Language, Culture, and Society

Language, Culture, and Society
Learning Module No. 1

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Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

STUDENT
Name:
Student Number:
Program:
Section:
Home Address:
Email Address:
Contact Number:
PROFESSOR
Name: REX ANGELO GARCIA RIZAL
Academic Department: Department of Arts, Sciences, and Teacher Education
Consultation Schedule:
Email Address: [email protected]/[email protected]
Contact Number: 09171820191

LEARNING MODULE INFORMATION
I. Course Code ENGM201a/ENGM301a
II. Course Title LANGUAGE,CULTURE, AND SOCIETY
III. Module 1
Number
IV. Module Title LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY:
An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology
V. Overview of the This module includes the discussion and activities on the course
Module Language, Culture, and Society. This will make you think, reason out,
and relate your experiences on the selected topics this course has.
Originally, this course requires almost 25 lessons, however, given the
situation, I chose essential topics that will give you the core of this
course.
This module also includes some activities that will make you assess
yourself, your schema, and experiences that are building blocks to
understanding your language, your culture, and your society, and
how these three affect and influence you as in individual, a citizen,
and a future educator.
This module will give you a full panoramic view of how the three
essential components hone you upon conception up to this time. This
will help you prepare for the WONDERFUL WORLD OF TEACHING
where cultural, language, and societal diversity are highly regarded.
VI. Module This module will be focused on the introduction to this course, thus,
Outcomes outcomes will be measured based on your answers in all activities you
will accomplish. No other paper work for this module except the given
activities embedded in each lesson, so make sure that you will give
your best in accomplishing them.
VII. General In answering this module, you have to make sure that the activities are
Instructions well answered. Cursive writing is encouraged but NOT REQUIRED.

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Lesson 1: Defining and relating LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY
Language is the vehicle to transmit culture, transform and develop a society. It is also
believed that through language and communication, we can build bridges for the
betterment of the world, hence, as global teachers, we have to prepare ourselves for our
vital roles, that is, to use language and communication as building blocks towards
development and better world. To do so, deeper understanding of the roles of language,
culture, and society is at of paramount.
Language, Culture, and Society is a major course of BSE-ELE students where you have
to understand how language affects culture, how culture affects language, how language
affects society, how society affects language, how culture affects society, and how society
affects culture. This lesson will give you a good background on the interrelatedness and
interconnectedness of the three big concepts.
In this lesson, you will encounter two readings that will help you understand the
concepts. In the midst of pandemic, global teachers like you must be prepared for a more
diverse and problem-solving-centered virtual classrooms.
Lesson Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, you will be able to:
1. define the interrelatedness of the three core concepts of this course, Language,
Culture, and Society;
2. relate your personal experiences with the topic; and
3. use your gained knowledge in preparing yourself as a future global ELT.

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SUMMARY SHEET FOR LESSON 1:
Below is the table containing all activities in this lesson. The second column contains
the total/perfect score per activity. On the third column, you have to do self-assessment on
your accomplished activities. Remember, you have to be honest and fair in giving scores to
yourself. This will help you do your reflection in this lesson if you have been serious in
accomplishing this lesson or not. Please do not write anything on the last two (2) columns for
these are my columns to be filled out.
SELF-
TOTAL INSTRUCTOR’S FINAL
ACTIVITIES ASSESSMENT
SCORE COLUMN GRADE
RAW SCORE
Getting Started
5
A. Looking Back
B. Essay 5
C. Self-Assessment 5
D. Essay 5
Application 30
Assessment (True or False) 10
Enrichment
10
Essay #1
Essay #2 10
Total 80
Final Grade for Lesson 1

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Getting Started:
A. LOOKING BACK: Have you ever experienced talking to a friend or family, perhaps
your sibling/s, mother or father, and you did not both understand one another? Share
your story by writing it below.
Who were you talking

to?
What was the

scenario?
(time/place/situation)
What was the
conversation all
about?
Your story here:

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B. From the story you‘ve shared, what do you think happen in your discourse? Why do
you think there‘s misunderstanding in that scenario? What possible barrier (language,
cultural, societal) you both encountered?
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C. SELF-ASSESSMENT: Write everything you know about the following terms. Do not consult
dictionary or any resources. Your answers can be in bullet form. Please answer in
complete statements.
LANGUAGE
CULTURE
SOCIETY

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D. From your answers above, how do you think these three concepts relate to each
other?
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Discussion:
Language and culture are intertwined. A specific language normally brings up to a
particular gathering of individuals. At the point when you associate with another dialect, it
implies that you are additionally communicating with the way of life that communicates in
the language. You can't comprehend one's way of life without getting to its language
straightforwardly.
At the point when you get familiar with another dialect, it not just includes learning its
letters in order, the word plan and the guidelines of language, yet in addition finding out
about the particular society's traditions and conduct. When learning or showing a language,
it is significant that the way of life where the language has a place be referred to, on the
grounds that language is a lot of imbued in the way of life.

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Utilizing Paralanguage
Complex is one term that you can use to portray human correspondence since
paralanguage is utilized to send messages. Paralanguage is explicit to a culture, thusly the
correspondence with other ethnic gatherings can prompt misconceptions.
At the point when you experience childhood in a particular society, it is inescapable

to become familiar with the looks, signals and little changes in voice or tone and other
specialized devices to accentuate or adjust what you need to do or say. These particular
correspondence procedures of one culture are found out generally by impersonating and
watching individuals, at first from guardians and close family members and later from
companions and individuals outside the nearby family circle.
Non-verbal communication, which is otherwise called kinesics, is the most evident kind
of paralanguage. These are the stances, articulations and signals utilized as non-verbal
language. In any case, it is similarly conceivable to adjust the importance of different words
by changing the character or tone of the voice.
Homologous relationship of culture and language
The expression, language is culture and culture is language is regularly referenced

when language and culture are examined. This is on the grounds that the two have a
homologous albeit complex relationship. Language and culture grew together and affected
each other as they advanced. Utilizing this unique situation, Alfred L. Krober, a social
anthropologist from the US said that culture began when discourse was accessible, and from
that start, the enhancement of possibly one drove the other to grow further.
In the event that culture is a result of the associations of people, the demonstrations of
correspondence are their social signs inside a particular network. Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, a
savant from Italy whose work zeroed in on reasoning, semiotics and etymology said that a
discourse network is comprised of the apparent multitude of messages that were traded with
each other utilizing a given language, which is perceived by the whole society. Rossi-Landi
further included that little youngsters take in their language and culture from the general
public they were conceived in. During the time spent learning, they build up their
psychological capacities also.

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Influencing the way people think

On the off-chance that you know about the rule of etymological relativity, it says
that the manner in which people think about the world is impacted straightforwardly by the
language that the people use to look at it. Anthropologist-etymologist Edward Sapir of the
United States said that the language propensities for explicit gatherings of people assembled
this present reality. He further included that no two dialects are comparable so that they
would speak to one society. The world for every public is unique. In investigation, this implies
communicating in a language implies that the person is accepting a culture. Knowing
another culture, in view of this rule, is knowing its specific language. Correspondence is
expected to live the translations and portrayals of that world.
Transmission of culture and language

Language is learned, which means it can be culturally transmitted. Pre-school children
take on their first language from their exposure to random words they encounter in and out
of their homes. When they reach school age, they are taught either their first language or
another language. If it is the first language, the children are taught writing and reading, the
correct ways to construct sentences and how to use formal grammar. However, the initial
knowledge of the child about the essential structure and vocabulary of the first language
was learned before the child went to school.
Conversely, culture is transmitted in a large part, by language, through teaching.

Language is the reason why humans have histories that animals do not have. In the study of
animal behavior through the course of history, alterations to their behavior were the result of
the intervention of humans through domestication and other types of interference.
The culture of humans on the other hand is as different as the world‘s languages. They
are likely to change over time. In industrialized countries, the changes in the language are
more rapid. Culture is not learned by imitation but by oral instruction. There could be some
imitation, if the learner is still young. With language, methods of social control, products,
techniques and skills are explained. Spoken language offers a vast quantity of usable
information for the community. This helps to quicken new skill acquisition and the techniques
to adapt to new environments or altered circumstances.
The advent of writing increased the process of culture dissemination. The permanent
state of writing made it easier for information to be diffused. The process is further hastened
by the increase in literacy and the invention of printing.

