The Relationship of Language and Culture

Culture - the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a
particular time.

Language - a system of communication consisting of sounds, words, and grammar, or the system of
communication used by people in a particular country or type of work.

- is the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives.

Three Aspects of Language and Culture

Language expresses cultural reality

Language embodies cultural reality
Language symbolizes cultural reality

Nature, Culture, Language

Nature refers to what is born and grows organically.

- From the Latin nascere: to be born.
Culture refers to what has been grown and groomed.
- From the Latin colere: to cultivate

Communities of Language Users

Speech Community composed of people who use the same linguistic code
Discourse Communities are common ways in which members of a social group use language to
meet their social needs.
- Linguist John Swales defined discourse communities as "groups that have goals or purposes,
and use communication to achieve these goals".
o Discourse Accent topics people choose to talk about their way, their style.
Another way to see culture is historical perspective considering people natural behavior- based
in experiences.

Imagined communities - are concept coined by Benedict Anderson. He believes that a nation is a
community socially constructed, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group.

Discourse communities - are characterized by facts and artifacts, common dreams, fulfilled and
unfulfilled imaginings. These imaginings are mediated through the language.
Sociocultural Context - refers to the idea that language, rather than existing in isolation, is
closely linked to the culture and society in which it is used.
Layers of Culture
o Social (synchronic)
o Historical (diachronic)
 o Imagination (in addition, a third essential layer to culture)

Insiders / Outsiders

Insiders identify themselves as members of a community.

Outsider - is someone who does not experience either socio- cultural or political belonging.
Orientalism - is a style of thought based upon ontological and epistemological distinction made
between "the Orient" and (most of the time) "the Occident".
Hegemonic effects of dominant cultures and the authority they have in representing and in
speaking for the other.

Aspects of Culture

o Culture is the result of human in the biological process of nature.

o Culture is the product of socially and historically situated discourse communities
o A community`s language and its material achievements represent a social patrimony
and a symbolic capital.
o Culture are a constant site of struggle for recognition and legitimation.

Linguistic Relativity

The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in
which its respective speakers conceptualize their world view, or otherwise influences their cognitive
processes. Popularly known as the SapirWhorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism.

Franz Boas (1858-1942) argued that each language necessarily represents an implicit
classification of experience that these classifications vary across languages, but that such variation
probably has little effect on thought or culture.

Edward Sapir (1884-1939) accepted the main thrust of Boas' position but came to feel that the closely
knit system of categories in a language could represent incommensurable analyses of experience with
effects on speakers' conceptual view points and aesthetic interpretations. Sapir's concern was not with
linguistic form, nor with linguistic content or meaning, but rather with the formal organization of
meaning characteristic of a language, the regular ways meanings are constructed.

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) argued that each language refers to an infinite variety of experiences
with a finite array of formal categories (both lexical and grammatical) by trouping experiences together
as analogically 'the same' for the purposes of speech.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - states that there are certain thoughts of an individual in one language
that cannot be understood by those who live in another language.

- The hypothesis makes the claim that the structure of the language one habitually uses
influences the manner in which one thinks and behaves.
- It is a controversial theory by the linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf.
Two Versions of Whorfs Hypothesis

The strong version which posits that language determines the way we think, and;
The weak version which supported by the findings that there are cultural differences in the
semantic associations evoked by seemingly common concepts.