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BLOCK 1Language and beyond
The heart of culture involves language, religion, values, traditions, and customs
Culture and Language influence each other. Therefore it is an interdependent relationship.
Four key constructs underlie the intrinsic relationship between Language & Culture
- Culture defines language and language shapes culture
- Language is a symbol of a cultural and personal identity
- Cultural groups have different worldviews based on their shared assumptions and
experiences
- Language is the medium through which individuals transmit culture from generation
to generation
Language: ‘’a symbolic code of communication consisting of a set of sounds (phonemes)
with understood meanings and a set or rule (grammar) for constructing messages[…]. It
consist of a series of arbitrary symbols.
Culture: ‘’everything that people have, think and do as members of their society’’
Culture serves a variety of functions
- Material objects (have)
- Ideas, values, and attitudes (think)
- Patterns of behaviour (do)
- Standards about appropriate communication (ex- and implicit)
- Culture is learned’
- Culture is shared and passed on to next generations
Each culture presents its members with ways of thinking and ways of behaving
Language influences perception, thought, and behaviour
‘’I think every language has a certain way of seeing the world’’ A whole different mindset’’
Culture is learned and takes place without you being aware of it, essential messages of a
culture get reinforced and repeated. Finally, you learn via variety of sources, most important
are family, school, church and community.
Perception is culturally determined
Perception is selective
‘’ patterns are learned
‘’ is consistent
‘’ is inaccurate
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are!
The language we speak determines the way we think and behave.
Grammatical gender influences perception
Culture sets the language as the language should be able to describe certain things in
a certain way, language influences the thought, what we think influences what we do
and that again reinforces the culture.
Like so much of culture, it is communication that makes culture a continuous process, for
once cultural habits, principles, values, and attitudes are formed, they are communicated to
each member of the culture
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
‘’There is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a
person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it.’’
, You can’t think of something, when you have no language for it
Most of the behaviours we label ‘’cultural’’ are automatic, invisible, and usually performed
with our being aware of them. Also, cultures are always changing, but the deep structure of a
culture is resistant to change.
Interdependence of thought / behaviour and speech and they mutually influence each other.
The structure of the language one habitually uses influences the manner in which
one thinks and behaves
Language shapes the way we think and determines what we can think about (Whorf)
Language categorises our experiences
Certain thought or concepts cannot be understood by those who speak another
language (linguistic diversity)
Culture shapes the language
Words are there that don’t exist in other languages as they are not necessary for
their culture
Language is an ability to communicate (interculturally)
We distinct verbal and non-verbal communication
Verbal communication is written and spoken language
Non-verbal communication is body language & paralinguistics
Language is a tool of human communication
Process
Dynamic (not static) and interactive
Symbolic – symbol is an expression that stands for or represents something else
o Language symbols are no more consistent or precise than the experience,
values, and belief systems of the people using them
Intentional AND unintentional
Contextual
o Involves 4 aspects: number of people, environmental context (where),
occasion and time
Cultural
Process of communication:
Sender (encoding) Message Channel Receiver (decoding) Feedback Channel
You have noise and barriers too.
Because you cannot directly access the internal thoughts of another, you must rely on and
interpret their use of verbal and nonverbal symbols to represent those thoughts.
Sender encodes a message – every culture encodes messages differently
o Direct cultures will put meaning in word
o Indirect cultures will put it vague with hints
Receivers decodes a message – every culture decodes messages differently
- Communication always happens within a certain context
- How much or how little meaning is derived from the context differs across cultures
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