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Modern techniques for fast communication transmission across the globe through
broadcasting and the presence of translation services around the world help make usable
knowledge to be accessible to people anywhere in the world. Thus, the world benefits from
the fast transference, availability and exchange of social, political, technological and
scientific knowledge.
Language, Society, and Culture
Society and culture influence the words that we speak, and the words that we speak
influence society and culture. Such a cyclical relationship can be difficult to understand, but
many of the examples throughout this chapter and examples from our own lives help
illustrate this point. One of the best ways to learn about society, culture, and language is to
seek out opportunities to go beyond our typical comfort zones. Studying abroad, for
example, brings many challenges that can turn into valuable lessons.
Although English used to employ formal (thou, thee) and informal pronouns (you),
today you can be used when speaking to a professor, a parent, or a casual acquaintance.
Other languages still have social norms and rules about who is to be referred to informally
and formally. My friend, as was typical in the German language, referred to his professor with
the formal pronoun ―Sie” but used the informal pronoun ―Du” with his fellow students since
they were peers. When the professor invited some of the American exchange students to
dinner, they didn‘t know they were about to participate in a cultural ritual that would
change the way they spoke to their professor from that night on. Their professor informed
them that they were going to ―dozen”, which meant they were going to now be able to
refer to her with the informal pronoun—an honor and sign of closeness for the American
students. As they went around the table, each student introduced himself or herself to the
professor using the formal pronoun, locked arms with her and drank (similar to the
champagne toast ritual at some wedding ceremonies), and reintroduced himself or herself
using the informal pronoun. For the rest of the semester, the American students still
respectfully referred to the professor with her title, which translated to ―Mrs. Doctor,‖ but used
informal pronouns, even in class, while the other students not included in the ceremony had
to continue using the formal. Given that we do not use formal and informal pronouns in
English anymore, there is no equivalent ritual to the German ―dozen”, but as we will learn
next, there are many rituals in English that may be just as foreign to someone else.

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Language and Social Context
We arrive at meaning through conversational interaction, which follows many social

norms and rules. As we‘ve already learned, rules are explicitly stated conventions (“Look at
me when I’m talking to you.”) and norms are implicit (saying you’ve got to leave before you
actually do to politely initiate the end to a conversation). To help conversations function
meaningfully, we have learned social norms and internalized them to such an extent that we
do not often consciously enact them. Instead, we rely on routines and roles (as determined
by social forces) to help us proceed with verbal interaction, which also helps determine how
a conversation will unfold. Our various social roles influence meaning and how we speak. For
example, a person may say, ―As a longtime member of this community…‖ or ―As a first-
generation college student…‖ Such statements cue others into the personal and social
context from which we are speaking, which helps them better interpret our meaning.
One social norm that structures our communication is turn taking. People need to feel
like they are contributing something to an interaction, so turn taking is a central part of how
conversations play out. Although we sometimes talk at the same time as others or interrupt
them, there are numerous verbal and nonverbal cues, almost like a dance, that are
exchanged between speakers that let people know when their turn will begin or end.
Conversations do not always neatly progress from beginning to end with shared
understanding along the way. There is a back and forth that is often verbally managed
through rephrasing (“Let me try that again,”) and clarification (“Does that make
sense?”)David Crystal, How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning,
and Languages Live or Die (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2005), 268.
We also have certain units of speech that facilitate turn taking. Adjacency pairs are
related communication structures that come one after the other (adjacent to each other) in
an interaction. For example, questions are followed by answers, greetings are followed by
responses, compliments are followed by a thank you, and informative comments are
followed by an acknowledgment. These are the skeletal components that make up our
verbal interactions, and they are largely social in that they facilitate our interactions. When
these sequences don‘t work out, confusion, miscommunication, or frustration may result, as
you can see in the following sequences:

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Travis: ―How are you?‖

Wanda: ―Did someone tell you I‘m sick?‖
Darrell: ―I just wanted to let you know the meeting has been moved to three o‘clock.‖
Leigh: ―I had cake for breakfast this morning.‖
Some conversational elements are highly scripted or ritualized, especially the

beginning and end of an exchange and topic changes. Conversations often begin with a
standard greeting and then proceed to ―safe‖ exchanges about things in the immediate
field of experience of the communicators (a comment on the weather or noting something
going on in the scene). At this point, once the ice is broken, people can move on to other
more content-specific exchanges. Once conversing, before we can initiate a topic change,
it is a social norm that we let the current topic being discussed play itself out or continue until
the person who introduced the topic seems satisfied. We then usually try to find a relevant
tie-in or segue that acknowledges the previous topic, in turn acknowledging the speaker,
before actually moving on. Changing the topic without following such social conventions
might indicate to the other person that you were not listening or are simply rude.
Social norms influence how conversations start and end and how speakers take turns to
keep the conversation going.
Ending a conversation is similarly complex. Surely, we‘ve all been in a situation where
we are ―trapped‖ in a conversation that we need or want to get out of. Just walking away
or ending a conversation without engaging in socially acceptable ―leave-taking behaviors‖
would be considered a breach of social norms. Topic changes are often places where
people can leave a conversation, but it is still routine for us to give a special reason for
leaving, often in an apologetic tone (whether we mean it or not). Generally though,
conversations come to an end through the cooperation of both people, as they offer and
recognize typical signals that a topic area has been satisfactorily covered or that one or
both people need to leave. It is customary in the United States for people to say they have
to leave before they actually do and for that statement to be dismissed or ignored by the
other person until additional leave-taking behaviors are enacted. When such cooperation is
lacking, an awkward silence or abrupt ending can result, and as we‘ve already learned, US
Americans are not big fans of silence. Silence is not viewed the same way in other cultures,
which leads us to our discussion of cultural context.

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Language and Cultural Context
Culture isn‘t solely determined by a person‘s native language or nationality. It‘s true
that languages vary by country and region and that the language we speak influences our
realities, but even people who speak the same language experience cultural differences
because of their various intersecting cultural identities and personal experiences. We have a
tendency to view our language as a whole more favorably than other languages. Although
people may make persuasive arguments regarding which languages are more pleasing to
the ear or difficult or easy to learn than others, no one language enables speakers to
communicate more effectively than another.
From birth we are socialized into our various cultural identities. As with the social
context, this acculturation process is a combination of explicit and implicit lessons. A child in
Colombia, which is considered a more collectivist country in which people value group
membership and cohesion over individualism, may not be explicitly told, ―You are a member
of a collectivistic culture, so you should care more about the family and community than
yourself.‖ This cultural value would be transmitted through daily actions and through
language use. Just as babies acquire knowledge of language practices at an astonishing
rate in their first two years of life, so do they acquire cultural knowledge and values that are
embedded in those language practices. At nine months old, it is possible to distinguish
babies based on their language. Even at this early stage of development, when most babies
are babbling and just learning to recognize but not wholly reproduce verbal interaction
patterns, a Colombian baby would sound different from a Brazilian baby, even though
neither would actually be using words from their native languages of Spanish and
Portuguese.
The actual language we speak plays an important role in shaping our reality.
Comparing languages, we can see differences in how we are able to talk about the world.
In English, we have the words grandfather and grandmother, but no single word that
distinguishes between a maternal grandfather and a paternal grandfather. But in Swedish,
there‘s a specific word for each grandparent: morfar is mother‘s father, farfar is father‘s
father, farmor is father‘s mother, and mormor is mother‘s mother. In this example, we can see
that the words available to us, based on the language we speak, influence how we talk
about the world due to differences in and limitations of vocabulary. The notion that
language shapes our view of reality and our cultural patterns is best represented by the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Although some scholars argue that our reality is determined by our

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language, we will take a more qualified view and presume that language plays a central
role in influencing our realities but doesn‘t determine them.
Culturally influenced differences in language and meaning can lead to some

interesting encounters, ranging from awkward to informative to disastrous. In terms of
awkwardness, you have likely heard stories of companies that failed to exhibit
communication competence in their naming and/or advertising of products in another
language. For example, in Taiwan, Pepsi used the slogan ―Come Alive with Pepsi‖ only to
later find out that when translated it meant, ―Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the
dead.
Similarly, American Motors introduced a new car called the Matador to the Puerto
Rico market only to learn that Matador means ―killer,‖ which wasn‘t very comforting to
potential buyers. At a more informative level, the words we use to give positive
reinforcement are culturally relative. In the United States and England, parents commonly
positively and negatively reinforce their child‘s behavior by saying, ―Good girl‖ or ―Good
boy.‖ There isn‘t an equivalent for such a phrase in other European languages, so the usage
in only these two countries has been traced back to the puritan influence on beliefs about
good and bad behavior. In terms of disastrous consequences, one of the most publicized
and deadliest cross-cultural business mistakes occurred in India in 1984. Union Carbide, an
American company, controlled a plant used to make pesticides. The company
underestimated the amount of cross-cultural training that would be needed to allow the
local workers, many of whom were not familiar with the technology or language/jargon used
in the instructions for plant operations to do their jobs. This lack of competent
communication led to a gas leak that immediately killed more than two thousand people
and over time led to more than five hundred thousand injuries.
Customs and Norms
Social norms are culturally relative. The words used in politeness rituals in one culture
can mean something completely different in another. For example, thank you in American
English acknowledges receiving something (a gift, a favor, a compliment), in British English it
can mean ―yes‖ similar to American English‘s yes, please, and in French merci can mean
―no‖ as in ―no, thank you. Additionally, what is considered a powerful language style varies
from culture to culture. Confrontational language, such as swearing, can be seen as

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powerful in Western cultures, even though it violates some language taboos, but would be
seen as immature and weak in Japan.
Gender also affects how we use language, but not to the extent that most people
think. Although there is a widespread belief that men are more likely to communicate in a
clear and straightforward way and women are more likely to communicate in an emotional
and indirect way, a meta-analysis of research findings from more than two hundred studies
found only small differences in the personal disclosures of men and women. Men and
women‘s levels of disclosure are even more similar when engaging in cross-gender
communication, meaning men and woman are more similar when speaking to each other
than when men speak to men or women speak to women. This could be due to the
internalized pressure to speak about the other gender in socially sanctioned ways, in
essence reinforcing the stereotypes when speaking to the same gender but challenging
them in cross-gender encounters. Researchers also dispelled the belief that men interrupt
more than women do, finding that men and women interrupt each other with similar
frequency in cross-gender encounters. These findings, which state that men and women
communicate more similarly during cross-gender encounters and then communicate in
more stereotypical ways in same-gender encounters, can be explained with communication
accommodation theory.
Additional readings on the topic:

Reading Number 1: Is there any correlation between language, culture and society?
Reference: https://syawallina17studyyo.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/is-there-any-correlation-
between-language-culture-and-society-explain/
I think, language, culture and society have a correlation because language is an

instrument or embodiment of culture that used by human to communicate with each other,
either through writing, oral, or movement (sign language), with the aim of conveying the
mind intent or willingness to others. There may be many cultures in one society by language
diversity; society is a number of people who have a settled relationship and the same
interest; culture is everything that is learned and experienced socially by the members of a
society, so the culture is not only the accumulation of habits and code of conduct but a
system organized behavior. Culture embraces all aspects and terms in human life, be it a
material or non-product material. There may be many cultures in one society by language
diversity.

