,
categories, attitudes, values and belief structures.

• The study of how a particular culture uses language can reveal important aspects of
sociality and behavior, including how people organize activities, socialize new
members, build or resist authority, use literacy tools, worship, argue, and imagine.
Language is not only a rule-governed system with its own internal rules and logic but
a system of tools for the constitution of social life and culture.
WHAT IS CULTURE?
•According to Roohul-Amini (1989) "Culture has multifarious meanings. Culture meant
farming". It is used everywhere as rural culture, urban culture, American culture and so
on. Today, in every field, in humanities, every research requires a general view of culture. It
is used in archaeology, linguistics, history, psychology, sociology and etc. It is even said that
man is an animal with culture. “That is to say, the factor which differentiates the human
being's behaviour from the behaviour of animal is culture”. (Mesbahe Yazdi, 2005).

“Culture has multifarious meanings. Culture meant farming.”

 Roohul-Amini, 1989

“That is to say, the factor which differentiates the human being's behavior
from the behavior of animal is culture.”
 Mesbahe Yazdi, 2005
shared foundations of social action. Likewise, from the anthropological and ethnological
senses, culture encompasses the total range of activities and ideas of a specific group
of people with common and shared traditions, which are conveyed, distributed, and
highlighted by members of the group (Collins English Dictionary 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000,
2003).
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE STUDIES
Thus, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, defines culture as 'the integrated pattern of human
knowledge, belief and behavior that depends upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting
knowledge to succeeding generations'. Another usage in the same dictionary, stresses the social
aspect of culture and defines it as 'the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial,
religious or social group'. The OED, in a similar vein, states that culture is ' a particular form, stage,
or type of intellectual development or civilization in a society; a society or group characterized by its
distinctive customs, achievements, products, outlook, etc.’
MERRIAM WEBSTER’S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY

CULTURE 'the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief

and behavior that depends upon man's capacity
for learning and transmitting knowledge to
succeeding generations'
CULTURE 'the customary beliefs, social forms, and material
traits of a racial, religious or social group'.

CULTURE ‘a particular form, stage, or type of intellectual development

or civilization in a society; a society or group characterized
by its distinctive customs, achievements, products, outlook,
etc.'
 LINGUISTIC

LANGUAGE

SOUNDS WORDS SENTENCES MEANING

MORPHOLOGY

PHONICS/PHONOLOGY SYNTAX SEMANTICS/PRAGMATICS

 SOCIOLING
UISTIC

NEUROLINGUI PSYCHOLI
STIC SOME MOST NGUISTIC
PROMINENT
BRANCHES
OF
LINGUISTIC

APPLIED
LINGUISTIC TEXT
LINGUISTIC
ANTHROPO
LOGICAL
LINGUISTIC
MOST PROMINENT BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS
It almost goes without saying that there can hardly be any learning or transmitting
knowledge or intellectual development without language. Nor can a society or a group function
without language. On the other hand, the study of language, or, more precisely, the scientific
study of language, is the domain of linguistics. According to the linguist’s focus and range of
interest different branches may be distinguished. The traditional areas of historical, theoretical
and descriptive linguistics, with their subfields of
phonology, morphology and syntax is what is usually considered the 'core' linguistics. In the
past fifty years or so, the overlapping interests of linguistics and other disciplines resulted in
the setting up of new branches, sometimes popularly called 'hyphenated', to stress their
interdisciplinary nature. Among them, some of the most prominent ones are psycholinguistics,
neurolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, sociolinguistics, text
linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and applied linguistics, and it is primarily in some of these
fields that we should look for the research focused on the relationship between language and
extralinguistic elements which may be subsumed under the term 'culture'.
Combining the areas of study, language and culture, we come up
with a seemingly ambiguous phrase 'language and culture studies'. It is actually
the title of an academic course which is offered at many universities, especially in the USA, and is, most
unambiguously and undisputedly, devoted to the study of the relationship between language and
culture. Mostly, it is an introductory course, a prerequisite for higher courses such as Linguistic
Anthropology, Sociology or even Cognitive Studies.

The structure of the course may vary, as well as the particular points of emphasis, but they are chiefly
comparative and examine the ways different cultures and languages represent, organize and express
thought, knowledge and emotion, discussing topics that range from the culturally specific to the
universal. In their more ambitious versions, these courses also offer a broader perspective on the
importance of theories of language for explaining and understanding culture across multiple disciplines,
including social and literary theories (to the extent they focus on culture and performance).

Edward Sapir, in his studies with Benjamin Lee Whorf, recognized the close relationship between
language and culture, concluding that it was not possible to understand or appreciate one without
knowledge of the other” (taken from Wardhaugh, 2002) However, Wardhaugh (2002) reported that there
appear to be three claims to the relationship between language and culture:
THREE CLAIMS TO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE
AND CULTURE

 The structure of a language determines the way in which speakers of that language
view the world or, as a weaker view, the structure does not determine the world-view but
is still extremely influential in predisposing speakers of a language toward adopting their
world-view

 The culture of a people finds reflection in the language they employ: because they
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

 A „neutral claim‟ which claims that there is little or no relationship between the two.
The first of these claims, though in its definitive phrasing is disputed by many
sociolinguists, is commonly associated with Sapir and Whorf. This claim is the basis for
much research on the relationship between language and culture and therefore will be
covered in the most detail following an acknowledgement of the other two, beginning with
a brief consideration of the „neutral claim‟.
The neutral claim claims that a relationship does not exist between language and culture, when
considering language for its communicative powers and its role in the culture that uses it, would appear
to be one for a philosophical debate. While it can be argued that it is possible to analyze a language
and/or culture without regard for the other, the reasons for such an analysis seem highly suspect. 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.

The second proposed relationship suggests that people in a culture use language that reflects their
particular culture‟s values. This is the opposing view of Sapir and Whorf in that here it is the „thoughts‟
of a culture which are reflected in the language and not the language which determines the thought.
This claim implies that cultures employ languages that are as different as the cultures that speak them
and therefore linguistic functions differ in terms of, for example, a culture‟s level of technological
development.
However, Wardhaugh (2002) argues that we must assume that all languages possess the
resources to allow any speaker to say anything provided that speaker is willing to use some
degree of circumlocution. When needs for lexical items arise, Wardhaugh (2002,) explains,
we can assume that cultures possess the ability and are free to create or to borrow them as
needed, and that cultures that have not done so have not yet experienced the need. Wardhaugh
also notes that people who speak languages with different structures can share similar cultural
characteristics, and people who have different cultures can also possess similar structures in
language. Examples like these indicate that the second relationship between language and
culture is quite viable.

The first of the three proposed relationships from above is the basis for the Whorfian
hypothesis; the belief that the structure of the language determines how people see the world.
The idea that language, to some extent, determines the way we think about the world around us
is known as linguistic determinism, with „strong‟ determinism stating that language actually
determines thought, and „weak‟ determinism implying that our thought is merely influenced by
our language (Campbell, 1997). Strong linguistic determinism and the idea that difference in
language results I difference in thought, or linguistic relativity, were the basic propositions for
the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The hypothesis claims that we see and hear and otherwise
experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose
certain choices of interpretation (Sapir 1929b, taken from Wardhaugh, 2002,). In consideration
of the various research, it does appear that the structure of a language determines how
speakers of that language view their world. A Look at how users of different languages view
colour, linguistic etiquette and kinship systems helps to illustrate this point.
THANK YOU !!