CHAPTER 5:

LANGUAGE AND
CULTURAL
PATTERNS OF
THOUGHT
Here is where your presentation begins
 LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

Though sometimes simplistically viewed through its most obvious function of exchanging
information and thought among people, i.e. through its referential, communicative aspect,
language has other functions as well. One of the very important aspects is cognitive which
highlights the use of language as an instrument of thought and cognition, without necessary
communicating the thoughts to others, as stressed by the very influential generative paradigm.

The relationship between language, thought and reality has fascinated philosophers and
linguists for centuries, so this article will necessarily be able only to outline some of the
significant research. What we are primarily interested in here is whether one's language
determines or is determined by one's world view.

Extending a person's world view to culture in the broadest sense of the word, we
shall focus on the relationship between language and its cultural aspects, rather than psychological
ones, on the one hand, and human cognition, on the other. At the end of the previous section there
has already been some indication of this issue, when we mentioned the premise of critical
discourse analysis that discourse not only reflects reality, but language can be (intentionally)
used in the construction of a particular reality.
The idea that the way we see the world is (to some degree) dependent on the language
we use is an old one, but it was most clearly and influentially voiced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in
his contention that each language contains a peculiar Weltanschauung (world view), which
causes its speakers to see and think in a characteristic way, different from the speakers of
other languages. This has become known as the principle of language relativity.

In the first half of the 20th century these ideas were particularly embraced in America, by the
anthropologist F. Boas and linguist Edward Sapir, and expanded by Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf
in what became known as the 'Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ of language relativity.
Whorf's much-quoted statement that language is 'the shaper of ideas' and that 'we
dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages' has become the credo of
linguistic determinism. Whorf continues; the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of
impressions which has to be organized in our minds – and this means largely by linguistic
systems in our minds.’ Later, he states: "This new principle of relativity holds
that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the
universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar.' (Whorf 1956:213-4, based on
Vorf 1979).
It should be emphasized that the linguistic relativity hypothesis goes much further than
the usual noting of vocabulary differences which reflect the immediate (physical and
social) surroundings of different speech communities. What is more significant,
more revealing and more decisive is the sphere of grammar. More precisely, it is
grammatical categories and grammatical structures of a language that encode aspects of reality
differently. Areas of experience that are important to cultures tend to get grammaticalized in thei
languages, which, in turn, determines the formation of the world view of their speakers,
and, ultimately, both their group and individual behavior. For example, Whorf's evidence
from the American Indian language Hopi, which has no category of tense, indicates
Hopi notion of and attitude to time, completely conceptually and practically different from
the one of Western culture.
Various similar grammatical examples have been objectively recorded for various
languages, but what can be questioned are the conclusions and interpretations of these
language data. This line of research and thought generally meant that on the basis of
linguistic data, (non-linguistic) conclusions can be made about extra linguistic
phenomena. The idea of the significance of grammatical categories as the guideline for
human cognition was recently revived and popularized by George Lakoff (1987) in his
catchytitled book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things – What Categories Reveal about
the Mind.
The relation between categorization, cognition and cultural beliefs may seem arbitrary, but though not
direct and transparent, it can, nevertheless, be systematic and revealing. At the example of the
Australian Aboriginal language Dyirbal, one of the grammatically most complex languages, Lakoff
demonstrated that the allocation of nouns into four Dyurbal gender categories, which may seem
random, is actually partly based on association and partly on myths and cultural beliefs of the Dyirbal
people, which are different from Western ones.

Looking at the broader field of cognitive semantics of Lakoff and his circle, it should be
noted that the basic notions of prototypes and conceptual metaphors have been examined cross-
linguistically and cross-culturally as well, and found to be partly culture- specific. (Hiraga 1991, Rohrer
1991, Charters-Black and Ennis 2001, inter al.)