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Relationship between language and society

Language and society are two things meet at one point, it means that between
language and society will not be separated. Language as arbitrary symbol system sound
that used by members of the community as a means of communication, interaction, and
identify yourself. Language so firmly attached, fused soul in each speaker in the community.
The function of language as an instrument to do the interaction and communication to
convey thoughts, ideas, concepts or also feeling in society life. Type of relationship between
language and society is an association between certain forms of language, called the
variation or dialect diversity with the use of function in society. For examples, we use
standard language in education activity, we use non-standard language in non-formal
activity, we use a literature language in our art activity, and so on. Sociolinguistic examines
the relationship between language of society which relate two areas those we can study
them separately, it is formal structure language by linguistic and structure community by
sociology.
Relationship between language and culture
Language is a part of the culture, so the relationship between language and culture is
subordinate relationship, which the languages are under the cultural sphere. Language and
culture are the two systems that attached in human life. If culture as a system that regulates
the human interaction in society, the language will be a system that serves as a means of
the interaction ongoing.
In conclusion, languages are closely in the life community, and they used by people to
communicate, whether they are in sign form, written, or oral. Then, contrary to human
nature, they cannot do society without languages. That might be said that human as same
as animals if there is no language in society, so there is a relationship between language and
society. Because of that relation, there is culture. It develops because of the public
speaking/people speak to each other, public thinking/people who think to create
something that becomes values in society, that is culture. So, society life cannot be
separated from language system and culture system.

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Reading Number 2: Is there any correlation between language, culture and society?
Reference: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-relationship-between-language-society-
and-culture
Language can bind people together like nothing else, even if it is imposed from one
culture to another—just think of the worldwide popularity of Hollywood movies in English, or
of the connection that nations in the pan-Arab world still feel with one another despite
serious ethnic, political, and religious differences. I doubt we Americans would have allied
ourselves so quickly with Britain in World War II if we didn‘t speak the same language. Even a
written language can bind people who speak differently, which helps explain the success of
China as a nation, where the written language is commonly read among people with very
different spoken languages, and can be generally understood even by the Japanese. I
guess I‘m saying that a common language, especially a common first language, adheres
cultures together in a way that is even stronger than race, nationality, or shared history.
On the dark side of this equation, the purveyors of cultural genocide have known the
power of language for centuries as well, which explains the attempts by the Romans, Greeks,
Arabs, English, Spanish, French, etc., each in their own time of world mastery, to block out
the languages of the nations they conquered as a method of social control. This doesn‘t
even have to be a colonial problem—Franco and Mussolini both attempted to unify their
fascist nations by eliminating regional dialects and languages and pushing for a unified
Spanish and Italian, respectively. Even in the United States, most Native Americans were
forced to go to schools until fairly recently where their native languages were banned.
This method of control has nearly or completely wiped out dozens if not hundreds of
languages in the past century or two, including Basque, Manx, Cornish, Venetian, Mohican,
Eyak, Tillamook, and many more—often because well-meaning leaders believed that having
splintered bands of folks not speaking the main lingua franca would hurt the nation at large.
In many cases, the attempts to eliminate a language has gathered societies together
because it lets them know full-well their culture is under attack. And thus there are efforts
underway to save Gaelic in Ireland, to save Basque in Spain, to save Navajo in the Southern
United States, and to save Hebrew all over the world—which was actually a dead language
and was revived! So language not only binds cultures, but the desire to preserve a language
promotes the preservation of a society, and vice versa.
Of course, there‘s a philosophical bent to your question as well, and I think this is the
wellspring from whence all the lingual genocide comes from—it IS true that people who think

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in one language will literally be incapable of thinking quite the same as another people of a
different language. If we don‘t have the words for a concept, we don‘t give that concept
primary importance in our reasoning about things. And if we DO have a concept baked into
the language, we might easily think that it‘s a natural state of affairs that doesn‘t need to be
proved or argued.
One example I think of a lot is how different languages talk about the past. Many
cultures don‘t have as many verb tenses for past experiences as English or Romance
languages do, and for these cultures, there seems to be less of a tendency to dwell on the
past. On the other hand, English doesn‘t have a verbal concept of the common distinction
in many African cultures between the recently departed (who have friends and relatives
alive who still remember them) and the ancient dead who are only remembered in stories
and books—and so our understanding of the past is not as rich as theirs, because we don‘t
have a common fulcrum around which to distinguish the recent past and its live witness
accounts from what came before.
Of course, sometimes having fewer words for a thing can lead to a richer experience
than having too many words. Consider our recent battles in Western culture over
transgendered folks or those who do not want to identify as one sex or another. For many
folks in our culture, this insistence on abandoning gender is a crazy fantasy, since it‘s
―known‖ that people are essentially male and female. But this is in some ways a limitation of
our language—Mandarin, for example, does not gender most words, and does not have a
―he‖ or ―she,‖ so everyone is just ―s/he.‖ On the other side of the equation, many romance
languages designate every noun as feminine and masculine, which can potentially freeze a
certain action or occupation as ―women‘s work‖ in the minds of speakers simply because,
say, the word for ―broom‖ or ―cook‖ might have a feminine ending. English has a few words,
like ―stewardess,‖ that have feminized endings, but for the most part it‘s easier in English to
think of occupations as gender neutral because we‘re not forced to specify. Clearly the
words used in one language can certainly enforce stereotypes that wouldn‘t be present in
another.
In fact many languages enforce class structures as well. In English we all know that a
job interview or a court case will require more formal language than a convivial meeting
with friends, but many languages have specific tenses and words you only use with your
grandmothers, or only use with your social betters or inferiors. Many of the things we now
consider racial slurs or offensive terms fall into this category—they at one time were not
meant so much to offend as to subtly degrade, and put a person ―in their place,‖ enforcing

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a lifetime of social stratification. In English, we‘ve been fighting against this kind of language
for a while now, and it kind of works. Much of modern PC culture may seem a little weird or
forced at first (―do we really need to call the stewardess a ―flight attendant‖ or call someone
―differently abled‖ rather than ―crippled?‖) but this ―lessening‖ of language is actually
helpful in removing the power of language to limit people‘s chances to exceed those roles.
Changing the language is changing the culture.
In short, languages bind cultures together, but they also can limit our abilities to think
about things. The good part is, it only takes about a generation to change language
considerably, and we‘re slowly realizing that because of the limits of language, having a
world with many languages is a better solution to new and profound thoughts than having a
world with just a few. If I were having kids, I‘d try to get them to learn as many languages as
possible, so they could have two or three different cultural systems of thought at their
disposal, rather than just the one.

19
Application:
For this part, I want you to observe or be engaged in a discourse (written or oral)
where you can spot misunderstanding/misinterpretation between/among the people in the
discourse. Analyze the reason/s of misunderstanding/misinterpretation and expound your
claim. Identify whether the reason/s fall/s under LANGUAGE, CULTURE, or SOCIETY. Use the
given space below and/or the space at the back of the paper if necessary.
LANGUAGE
CULTURE
SOCIETY

20
Summary of the Lesson:
The interrelatedness and interconnectedness of the three concepts, language,

culture, and society, is undeniable. This lesson gave us what you need to know as future ELT
or English Language Teacher, that is, “what you say is who you are and what you act is what
you say that reflects who you really are”. May this lesson gave you the opportunity to
understand and be more sensitive to diverse languages and dialects of communities, for
language brings in culture that can make and/or unmake the society, the culture, and the
language itself.
A tip from Sir Rex: For the past four (4) years of teaching the English Language, I have
encountered lots of problems and challenges as to how to teach the correct grammar,
pronunciation, etc., but that did not push me into my limits, instead, it gives me more
learning opportunities with my students for through their language, I can learn their culture
and identify what society they belong to. Do not ever give up loving this noblest profession,
specifically our major, for this will bring you into the world of understanding yourself, your
students, and the society we belong to, and through that, we can make remarkable
difference to our students, the FUTURE HOPE OF THIS NATION.
If we are to plot these three concepts into a Venn Diagram, we can see that what‘s at
the center of the diagram is YOU, because you have the language, the culture, and society
in your hands. You have the full grasps on how to use language to maintain, sustain, and
transmit our culture; You have the power to empower the language transform our culture
and our society into being a dynamic, proactive, and nurturing. At the end of the day, it will
always about YOU. Choose to be the instrument of transformation of language, culture, and
society not only for yourself, but also for your future students.

