Language Culture and World View

• Language

The word “language” means the most specialized sound signalling system which seems to be genetically programmed to develop in humans

• Characteristic of Language

• “ Language is the dress of thought”

• “ Language shapes our ideologies and world view”

• “ Language and culture are directly proportional to each other”

• “ The shared languge of a community is the most essential carrier of their common culture”

• Language and culture are grown up together”

• The form of language used determines individual’s thought”

• The structure of language influences how its speaker view the world around them”

• Culture

Culture in narrow sense means “art and sciences”. In broad sense means “our ways of living, religion, laws, manners, housing, dress, etc are called culture

• Characteristics of Culture

• Culture is acquired

• Culture is shared

• Culture is learnt

• Culture is transmitted

• Culture is dynamic

• Culture is adaptive

• Culture is influential

• Types of Culture

There are four types of culture

• Material / Physical culture

• Non-material / cognitive culture

• Real culture

• Ideal culture

• Material / Physical culture It includes man-made objects such as tools, implements, furniture, etc. It is concerned with the external, mechanical and utilitarian objects. It includes our banks, parliments, insurance scheme, currency systems, and etc. It is referred to as civilization.

• Non-material / Cognitive Culture

It is something internal and intrinsically valuable. It reflects the inward nature of man. It consists of the words the people use or the language they speak etc. It includes our customs, tastes, attitute ans outook, in brief, our acting, feeling and thinking etc. It is mental organization in each individual’s mind.

• Real culture It is that culture which can be observed in our daily life. The culture on which we act upon in our social life is real. It is the culture people adopt in their real life. The whole of the culture can never be real because some of its part may remain unpracticed. Real culture include the values and norms being practiced.

• Ideal culture The culture which is presented as a pattern or precedent to the people is called ideal culture. It is the goal of the society It can never be achieved fully because some part of it remains out of practice. Ideal culture encompasses the values and norms a culture demands.

• Language and Culture

Language and culture both are determined by each other. It is generally agreed that language and culture are closely related. Language can be viewed as a verbal expression of culture. It is used to maintain and convey culture and cultural ties. Language provides us with many of the categories we use for expression of our thoughts, so it is therefore natural to assume that our thinking is influenced by the language which we use. The values and customs in the country we grow up in shape the way in which we think to a certain extent

Culture and Language

What We Say Influences What

We Think, What We Feel andWhat We Believe

Unique human ability· Ability to create and use language is the most distinctive feature of humans· Humans learn their culture through language· Culture is transmitted through language

The nature of language· Considerable variation in the number of languages in the world· 95% of the world’s people speak fewer that 100 of the approximate 6,000 different

languages· Linguists concerned about the last 5% of the world’s languages which are in danger of

disappearing

Seven functions of Language· Instrumental Language· Regulatory Language· Interactional Language· Personal Language· Imaginative Language· Heuristic Language· Informative Language

Regulatory Language· Using language to control the behavior of others or getting them to do what we want

them to do· May include giving orders or at more subtle levels manipulating and controlling others· Positive regulatory language is “life skills” of parents, management and administrator

must know

Interactional Language· Used to establish and define social relationships and language all of us use in group

situation· “small talk”, negotiations, encouragement, expression of friendship are examples· Because those who are effective in building social skills are likely to succeed, children

need to develop need to develop awareness of the ability to use language to establish relationships

· Work cooperatively, enjoy companionship

Personal Language· Used to express individuality and personality· Strong feelings and opinions are a part of personal language· Often neglected in classrooms and thought inappropriate.· Yet through personal language that students relate their own lives to the subject

matter being taught establish their own identities, build selfesteem and confidence

Heuristic Language· Used to explore, to investigate, to acquire knowledge, to do research, to acquire

understanding· It is the language for wondering, for figuring things out· Inquiry is its most important function· Dense Textbooks?

Communication· The act of transmitting information that influences the behavior of another person· While communication among animals is critical to their survival, it is limited

compared to human language

Call Systems· Animal systems of verbal communication are referred to as call system· Call system—a form of communication among non-human primates composed of

a limited number of sounds that are limited to specific stimuli in the environment· Chimp-”Squeal Squeal” –”danger here”· “Closed System”

Call System/Closed System· Primate Communication system is complex· Non-Human Primate have a Closed Call System· Sounds are unique in form and message· Sounds are mutually exclusive· Can’t signal “Tomorrow I’ll climb that tree”

Humans/Open Call System· Starting with a limited number of sounds. Human are capable of producing an

infinite number of meanings by combining sounds and words into new meanings· Can send messages that have never been sent before.· Can talk about things not present and have yet to happen

Human Language· Is capable of recreating and complex thought patterns and experiences in words· Without human language, human culture would not exist· Plays a crucial role in the maintenance of human social relationships· Because language is a creative and open system it is extremely flexible and can

communicate new ideas and abstract concepts

Displacement· Human capacity to convey information about a thing or an event that is not

present· Enables humans to speak of purely hypothetical things· Transmitted largely through tradition experience alone

