Language and Culture

1

• Language and Culture
• in the Global Village
• Xu lisheng
• Zhejiang University

2

• In intercultural communication studies, culture
  and language are often assumed to be intertwined.
  
• New words are coined to reflect this relation
• languaculture (Agar, 1994),
• language-and-culture (Byram and Morgan,
  1994).
• Language and culture are considered as two
  sides of the same coin. (P. R. Moran, 2001)

3

• Human beings do not live in the objective world
  alone, nor alone in the world of social activity
  as ordinarily understood, but are very much at
  the mercy of the particular language which has
  become the medium of expression for their
  society The fact of the matter is that the
  real world is to a large extent unconsciously
  built up on the language habits of the group.
• 
  (Edward Sapir,1929)

4

• Every language is something more than a
  vehicle for exchanging ideas and information ---
  more even than a tool for self-expression and for
  letting off emotional steam or for getting other
  people to do what we want. Every language is also
  a special way of looking at the world and
  interpreting experience.
• (Clyde
  Kluckhohn,1965)

5

• Language is taken to play a crucial role in the
  construction of the shared view of reality held
  by speakers of a common language in three
  interrelated ways ---
• by naming aspects of the physical and social
  reality that are seen as significant in a
  particular culture
• through the ways of speaking that are
  characteristic of a particular culture
• through covert grammatical categories..

6

• However, the world today is no longer the world
  in which people lived isolated from one another.
• In the past century, particularly the last few
  decades, we have seen dramatic changes in human
  society and an enormous increase both in amount
  and in the quality and intensity of communication
  among people of different nations as people
  become increasingly mobile.

7

• In the past most human beings were born, lived,
  and died within a limited geographical area,
  never encountering people of other cultural
  backgrounds.
• Such an existence no longer prevails in the
  world. Even members of once isolated groups of
  people now frequently have contact with members
  of other cultural groups.

8

• Today, it has become quite possible that many of
  us spend much of our lives in the company of
  those who still speak the same language as we do,
  but might seek different values, move at a
  different pace, and interact with us according to
  a different norm.
• It is now more and more likely that we come
  into direct contact with others who do not share
  our basic assumptions and perspectives.
  Intercultural communication is well on its way to
  becoming an everyday phenomenon.

9

• Linguistic and cultural boundaries become
  blurred. Speakers of the same language may find
  themselves separated by deep cultural gaps, while
  others who speak grammatically distinct languages
  may share the same culture.

10

• Culture and language may not co-vary with one
  another any more.
• Now we can hardly assume that language and
  culture are co-extensive. The assumption of a one
  to one relationship between language and cultural
  variability must be seen as not very well
  grounded.

11

• The way the relationship between language and
  culture is viewed and investigated should be
  renovated.
• It seems that the concern with language and
  culture should be more local than universal.

12

• In todays world, what is intertwined with
  culture may not be language itself, but the way
  in which language is used.
• The differences in ways of speaking are profound
  and systematic. And these differences reflect
  different cultural values.

13

• If there should be a one-to-one relationship,
  it would be the relationship between culture and
  what is usually called discourse.
• In a sense, it is discourse, rather than
  language, that is so intertwined with culture
  that the two can hardly be separated, for
  discourse is actually where culture is
  constructed and reproduced through the use of
  language in a particular way.

14

• If culture can be conceptualized as an
  abstract system of meanings shared by the members
  of a community, it is not necessarily shared by
  those who happen to speak a single grammatically
  homogeneous language, but will more probably
  shared by those of the same discourse community,
  a community that may not be geographically or
  socially bounded and its members may not even
  speak the same language.

15

• Thank you!