21
Assessment:
TRUE or FALSE: Each item below contains two (2) statements that make each number
two (2) points. You have to identify whether the given statements are TRUE or FALSE. Use the
legend below in answering this. Write your answers on the space provided.
Legend:
TT – first and second statements are TRUE
FF – first and second statements are FALSE
TF – first statement is TRUE and the second statement is FALSE
FT – first statement is FALSE and the second statement is TRUE
ANSWER # STATEMENTS
Anthropologist-etymologist Edward Sapir of the United States said that the
language propensities for explicit gatherings of people assembled this present
1 reality.
He further included that two dialects are comparable so that they would
speak to one society.
Language is culture and culture is language is regularly referenced when
language and society are examined.
2
Culture is a result of the associations of people, the demonstrations of
correspondence are their social signs inside a particular network.
Language is transmitted, which means it can be culturally learned.
3 Conversely, culture is transmitted in a large part, by language, through
observing.
In English, we have the words grandfather and grandmother, but no single
word that distinguishes between a maternal grandfather and a paternal
grandfather.
4
But in Swedish, there‘s a specific word for each grandparent: morfar is
mother‘s father, farfar is father‘s father, farmor is father‘s mother,
and mormor is mother‘s mother.
Language is a part of the culture, so the relationship between language and
culture is subordinate relationship, which the languages are under the cultural
5 sphere.
Language is at the center of a paradigm if we are to plot the three concepts
on a Venn Diagram.

22
Enrichment Activity:
Essay: Answer the following questions by citing key ideas from the discussion part and
provide practical situations and/or scenarios parallel to your answer.
1. How does this lesson help you become an effective and efficient global English
Language teacher in the future?
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23
2. How do the overlapping concepts/interconnected concepts of ―Language, Culture,

and Society‖ work/manifest in a classroom setting? What would be your role as a
teacher?
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References/Attributions:
https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/language-and
culture/#:~:text=Language%20and%20culture%20are%20intertwined,without%20acce
ssing%20its%20language%20directly
https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/a-primer-on-communication-studies/s03-04
-language-society-and-culture.html
Salzamann, Z., Stanlaw, J., & Adachi, N. (2012). Language, Culture, and Society: An
introduction to linguistic anthropology: Fifth edition. Boulder, Colorado: Westview
Press.

24
Lesson 2: Language, Culture, and Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology
In this lesson, we have two disciplines that, at first glance, might appear to be very
different. Stereotypically, people think of anthropologists in pith helmets out in a jungle
someplace uncovering bizarre tribal customs. Likewise, they imagine a linguist as someone
who can speak a dozen of languages fluently, or else as a scholar poring over ancient texts
deciphering secret hieroglyphic messages. In reality, these two are fields are hardly like that,
but that does not make them any less exciting. This lesson is about how those people who
call themselves LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGISTS who study the universal phenomenon of
human language.
Lesson Objectives:
1. distinguish whether Filipino language, specifically Tagalog dialect, is a primitive
language;
2. evaluate themselves as to how are they going to preserve our native language
while promoting globalization in their own future English language classroom; and
3. draw their own paradigm of Language, Culture, and Society utilizing their
knowledge from the first and second lessons.

25
Summary Sheet for Lesson 2

SELF-
SCORE COLUMN GRADE
RAW SCORE
Getting Started 5
Application
10
Essay 1
Essay 2 10
Essay 3 10
Assessment
5
Essay 1
Essay 2 5
Essay 3 5
Enrichment Activity 20
Total 70

26
Getting Started: Answer the question comprehensively.
Why should we study language? Give at least five (5) reasons, then expound.
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27
Discussion
The question posted above is hardly a rhetorical question. Most people never formally
study language and they seem to get along fine. But do they? Have you ever been
misinterpreted by the people you are talking to because you are not on the same plate?
Why do we need lawyers to translate a document written in a language that all parties
share? Why do doctors have to use plain language whenever they talk to their patients?
At school, we are confronted with language problems the moment we enter the
room. Why can‘t we understand Shakespeare if he did use the English language? Why do
we use ―I‖ and ―you‖ instead of ―me‖ and ―you‖? Some problems, such as the subtle sexism
found in some textbooks, maybe beyond our everyday psychological threshold. Problems of
ethnicity and community-identity can be seen in such controversial issues as BILINGUAL
EDUCATION or THE TEACHING OF EBONICS.
Language is involved in a wide variety of human situations, perhaps every situation. If

something permeates every aspect of human life and is so complex that we cannot fathom
its influence, we should study it. The scientific study of language is one of the keys to
understanding much of human behavior.
The study of language will not in itself solve all the world‘s problems. It is useful enough
to make people aware that these problems of language exist and that they are widespread
and complex. Besides being of intellectual interest, then, the study of language offers a
special vantage point of ―linguistic sensitization‖ (Crystal 1971:35) to problems that are of
concern to everyone, regardless of discipline and background.
MODERN MYTHS CONCERNING LANGUAGES

This may be a good place to provide information about languages in general to set
some basic matters straight. Every human being speaks a language, but what people think
about languages—particularly those about which they know little or nothing—is quite
another matter. Consider the following statements. Which ones do you think are true?
Modern Myths Concerning Languages

- Almost everywhere in the world, everyone is monolingual or monodialectal, just as in
America.

28
- Spelling in English is basically phonetic and governed by clear rules.

- Most writing systems in the world are based on some kind of alphabet.
- If you really want to learn Spanish, don‘t take a class in school. It is better to just go, say,
to Mexico for a month or two.
- Some languages are naturally harder to learn than others.
- Some languages are naturally more ―primitive‖ than others.
- Language itself is not ambiguous; it is people‘s misinterpreting things that causes
problems.
- Some dialects are, well . . . stupid, demonstrating that a person is uneducated.
- The use of language somehow reflects one‘s intelligence.
- People who are fluent in another language may not have complete mastery of their
native language.
- The ability to learn a foreign language is a special kind of skill that some of us have, and
others don‘t.
- As our grade school teachers taught us, if you want to get it right, go to the dictionary!
- People who use double negatives (―I don‘t need no anthropology classes‖) are really
not thinking logically.
- It is easier to learn Chinese if you come from a Chinese family background than from a
European family.
- Languages seem to have special characteristics or personalities: for example, French is
romantic; German is scientific; Russian is soulful; Spanish is hot-b looded; Italian is
emotional; Chinese is simple and straightforward; Japanese is mysterious, spiritual, and
Zen-li ke; English is logical; Greek is philosophical, and so on.
- All Native Americans generally speak the same language; that‘s why they could
communicate with each other using sign language (like in the movies). The more words
you know, the better you know your language.
Most anthropologists and linguists would say that all of these statements are suspect, if
not outright wrong. Let us briefly consider a few of these misconceptions concerning
languages in more detail because they appear to be widespread, even among those who
are otherwise well educated and knowledgeable. These misconceptions we can refer to as
myths, in the sense of being unfounded, fictitious, and false beliefs or ideas.

29
Primitive Languages . . . Or Not?
The most common misconception is the belief that unwritten languages are
―primitive,‖ whatever that may mean. Those who think that ―primitive‖ languages still exist
invariably associate them with societies that laypeople refer to as ―primitive‖—especially the
very few remaining bands of hunter-gatherers. There are of course differences in cultural
complexity between hunting-and- collecting bands and small tribal societies, on the one
hand, and modern industrial societies, on the other, but no human beings today are
―primitive‖ in the sense of being less biologically evolved than others. One would be justified
in talking about a primitive language only if referring to the language of, for example, the
extinct forerunner of Homo sapiens of a half million years ago. Even though we do not know
on direct evidence the nature of the system of oral communication of Homo erectus, it is
safe to assume that it must have been much simpler languages than of the past several
thousand years and therefore primitive in that it was rudimentary, or represented an earlier
stage of development.
Why certain languages are mistakenly thought to be primitive? There are several
reasons. Some people consider other languages ugly or ―primitive sounding‖ if those
languages make use of sounds or sound combinations they find indistinct or ―inarticulate‖
because the sounds are greatly different from those of the languages they themselves
speak. Such a view is based on the ethnocentric attitude that the characteristics of one‘s
own language are obviously superior. But words that seem unpronounceable to speakers of
one language—and are therefore considered obscure, indistinct, or even grotesque—are
easily acquired by even the youngest native speakers of the language in which they occur.
The Grammar of Non-Western Languages

Another myth has something to do with grammar. Some think that languages of
peoples whose societies are not urbanized and industrialized have ―little grammar‖,
meaning that such languages have few, if any, of the sort of grammar rules students learn in
school. According to this misconception, members of simple societies use language in rather
random fashion, without definite pattern. To put it differently, GRAMMAR in the sense of rules
governing the proper use of cases, tenses, moods, aspects, and other grammatical
categories is erroneously thought to be characteristic of ―civilized‖ languages only. Once
again, nothing could be further from the truth. Some languages have less ―grammar‖ than