Language and Culture· Anthropologist learn to communicate in another language in order to do field

work· Language reflects a Way of Thinking· Close relationship between language and culture. Culture is transmitted by

language· Clear that the terminology used by a culture primarily reflects that culture’s

interest and concerns

How Culture Influences Culture?· Cultural emphasis—the vocabulary found in any language tends to emphasize the

words that are considered to be adaptively important in that culture· Military metaphor in medicine· Technology also affects language

Acquiring language· Linguistic symbols are all arbitrary—that is they are conventions by which certain sounds

are attached to certain objects and events· C/A/R=car· Humans’ normal physical and mental apparatus allows them to learn any language with

equal ease· Human Being would speak no language if he or she were taught none

· Critical period of language development for humans before the age of six— thereafter learning language skills become increasingly difficult

• Language is determined by Culture Language and its structure are dependent on the cultural context in which they existed. There are ways in which culture really varies and determines language.

Language as a part of Culture Language is not just the medium of culture but is also a part of culture. Linguistic differences are often seen as the mark of another culture, and they create divisiveness among neighbouring people or even among different groups of the same nation

• World View

It is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirely of individual’s or society’s knowledge and point of view including ethics, values etc

• Linguistic Determinism It states that the structure of language determines our thought patterns

• Linguistic Relativity “It means that users of different grammers are pointed by there grammer towards different type of observations and different evaluations of externally similar acts of observation and hence are not equivalent as observers but must arrive at somewhat different view of the world”

The linguist Sapir and whorf maintained that

“The language spoken by a society influences the way in which that society thinks about the world”

• Certain System of Classification in Language and Society There are three systems of classification which are as follows

• Kinship system

• Colour Terminology

• Taboo & Euphemism

• Kinship System Kinship systems are the universals features of language because kinship is so important in social organization that people use language to describe a particular kin relationship.

• Colour Terminology It is also used to explore the relationship between languages and cultures. The colour spectrum is a physical continum showing no breaks at all. The interesting issue is how colours are referred to in different languages? All languages make use of basic terms.

• Taboo & Euphemism To express cultural meanings in language,there are certain basic limitations. Taboo is the prohibition or avoidance in any society of behaviour believed to be harmful to its members in that it would cause them anxiety, embarrassment or shame.

• Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis • This hypothesis states that

• “Semantic structure of language shapes or limits the ways in which speakers form the conception of the world”

• According to this hypothesis “our thinking is according to our structure of language”

• 1 st Claim • The structure of language determines the way in which speakers of that language view the world.

• Weaker claim • It is that the structure does not determine the world-view but is still influential in predisposing speakers of a language towards adopting a particular world-view

• Opposite Claim • It is that the culture of people finds reflection in the language they employ. In this view, cultural values do not determine the structure of the language.

• Neutral claim • It is that there is little or no relationship between language and culture

• Most accepted Claim It is that the structure of language influences how its speakers view the world.

The linguistic relativity principle, or the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, is the idea that differences in the way languages encode cultural and cognitive categories affect the way people think, so that speakers of different languages will tend to think and behave differently depending on the language they use. The hypothesis is generally understood as having two different versions: (i) the strong version that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determines cognitive categories and (ii) the weak version that linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behavior.

The idea was first clearly expressed by 19th century thinkers, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt who saw language as the expression of the spirit of a nation. The early 20th century school of American Anthropology headed by Franz Boas and Edward Sapir also embraced the idea. Sapir's student Benjamin Lee Whorf came to be seen as the primary proponent of the hypothesis, because he published observations of how he perceived linguistic differences to have consequences in human cognition and behavior. Whorf's ideas were widely criticized, and Roger Brown and Eric Lenneberg decided to put them to the test. They reformulated Whorf's principle of linguistic relativity as a testable hypothesis, now called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and conducted experiments designed to find out whether color perception varies between speakers of languages that classified colors differently. As the study of the universal nature of human language and cognition came in to focus in the 1960s the idea of linguistic relativity fell out of favor. A 1969 study by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay showed that color terminology is subject to universal semantic constraints, and the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis was seen as completely discredited.

From the late 1980s a new school of linguistic relativity scholars have examined the effects of differences in linguistic categorization on cognition, finding broad support for weak versions of the hypothesis in experimental contexts. Effects of linguistic relativity have been shown particularly in the domain of spatial cognition and in the social use of language, but also in the field of color perception. Recent studies have shown that color perception is particularly prone to linguistic relativity effects when processed in the left brain hemisphere, suggesting that this brain

half relies more on language than the right one. Currently a balanced view of linguistic relativity is espoused by most linguists holding that language influences certain kinds of cognitive processes in non-trivial ways but that other processes are better seen as subject to universal factors. Current research is focused on exploring the ways in which language influences thought and determining to what extent. The principle of linguistic relativity and the relation between language and thought has also received attention in varying academic fields from philosophy to psychology and anthropology, and it has also inspired and colored works of fiction and the invention of constructed languages.

Conclusion

Language = knowledge

Knowledge = culture

So,

Language = culture

Both are the means of identity. Both denotes life style and both are dynamic

Language is the keystone to the culture. Language is the carrier and container of cultural information. Language expresses and symbolize cultural reality. Language is the primary means to the cultural transmission.