Finally, but by no means exhausting the list of relevant research on the issue of language, thought,
and culture, we should also note the contribution of the Polish-born Australian linguist Anna
Wierzbicka (1992, 1997). Starting from semantic analysis, she and her followers developed the
'natural semantic metalanguage' approach, based on the cross-linguistic evidence that there is a
small core of basic universal meanings (semantic primes), shared by all languages, which can be
either words or linguistic expressions.
This common core can be used for linguistic and cultural analysis: to explicate complex and culture-
specific words and grammatical constructions, and to articulate culture-specific values
and attitudes (cultural scripts) in clear and translatable terms. This theory also hopes to provide a
semantic foundation for universal grammar and linguistic typology and has applications especially
in intercultural communication, lexicography, and language teaching.
 CULTURAL PATTERNS
Cultural Patterns are Shared beliefs, values, norms, and social practices that are stable over time
and that lead to roughly similar behaviors across similar situations.

FOUR COMPONENTS OF CULTURAL PATTERNS

 A belief is an idea that people assume to be true about the world. Beliefs,
therefore, are a set of learned interpretations that form the basis for cultural members
to decide what is and what is not logical and correct.

 Values involve what a culture regards as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair,
just or unjust, beautiful or ugly, clean or dirty, valuable or worthless, appropriate or
inappropriate, and kind or cruel. Because values are the desired characteristics or
goals of a culture, a culture’s values do not necessarily describe its actual behaviors
and characteristics. However, values are often offered as the explanation for the way
in which people communicate.
 Norms are the socially shared expectations of appropriate behaviors. When a person’s behaviors
violate the culture’s norms, social sanctions are usually imposed. Like values, norms can vary within a
culture in terms of their importance and intensity. Unlike values, however, norms may change over a
period of time, whereas beliefs and values tend to be much more enduring.

 Social practices are the predictable behavior patterns that members of a culture
typically follow. Thus, social practices are the outward manifestations of beliefs,
values, and norms.

Luckhohn and Strodtbeck’s view of cultural patterns contains five major elements address the manner
in which a culture orients itself to activities, social relations, the self, the world, and the passage of time.

Activity orientation defines how the people of a culture view human actions and the expression of self
through activities.

 Is it important to be engaged in activities in order to be a “good” member of one’s culture?

 Can and should people change the circumstances of their lives?
 Is work very different from play?
 Which is more important, work or play?
 Is life a series of problems to be solved or simply a collection of events to be experienced?
The social relations orientation describes how the people in a culture organize
themselves and relate to one another. This orientation provides answers to questions
such as the following:
 To what extent are some people in the culture considered better or superior to others?
 Can social superiority be obtained through birth, age, good deeds, or material achievement and
success?
 Are formal, ritualized interaction sequences expected?
 In what ways does the culture’s language require people to make social distinctions?
 What responsibilities and obligations do people have to their extended families, their neighbors, their
employers or employees, and others?

Self-orientation describes how people’s identities are formed, whether the culture views the self as
changeable, what motivates individual actions, and the kinds of people who are valued and respected. A
culture’s self-orientation provides answers to questions such as the following:

 Do people believe they have their own unique identities that separate them from others?
 Does the self reside in the individual or in the groups to which the individual belongs?
 What responsibilities does the individual have to others?
 What motivates people to behave as they do?
 Is it possible to respect a person who is judged “bad” in one part of life but is
successful in another part of life?
Cultural patterns also tell people how to locate themselves in relation to the spiritual world, nature, and other
living things. A world orientation provides answers to questions such as the following:

 Are human beings intrinsically good or evil?

 Are humans different from other animals and plants?
 Are people in control of, subjugated by, or living in harmony with the forces of nature?
 Do spirits of the dead inhabit and affect the human world?

The final aspect of cultural patterns concerns how people conceptualize time. Time orientation provides
answers to questions such as the following:

 How should time be valued and understood?

 Is time a scarce resource, or is it unlimited?
 Is the desirable pace of life fast or slow?
 Is time linear or cyclical?
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