30
others, but the degree of grammatical complexity is not a measure of how effective a
particular language is.
What sorts of grammars, then, characterize languages spoken by members of tribal

societies? Some of these languages have a fairly large and complicated grammatical
apparatus, whereas others are less grammatically complex—a diversity similar to that found
in Indo- European languages. Edward Sapir‘s description of the morphology of Takelma,
based on material collected in 1906, takes up 238 pages (Sapir 1922). In Takelma, the now
extinct language spoken at one time in southwestern Oregon, verbs were particularly highly
inflected, making use of prefixes, suffixes, infixes, vowel changes, consonant changes, and
reduplication (functional repetition of a part of a word). Every verb had forms for six tense-m
odes, including potential (―I can . . . ‖ or ―I could . . . ‖), inferential (―it seems that . . . ‖ or ―I
presume that . . . ‖), and present and future imperatives (the future imperative expressing a
command to be carried out at some stated or implied time in the future). Among the other
grammatical categories and forms marked in verbs were person, number, voice (active or
passive), conditional, locative, instrumental, aspect (denoting repeated, continuing, and
other types of temporal activity), and active and passive participles. Sapir‘s description of
verb morphology fills more than 147 pages—yet is not to be taken as exhaustive. Although
the brief characterization here is far from representative of Takelma verb morphology, it
clearly indicates that Takelma grammar was anything but simple. A similar and more
detailed demonstration of morphological complexity could easily be provided for hundreds
of other so- called primitive languages. Vocabulary Deficiencies?
When it comes to the vocabulary of languages, is it true, as some suppose, that the
vocabularies of so- called primitive languages are too small and inadequate to account for
the nuances of the physical and social universes of their speakers? Here the answer is
somewhat more complicated. Because the vocabulary of a language serves only the
members of the society who speak it, the question to be asked should be: Is a particular
vocabulary sufficient to serve the sociocultural needs of those who use the language? When
put like this, it follows that the language associated with a relatively simple culture would
have a smaller vocabulary than the language of a complex society.

31
Lexical specialization in nonscientific domains is of course to be found in complex

societies as well. The Germans who live in Munich are known to enjoy their beer;
accordingly, the terminology for the local varieties of beer is quite extensive. Per Hage
(1972) defined ten ―core‖ terms for Munich beers according to strength, color, fizziness, and
aging. But when local connoisseurs also wish to account for the degree of clarity and the
Munich brewery that produced a particular beer, the full list now exceeds seventy terms.
Such a discriminating classification of local beers is likely to impress even the most
experienced and enthusiastic American beer drinker.
However, even though no languages spoken today may be labeled primitive. This
does not mean that all languages are the same, do all things in the same way, or are
equally influential in the modern transnational world. The linguistic anthropologist Dell Hymes
claims that languages are not functionally equivalent because the role of speech varies
from one society to the next. One of his examples is the language of the Mezquital Otomi,
who live in poverty in one of the arid areas of Mexico. At the time of Hymes‘s writing, most of
these people were monolingual, speaking only Otomi, their native language. Even though
they accepted the outside judgment of their language as inferior to Spanish, they
maintained Otomi and consequently were able to preserve their culture, but at a price.
Lack of proficiency in Spanish, or knowledge of Otomi only, isolated the people from the
national society and kept them from improving their lot. According to Hymes, no known
languages are primitive, and all “have achieved the middle status [of full languages but not]
the advanced status [of] world languages and some others. . . . [But though] all languages
are potentially equal . . . and hence capable of adaptation to the needs of a complex
industrial civilization,” only certain languages have actually done so (Hymes 1961:77).
These languages are more successful than others not because they are structurally
more advanced, but because they happen to be associated with societies in which
language is the basis of literature, education, science, and commerce.

32
Application
1. Are all languages the same? Why or why not?
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2. How does this discussion help you to being culturally, linguistically, and social
linguistically aware and sensitive ELT?
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3. How will your knowledge from this lesson help you preserve our native language while
promoting globalization in your own classroom in the future?
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33
Summary of the Lesson

To say, however, that some languages may be considered more successful than
others must not be taken as justifying linguistic profiling—that is, judging the worth of persons
on the basis of their speech. This may happen (and is happening) whenever one of two (or
several) languages spoken in a particular area of the world is thought to have more prestige
than another. Such valuation may easily lead to language prejudice and result in an
irrational attitude of superiority toward an individual, a group, or a population using that
language. And strange as it may seem, language prejudice can exist even in situations in
which two (or more) languages in question have equally long histories and distinguished
literary traditions. A case in point may be the attitude in the eastern United States of some
white Americans toward Puerto Ricans. The use of ―good‖ English (whatever ―good‖ may
mean in this context) is associated by these white Americans with political and economic
prestige, but Spanish (or English, the second language of the Puerto Ricans, if spoken with a
decided accent and grammatical mistakes) is equated with poverty, a lower- class status,
lower intelligence, and the like. In other words, languages, dialects, choice of words, and
accents become the means by which people are classified and then treated accordingly.
Linguistic prejudice and racial prejudice are close relatives.
A tip from Sir Rex: You will surely experience in your class cultural and linguistic diversity.
Make that as your starting point to make your class even more interesting. Let them share
their language and culture but do not forget to relate that in your subject matter. Through
that, your students will gradually understand diversity and acceptance. If you have
achieved that, then you can say that you have contributed something remarkable in the
profession, in the country, and in INTERNATIONALIZATION.

34
Assessment
1. Explain the relationship between humans and their languages from this perspective:
“The scientific study of language is one of the keys to understanding much of human
behavior.”
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2. Do you consider the ―tagalog‖ dialect as primitive? Expound.

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35
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3. As future ELT in the Philippines, how will you teach your students the value of
BILINGUALISM?
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36
If you are to do the paradigm of LANGUAGE, CULTURE, and SOCIETY that can
demonstrate the relationship between and among the concepts, what would it be? Draw
your answer inside the box.
Salzamann, Z., Stanlaw, J., & Adachi, N. (2012). Language, culture, and society: An
Press.

37
Lesson 3: ANTHROPOLOGY, LINGUISTICS, AND LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY
As a teacher, do you believe that understanding your students‘ language and their
immediate environment is at of paramount in determining your teaching styles and
methodology for a more effective and efficient teacher? Do you believe that your students
are the end results of their immediate environment and institutions in the society?
As a teacher, keeping and considering the profile of your students in drafting your
lessons will be helpful in achieving the your goals and objectives in each of your lessons, thus,
this lesson will give you a good opportunity to understand the specific roles of anthropology
and linguistics in the teaching and learning process.
Lesson Objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
1. have a recall on your schema about linguistics and anthropology;
2. define the line between and among linguistics, anthropology, and linguistic
anthropology; and
3. relate these concepts to your future profession.

38

SELF-
SCORE COLUMN GRADE
RAW SCORE
Getting Started 10
Application 40
Assessment 10
Enrichment Activity 10
Total 70

39
Getting Started
Complete the given table by writing your thoughts/schema about Linguistics/Linguists
and Anthropology/Anthropologists. What do they do? What are their concerns?
LINGUISTICS/LINGUISTS ANTHROPOLOGY/ANTHROPOLOGISTS

40
Discussion
Another discipline that also focuses on uniquely human attributes is linguistics, the
scientific study of language. Linguistics does not refer to the study of a particular language
for the purpose of learning to speak it; rather, it refers to the analytical study of language,
any language, to reveal its structure—the different kinds of language units (its sounds,
smallest meaningful parts of words, and so on)—and the rules according to which these units
are put together to produce stretches of speech. There is a division of labor, then, between
linguists and linguistic anthropologists. The interest of the linguist is primarily in language
structure, whereas the interest of the linguistic anthropologist is in speech use and the
relations that exist between language, on the one hand, and society and culture, on the
other. As for the prerequisite training, the linguist does not need to study anthropology to
become fully proficient in linguistics; a linguistic anthropologist, in contrast, must have some
linguistic sophistication and acquire the basic skills of linguistic analysis to be able to do
significant research in linguistic anthropology.
A terminological note is appropriate here. Although anthropological linguistics has

frequently been employed to refer to the subfield of anthropology otherwise known as
linguistic anthropology, and a respected journal exists under that name (Anthropological
Linguistics), the term linguistic anthropology is to be preferred, as Karl V. Teeter argued some
years ago (1964). Briefly, if anthropology is the study of humanity, and language is one of the
most characteristic features of humankind, then the study of language is an obvious and
necessary aspect of anthropology as a whole. To modify the noun linguistics by the
adjective anthropological is clearly redundant, because even though members of all
animal species communicate, so far as is known no other species uses anything comparable
to human language. Only if, say, members of the cat family (Felidae) or of the class of birds
(Aves) had something like human speech (not just some system of communication, no
matter how intricate) would it make sense to speak of anthropological linguistics to
distinguish it from some such field of study as felid or avian linguistics (that is, the study of the
language of cats or birds). As we have already seen, there are several subfields of
anthropology; just as the subfield concerned with culture is referred to as cultural
anthropology, the one concerned with language is aptly referred to as linguistic
anthropology. This is the term used throughout this lesson: it states exactly what the subfield is
about—the study of language (or speech) within the framework of anthropology.

