07-Chapter+Seven+language+culture+society(Hu&Dai)
Week 10 Chapter 7: Language, culture, and society
Review: Key Point of Chapter 6
Construal Operations识解操作/ 运作
Image schemes意象图式
Metaphor（语言的）隐喻性
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Introduction:
Their relationship? Or the “relatedness” of them → sociolinguistics: the study of language in a sociocultural context
There many human societies, each of which has its own language and
culture;
with each other, or a society needs
between cultures: cross-cultural communication
Hence the 3 sub-topics of this chapter: language & culture, language &
society, and cross-cultural communication.
7.1 Language and culture
What is culture:
In a broad sense, culture means the total way of life of a people, including the patterns of belief, customs, objects, institutions, techniques, and language that characterizes the life of the human community.
In a narrow sense, culture may refer to local or specific practice, beliefs or customs, which can be mostly found in folk culture, enterprise culture or food culture, etc.
There are generally two types of culture: material and spiritual.
7.1.1 How does language relate to culture?
The relationship between language and culture:
The same word may stir up different associations in people under different cultural background, e.g. the word “dog”.
Language expresses cultural reality, reflects the people’s attitudes, beliefs, world outlooks, etc.
The culture both emancipates and constrains people socially, historically and metaphorically.
Culture also affects its people’s imagination or common dreams which are mediated through the language and reflected in their life.
On the one hand, language as an integral part of human being, permeates in his thinking and way of viewing the world, language both expresses and embodies cultural reality; on the other, language, as a product of culture, helps perpetuate the culture, and the changes in language uses reflect the cultural changes in return.
Speech community:
Speech community refers to a group of people who form a community, e.g. a village, a region, a nation, and who have at least one speech variety in common.
Context of situation (Firth, 1950: 43-44 [Palmer, 1981: 53-54]): (language use and its co-occurrent factors)
(1) The relevant features of the participants: persons, personalities:
a. The verbal action of the participants
b. The non-verbal action of the participants
(2) The relevant objects
(3) The effects of the verbal action
Ethnography of communication:
The study of place of language in culture and society. Language is not studied in isolation but within a social or cultural setting. Ethnography of communication studies, e.g. how people in a particular group or community communicate with each other and how the social relationships between these people affect the type of language they use.
SPEAKING (certain components of speech, Yang, 2000: 23-24)
Sapir-Whorf Hypotheses:
Language helps mould our way of thinking → language determines our thinking pattern
↓
Different languages have different ways of understanding the world →similarity between languages is relative →
point: there is no limit to the structural diversity of languages.
E. Nida, a Bible translator → cross-cultural communication → 5 types of sub-cultures
Cross-cultural communication: an exchange of ideas, information, etc. between persons from different cultural backgrounds.
7.1.2 More about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
“
”? →
Thus, don ’t evaluate a language system against the criteria in our mother tongue.
Suggested criterion: similarity + difference; starting from the similarities for “linguistic universality ”
Basic color words system → evolutionary theory (All language are equally sufficient and advanced, though at different evolutionary stages)
Conclusion: Sapir-Whorf Hypotheses is still feasible though imperfect.
7.1.3 Case studies
Examples of the interplay of Language and Culture, ranging from textual structure to phonological variation.
e.g.: “Watergate”
Why? (The two correlate each other at different levels of linguistic structure)
7.2 Language and society
Language is the mirror of society, while society provides language with a context of use →
sociolinguistics
7.2.1 How does language relate to society?
7.2.2 A situationally and socially variationist perspective
←
7.2.3 What should we know more about sociolinguistics?
structural things (language)
Sociolinguistics dual objectives: study one through the other language use in sociocultural context (society)
↓
2 things to study
language ← micro sociolinguistic study of
society ← macro
↓
2 perspectives
7.3 Cross-cultural communication
Successful communication: listen with understanding
Diversity of language and culture → difficulty in cross-cultural communication
7.3.1 What should we know all about cross-cultural communication?
Basic principles in communication (pragmatics)
Tripartite model: 3 principles
3 suggestive principles as the guidelines
7.3.2 Case studies
Principles illustrated with proverbs
7.4 Summary
Evolutionary approach: an optimal and encouragiable perspective for the relation of language, culture, and society.
FLB
Faculty of language
FLN
Sociolinguistic inquiry of language → sociolinguistics
Difficulties: from the diversity in subject matters
Interdisciplinary nature: requiring knowledge in anthropology, sociology, social psychology, ethnology, cognitive science, etc.. Homework:
Compare what sociolinguistics and cultural linguistics study to understand the relations between the three.
Preview Chapter 8: Language in Use.
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附录：戴炜栋《语言学》相关章节
Week 10: Mid-term Test（课后）
What are the phones, allophones, phoneme, and Array
conditions/environments in the given chart?
What are the phonemes, morphemes, and sememes of the word “boys”?
How do you know the “apple”in “The little girl is the apple of her father’s eyes” is not a fruit? Do we Chinese have a similar saying? Does this difference prove that language influences our thinking? Why?
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