41
Others, however, have been quite adamant about these apparently picayune
differences in terminology, which to the uninitiated would seem to matter little. Dell Hymes
(2012), for example, argued that there were political and academic consequences to these
choices of words. Hymes said it was important to be clear that the work discussed here was
not just a kind of linguistics that anthropologists decided to do, but rather an integral part of
the anthropological paradigm. But in the 1960s, the formalist study of grammar and
language, as advocated by Noam Chomsky and his followers, came to dominate much of
all intellectual thought (as we will see in Chapter 4). Chomsky and others stressed the notion
of linguistic competence—the underlying knowledge and ability a person has for a
language, regardless of his or her actual manifestation—or performance of that language in
a social context at any given time. But to Hymes and others it was exactly this
communicative ability of language to produce results in social life that held the most
interesting problems and prompted the most important questions. Communicative
competence and the social life of language, then, was what anthropologists should be
studying, and the way to best describe this activity was to use the cover term linguistic
anthropology.
Methods of Linguistic Anthropology

What linguistic anthropology is concerned about with are the consequences of the
process that led to language. Because linguistic anthropologists try to view language from
the very broad base of anthropology, their research interests are correspondingly
comprehensive: from communication among the primates to language origins to structural
characteristics of language to non-verbal types of communication to language in social
context, and so on – too many fully enumerate here. If the study of language is the main
concern of linguistic anthropologists, then how does ANTHROPOLOGY differ from
LINGUISTICS?
Contrasting Linguistics with Linguistic Anthropology

Linguistics is the study of language. This term does not refer to the study of a particular
language or languages for the purpose of learning to speak them; rather, it refers to the
analytical study of language, any language, to reveal its structure and the rules according
to which these units are put together to produce stretches of speech while Linguistic
anthropology is a study of language in its biological and sociocultural contexts.

42
The term society is frequently used almost interchangeably with the term culture, and
the compound word ―sociocultural‖ points out their interconnection. There is a fine
distinction between society and culture, and linguistic anthropologists deal with aspects of
both concepts: when they study and describe the communicative links between individual
members of a group and between groups within a society, and when they study and
describe traditional learned behavior (culture) and how it relates to the values of the
members of a group, their linkages with language are sociocultural.
Read and analyze the given examples below. Guess which statements are from
linguists or linguistic anthropologists.
a. In Javanese, the choice of words is determined by such characteristics of the speaker

and the addressee as their age, gender, wealth, education, and occupation: and the
more refined the level of speech, the slower, softer, and more even the presentation
will be.
b. In English, the nasal consonant ―n‖ as in ―sin‖, and ―ng‖ as in ―sing‖, are in contrast
because they differentiate in the meanings of two English words.
c. The remarkable cave-wall paintings and carvings of the Upper Paleolithic Cro-
Magnons serve as an indirect proof that these prehistoric people had a full-fledged
language.
d. The Modern English word ―woman‖ developed over the centuries from the old English
―wifman‖

43
Application
Now, after reading the given statements above, which statements do you think are from
LINGUISTS? Which are from LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGISTS? Include the letter/s in your
explanation.
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To sum up, a division of labor exists between linguistics and linguistic anthropology. The
interest of the linguist is primarily in language structure and less often in language changes
over time while the interest of linguistic anthropologists is in speech use and the relations that
exist between language on the one hand and its users on the other.
A tip from Sir Rex: Our students come from different family orientation, culture, and
immediate environment, thus making our classroom even more exciting because of the
diversity in language and culture our students have. As a teacher, or probably as class
adviser, you have to let them showcase what they‘ve got, because through that, you will be
able to know their strengths and weaknesses, and let that be your springboard and capital
in dealing with them, shaping them into a more productive and functional citizens of our
country. That will be your greatest contribution not only to the country, but also to our
profession, the noblest of all, the teaching profession.
Assessment
Identification: Read and analyze each item below. Identify what is being described in
each item. Write your answer before each number using the legend below.
Linguistics/Linguists – LNGS
Anthropology/Anthropologists – ANTP
Linguistic Anthropology/Linguistic Anthropologists – LNAN
1. I must have a sophisticated knowledge of language.

2. I study how plosives and fricatives can be learned.
3. My area is about understanding the products of humans.
4. I am concerned about with are the consequences of the process that led to
language.
5. I look into links between and among the factors affecting language dynamism in
context.

45
Rationalize the importance of having a deep understanding about this topic in relation to
your future work as English Language Teacher.
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47

Learning Module No. 2#

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Lesson 4: Nonverbal Communication

Spoken language – speech – is by far the most common and important means by
which humans communicate with one another, but it is not the only one. The many different
writing systems used throughout the world are of tremendous importance for
communication, having in some respects an advantage over spoken language, especially
their relative permanence.
This lesson deals with the how nonverbal communication expresses one‘s culture in
relation to the societal systems present.
Lesson Objectives
1. discriminate the dynamics of nonverbal communication;
2. identify situations wherein nonverbal communication is effective; and
3. cite situations where this lesson shall be beneficial to you as an ELT.

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SUMMARY SHEET FOR LESSON 4:
SELF-
SCORE COLUMN GRADE
RAW SCORE
Getting Started 10
Application 30
Assessment 20
Enrichment 10
Total 70
Getting Started
Can we consider sign language verbal or nonverbal? Expound.
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Discussion
The term ―nonverbal communication‖, taken literally refers to the transmission of signals
accomplished by means other than spoken or written words. Not everyone agrees on what
the term encompasses, and some even question whether nonverbal communication is
definable. This term includes bodily gestures, facial expressions, spacing, and touch, and
smell, as well as whistle, smoke-signal, and drum languages, and such optional vocal effects
as those that accompany spoken utterances and can be considered apart from actual
words.
Nonverbal systems of communication may be divided into those that are derived from
spoken language and those that are independent of it. Other systems of communication
that are based on speech are drum and whistle languages which imitate some of the
reproducible distinctive features of the spoken languages along with which they are used.
Another way of classifying nonverbal communicative systems is according to channel or the
medium by which signals are conveyed. The channel employed in drum language is
acoustic, whereas sign language or smoke signals use optical channel. Blind people make
use of touch when they feel the raised dots of the braille system, and those who are deaf as
well as blind may learn to monitor articulatory movements by placing a hand on the
speaker‘s face and neck or also known as TADOMA METHOD.
Paralinguistics
Paralanguage refers to the characteristics of vocal communication considered
marginal or optional and therefore exclude from linguistic analysis. The most common
paralinguistic features are usually assigned to three categories:
1. Voice qualifiers have something to do with the tone of voice and pacing of speech,
and they include variations in volume or intensity, pitch, tempo, and articulation.

51
2. Voice characterizers do accompany speech or, more precisely, through which one
talks. These range from laughing and giggling to crying and sobbing to yelling,
moaning, groaning, whimpering, and whining.
3. Vocal segregates represented for the most part by such extralinguistic sounds as the
ones graphically represented in English texts as ―uh-huh‖ to indicate agreement or
gratification, ―uh-uh‖ to indicate disagreement, ―tsk-tsk‖ to express mild disapproval,
and other graphic approximations of different kinds of snorts and sniffs.
Kinesics
Kinesics is the study of body language. There is no question that bodily gestures serve
as an important means of communication. Comedians are notably adept at slanting,
canceling, or completely turning around the meaning of their spoken lines with a well-
chosen grimace or gestures of different communicative content, and professional mimes
know how to move their audiences to tears or laughter without uttering a single word. But
speech-related body motions are by no means limited to performers – they are an integral
part of everyone‘s daily communicative activity. KINEME, analogous to the phoneme, has
been defined as the smallest discriminable contrastive unit of body motion. Students of
kinesics take note several basic components, all of which are associated: facial expression,
eye contact, body posture, and hand gestures.
Proxemics
In the early 1960s, the interdependence between communication and culture
stimulated Edward T. Hall to develop proxemics, the study of the cultural patterning of the
spatial separation individuals maintain in face-to-face encounters. The term has
subsequently come to embrace studies concerned with privacy, crowding, territoriality, and
the designing of buildings, private and public, with the view of meeting the different cultural
expectations of their prospective users.
According to Hall, the distances individuals maintain from another depend on the
nature of their mutual involvement and are culture-specific. In the close phase of the
intimate distance, the individuals are close enough to be encircled by each other‘s arms. All
senses are engaged: Each individual receives the body heat as well as any odor or scent
emanating from the other individual, and the other person‘s breath is felt; because of the
closeness, vision may be blurred or distorted and speaking is at a minimum. As is obvious, this
narrowest of all interpersonal distance is suited to love-making, protecting, or comforting. By
contrast, business is transacted at the social-consultative distance: The close phase is

52
characteristic of contact among people who work together or are participants at casual
social gatherings; the far phase characterizes more formal business transactions, such as
interviews or situations in which two or more people find themselves in the same space and
do not want to appear rude by not communicating.
Some differences in proxemics and haptic behavior (haptic behavior relates to the
sense of touch) may be noticeable even among members of the societies who live in close
proximity. Without being acquainted with Hall‘s proxemics matrix, people are aware when
someone encroaches into their personal zone, or into the zone of someone for whom they
think they have a special claim. Finally, it should be mentioned that personal space is
occasionally modified by the conditions imposed by the physical situation in which people
find themselves.
Sign languages
Signing, that is, communicating manually by sign language of some kind is
undoubtedly at least as old as speech. From the writings of ancient Greeks and Romans, we
know that their deaf made use of signs. It is, however, reasonable to assume that even
among the earliest humans those who were not able to communicate orally would have
used their hands to make themselves understood. Sign languages used to the exclusion of
spoken language – for example, by people born deaf – are referred to as primary. Sign
languages found in communities of speaker-hearers as regular or occasional substitutes for
speech are termed alternate sign languages.
If primary sign languages function much like spoken languages, do they also have
duality of patterning, that is, are they analyzable at two levels of structural units comparable
to phonemes and morphemes? According to William C. Stokoe Jr. (1960), Ameslan grammar
has the same general form as the grammars of spoken languages. It is characterized by a
small set of contrastive units meaningless in themselves that combine to form meaningful sign
of units, the morphemes. Chereme refers to a set of positions, configurations, or motions that
function identically in a given sign language. And each morpheme of a sign language may
be defined according to hand shape, orientation of the palm and fingers, place of
formation, movement and its directions, point of contact, and other spatial and dynamic
features. Users of Ameslan and other natural sign languages are no more aware of
cheremes than users of spoken English are of phonemes.

53
To sum up, contrary to popular misconceptions, primary sign languages used by the
deaf are highly structured, complete, and independent communicative systems,
comparable in complexity to spoken and written languages; otherwise they could not
substitute for spoken languages as effectively as they do. Furthermore, they are natural
languages in the sense that their acquisition is the automatic result of interaction with others
who depend upon signing.
Application
1. Differentiate KINEME from CHRENEME by giving at least two examples or situations.
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2. How do you explain the interrelatedness and interconnectedness of proxemics and

haptics/haptic behavior?
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3. How do you see this lesson‘s worth to you as a future ELT?

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Although spoken language is undoubtedly the oldest and most efficient means of
human communication, there are many other ways in which people transmit or exchange
information. Information, emotions, and feelings, in addition to writing can be transmitted
nonverbally. Nonverbal systems of communication are based on wither spoken or written
language, or are independent of it.
The Morse Code and braille derive from the written representation of a language.
Vocal communication is invariably enhanced or modified by so-called paralinguistic
features such as extra loudness, whispering, or sounds other than those of normal speech.
Body language includes facial expressions, hand gestures, and other body motions. Hearing-
impaired individuals make use of sign systems that are very nearly efficient and expressive as
spoken languages.
Assessment
1. From the discussion, can we consider sign language nonverbal? Why or why not?
Expound.
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2. How do nonverbal cues help linguistic anthropologists identify and/or classify one‘s
culture?
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Enrichment Activities
1. In the 21st century classroom where technology is highly utilized, how do you explain to
your future students the importance of nonverbal communication in our virtual life?
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Lesson 5: Code-Switching, Code-Mixing, and Diglossia
Probably, all speakers of every language have a variety of linguistic resources

available to them. For example, the prewar Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1981)
wrote of the illiterate peasant who prays to God in Old Church Slavonic, speaks to his family
in their local village dialect, sings hymns in Standard Russian, and attempts to petition the
local government in what he thinks is the high-class speech of officialdom. In most places in
the world, there are not only dialects but several languages present in a community, the
speakers possessing varying degrees of facility. In these multilingual situations the codes
often become blended. This is so common that linguists have special terms for this blending:
code-switching and code-mixing.
Lesson Objectives
1. compare and contrast code-switching, code-mixing, and diglossia;
2. identify ways on how culture affects the use of code-switching, code-mixing, and
diglossia; and
3. explain the concept of diglossia in acquiring language.

61

SELF-
SCORE COLUMN GRADE
RAW SCORE
Getting Started 10
Application 30
Assessment 20
Total 60

62
Getting Started
Recall situations where you can say that you used the wrong language which resulted to
miscommunication/misinterpretation. What happened after that situation? How has the problem
been resolved?
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Discussion
This nomenclature has had a long history in linguistics. Einar Haugen (1956:40), who
almost likely coined the term code-switching, defined it as ―when a bilingual introduces a
completely unassimilated word from another language into his speech‖. Carol Myers-
Scotton (1993:3) broadened the definition by saying that code-switching ―is the selection by
bilinguals or multi-linguals of forms from an embedded variety in utterances… during the
same conversation‖. Eyamba Bokamba (1989:3) distinguishes code-switching and code-
mixing: ―Code-switching is the mixing of words, phrases and sentences from two distinct
grammatical systems across sentence boundaries within the same speech even while code-
mixing is the embedding of various linguistic units such as affixes, words, phrases and
clauses from a co-operative activity where the participants must reconcile what they hear
with what they understand‖.
These distinctions are not always separated by all scholars, and some use code-
switching to refer to all types of combined languages. The important thing in this situations is
that a person capable of using two languages, A and B, has three systems available for use.
Mixing and switching probably occur to some extent in the conversations of all bilinguals.
Code-mixing and code-switching can serve a variety of functions such as building or
reinforcing solidarity among speakers who share these languages.
The use of two distinct varieties of a language for two different sets of functions is
called diglossia. The common language is the colloquial or the low variety. A second, high
variety is used in formal circumstances. It is taught in schools and assumes administrative,
legal, religious, and literary functions. Of the two varieties, the colloquial typically is learned
first and is used for ordinary conversation with relatives and friends or servants and working
persons, in cartoons, popular radio and television programs, jokes, traditional narratives, and
the like. The formal variety which carries prestige is taught in schools and assumes most of the
literary, administrative, legal, and religious functions.
Instances of diglossia are fairly common. Those Swiss who use Standard German as
their formal variety are fluent in the Swiss German dialect, the low variety in addition to the
other national languages they may have learned. Similarly, in Greece colloquial Greek is in
use side by side with the literary form derived in large part from its classical ancestor. In
actual speech, however, neither the two diglossic varieties nor the languages of a bilingual
community are always kept strictly apart.

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Application
1. Using the given Venn Diagram, compare and contrast code-switching, code-mixing,
and diglossia.

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2. Evaluate yourself. Do you code-switch and code-mix? Cite situations when you use
these two.
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3. From your answer in item 2, what do you think are the roles of your learned culture in
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Learning to speak a foreign language is a formidable task, and most adults fail to
achieve fluency even after many years of trying. Children, however, learn their native
language with no apparent effort and without instruction before they reach school age.
Among many activities the human brain controls are speech, writing, and reading. Even
though much is still to be learned about the workings of the brain, it has long been known
that different parts of the brain contribute to different aspects of language processing.
Injuries to these areas result in corresponding language and speech impairment.
Competency in one language only, typical of most Americans with English as their
mother tongue, is uncommon in the rest of the world, where hundreds of millions of people
are able to speak several languages or language varieties – that is, they are multilingual or
diglossic. Even though many people speak only one language, they are actively, or at least
passively, acquainted with several dialects and speech styles of that language. Their own
speech patterns differ from those of others, even if only slightly. All speakers have their
individual idiolects.
Assessment
As a future ELT, will you allow code-switching and code-mixing in your classroom?
Why or why not?
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Learning Module No. 3#

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Lesson 6: Languages in Variation and Languages in Contact
Strictly speaking, the speech pattern of one individual is somewhat different from the
speech pattern of the next, even though to speak the same language and regional varieties
of language differ from each other by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
Lesson Objectives
1. differentiate language from dialect;
2. differentiate pidgin from creole;
3. identify Philippine pidgins; and
4. discuss how our culture affects the development of pidgin in our country.

SELF-
SCORE COLUMN GRADE
RAW SCORE
Getting Started 20
Application 30
Assessment 20
Total 70

70
Getting Started
Differentiate Language from Dialect by citing their distinct characteristics that made them
different from each other.
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Discussion
Idiolects
This is why it is possible to identify over the telephone people we know well without
their having to say who they are; similarly, we recognize familiar television newscasters even
when we cannot see the screen. The recognition of individuals by voice alone is possible
because of their idiosyncratic combination of voice quality, pronunciation, grammatical
usage, and choice of words. VOICE QUALITY or TIMBER, is determined by the anatomy of the
VOCAL TRACTS (the tom, the nasal, and oral cavities, the vocal cords, the larynx, and other
parts), over which the speaker has little or no control. Other voice features -for example,
tempo, loudness, and to some extent even teach range- can be controlled fairly simply. But
none of these features of an individual's speech pattern is constant. Voice quality changes
with age as muscles and tissues that area rate in the dentition undergo modification. Over a
lifetime, changes tend to occur in the choice of words, grammar, and pronunciation as well.
An individual's speech variety is referred to as an IDIOLECT. Almost all speakers make
use of several idiolects, depending on the circumstances of communication. Typically differ
from those any one of them would use in, say, an interview with a prospective employer. The
concept of Idiolect therefore refers to a very specific phenomenon – The speech variety
used by a particular individual.
Dialects
Often, people who live in the same geographic area, have similar occupations, or
have the same education or economic status speak relatively similar idiolects compared to
those from other groups. These shared characteristics may entail similarities in vocabulary,
pronunciation, or grammatical features. When all the idiolects of a group of speakers have
enough in common to appear, at least superficially alike, say that they belong to the same
dialect. DIALECT refers to a form of language or speech used by members of a regional,
ethnic, or social group? Dialects that are mutually intelligible belong to the same language.
All languages spoken by more than one small homogeneous community are found to
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MUTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY, of course, can vary as to degree. In the early 1950s, a number
of men and women from 8 reservations in New York and Ontario word tested in an
experiment designed to determine which of their local dialects were mutually intelligible and
therefore dialects of language, and which were not and, therefore, could be classified as
individual languages of the Iroquoian language family. Even though the investigators arrived
at the percentages of intelligibility between any two of the Iroquoian speech communities,
the question of where the boundaries between intelligibility and intelligibility remained
unresolved. If the boundaries between language and dialect had been thrown at 25% of
mutual intelligibility, there would have been four different languages, of which one would
have consisted of two dialects and another of three. If set at 75%, there would have been
five languages, two of which would have consisted of two dialects each.
Because it is spoken in so many different areas, English is particularly diversified

dialectally. Speakers‘ home countries may be guessed from their pronunciation and from the
use of certain word that are characteristic of specific variety of English. A speaker of any
dialect of American English is likely to find it quite difficult to understand a cab driver in
London who speaks cockney, the dialect of London‘s east end, even though both speak
dialects of the same language.
The way individuals speak varieties not only according to the regional and social
dialects but also according to context. The distinctive manner in which people express
themselves in a particular situation are referred to as STYLE. Speech styles are thus
comparable to styles of dress. One would feel out of place and uncomfortable going on a
hiking trip in formal attire for attending a traditional wedding reception in sneakers, jeans,
and sweatshirts. Similarly, a person who might use the vulgar expression ― I‘m pissed‖ when
talking with former schoolmates would probably substitute the colloquial phrase ―I‘m mad‖
under other circumstances and use such words as ―angry‖ or ― aggravated‖ under more
formal conditions.
Styles
Stylistic variation or not only lexical, but also phonological (for instance, the casual
pronunciation of butter with the flap [f] rather than the dental [t]), morphological (as in
casually styled “who are you taking to lunch?” as against the formal “ who are you taking to
lunch?”), and syntactic (as in “Wanna eat now? As against “Do you want to eat now?”). A

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stylistic or dialectal variety of speech that does not call forth negative reaction, is used on
formal occasions, and carries social prestige and considered standard; varieties that do not
measure up to these are referred to as non-standard or substandard. Standard British English
often referred to as Received Standard and its pronunciation as Received Pronunciation, is
used at English public schools (private secondary boarding schools), heard during radio and
television newscasts, and used when circumstances call for a serious, formal attitude
(sermons, lectures, and the like). In less formal situations, there has been an increasing
tendency to use a style that deviates from or falls short of the standard. Informality in dress,
behavior, and speech is a sign of the times both in the US and elsewhere.
How many different styles do speakers of English use? For Martin Joos (1907-1978), five
clearly distinguishable styles were characteristic of his dialect of American English (spoken in
the east-central united states); he termed them frozen, formal, consultative, casual, and
intimate (Joos,1962). Today, very few speakers of American English ever use the frozen style
except perhaps occasionally informal writing. The assumption that the exact number of
speech styles can be determined for a language serving millions of speakers does not seem
to be warranted. Not to native speakers of English talk alike, and just exactly what use each
person makes of the various stylistic features, ranging all the way from a pompous formality
to an intimate or even vulgar informality, is up to the individual speaker.
Language Contact
Languages must have been in contact as long as there have been human beings.
From what can be certain from the current and historical ethnographic record, people have
also often been in close proximity with those who speak languages that were mutually
unintelligible. Trade, travel, migration, war, intermarriage, in other non-linguistic causes of
forced different languages to come in contact countless times throughout history. When this
occurs, several things can happen over time: languages can die, new languages can
develop, or languages in contact can become mixed in various ways. We will now explore
some of the consequences of mixing and see how it can sometimes lead to the
development of drastically different linguistic structures.
Win a new physical item or concept is borrowed from another culture, the name for
that new item in the donor language is often just directly taken over. For example, Hawaiian
gave English ukulele; Bantu, gumbo; Czech, polka; Cantonese work; Arabic, algebra;

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German, pretzel; and Malay, rice paddy. Of course, English contributed hundreds of words
to other languages as well, as a weekend to French, boyfriend to Russian, aerobic classes to
German, and beefsteak to many languages.
Please exchange can go both ways. As most native English speakers know, many
words of French origin have been borrowed into the language. In return for the weekend,
the English receive rendezvous and lingerie. One of the reasons for these was the
introduction of old French during the Norman conquest of England in 1066, which replaced
old English as a language of the ruling class in England ( and which held prominence until
well into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries). During the centuries of French linguistic
dominance, a large proportion of English vocabulary drastically changed.
Pidgins
A common way in which individuals and groups interact across language boundaries
is by means of a PIDGIN. Typically, a pidgin originates when speakers of two or more
mutually unintelligible languages develop and need to communicate with each other for
certain limited or specialized purposes, especially trade. Because pidgins have a much
narrower range of functions than the languages for which they substitute, they possess a
limited vocabulary, and because they need to be learned rapidly for the sake of efficiency,
they have a substantially reduced grammatical structure. From a sociocultural perspective,
an important characteristic of a pidgin is that it does not serve as a native, or first, language
of any particular group.
A pidgin is not the result of the same kind of development through languages are
subject to it tends to come about suddenly, as the need arises, and ceases to exist when no
longer called upon to perform its original function. It may last as little as a dozen or so years;
only infrequently does it out last century. In its phonology and morphology, a pidgin is
invariably simpler than the first languages of those who use it, and the bulk of its lexicon is
based on or derived from, one of the languages in contact.
Although it is true that pidgins can be simplified versions of any language, the most
common are those based on English. The reason for this is the widespread contact that
English- speaking people have had with nonwestern nations. The British Empire not only
spread the Union Jack but also its language over much of the world. Thus, English – based

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pidgins were found from the coasts of Africa to the new world to the South Pacific. For
example, here is an example of the first lines of Shakespeare‘s Julius Caesars (Act 3, Scene 2)
in Melanesian Tok Pisin compared to the original English (Murphy 1980:20)
Pren, man bolong Rom, Wantok, harim nau.
Mi kam tasol long plantim Kaesar. Mi noken beiten longen.
Friends, Romans countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
We can see here many of the typical devices pidgins (and later creoles) use that
allow them to communicate effectively with a limited set of grammatical and lexical
resources. Words such as pren, mi, kam, or simply revised forms of English ―friends‖, ―me‖,
and ―come‖. Romance comes out man bolonv Rom. Countrymen is Wantok - those of us
who all speak “one talk”. Though lend me your ears loses some of its power when rendered
harim nau (hear em now), it still makes its point; but plantim (plant'em) meaning ―bury‖ is
almost as poetic metaphor. The pidgin tasol (That's all) acts as a conjunction (such as but) or
adverb (such as only). The word noken (no can) is a verbal negative auxiliary. There are no
inflections, case markers, or tenses in pidgins there for certain words must do a multiplicity of
tasks. Once such word is long. This word serves many uses, as. A preposition, a comparative
marker, indirect object sign, or an indication of duration. For example, lukluk long (look look
long) can mean to seek, to watch, to look for, to take care of, or to protect. Beten or beiten
is ―prayer‖, and beiten longer (prayer belong ‗em) is a way of saying ―praise.‖
Although the characteristically luck in flexion and possess a limited vocabulary, pidgins
structure of their own and readily adapt to changing circumstances. The structural simplicity
of pidgin is to their advantage, allowing cross-cultural communication with the minimum of
effort. The reduction or total elimination of inflectional affixes, the use of morphemic
repetition for intensive fiction and simplified syntactic construction make geographically
separated pidgins look remarkably similar - so much so that some scholars have argued that
in their basic structure all modern and reason pidgin may well go back to some such

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PROTOPIDGIN as Sabir, the original lingua franca, a medieval pidgin based on Romance
languages and use in Mediterranean ports until the beginning of the last century. As similar
to pidgins may be structurally, though, they differ according to the languages that have
lexified them (that is, supplied them with the bulk of their word-stock).
Finally, it is important to remember that PIDGINS ARE NOT BROKEN LANGUAGES, a kind
of primitive speech or manifestation of corrupt though processes of simple peoples. They are
quite the opposite: ―pidgins our demonstrative creative adaptations of natural languages,
with the structure and rules of their own. Along with the creoles they are evidence of a
fundamental process of linguistic change … [and] they provide the clearest evidence of
language being created and shaped by society for its own ends, as people adapt to new
social circumstances‖ (Crystal 2010: 344).
From Pidgins to Creoles

The process of grammatical and lexical reduction of a language such as English or
Navajo to a pidgin, referred to as pidginization, reflects a limitation on functions that pidgin is
expected to serve. But it would be wrong to assume that the roles pidgins are the same to
play is invariably humble. In many instances, a pidgin has come to be used by a growing
number of people over an increasingly large area, especially when none of the native
languages can claim priority by virtue of population size or the prestige of a written tradition.
In short, a pidgin may become widely recognized and depended upon as an indispensable
means of interethnic communication. Under such circumstances, the growing demands
placed on the pidgin cause an expansion of its vocabulary and elaboration of its syntax - a
process opposite to pidginization. Isemi-officialished with a writing system and used in mass
media, it may acquire a semi-official status, it may even become the mother tongue of
those children and whose families it is habitually used. This process of expansion of a pidgin
to other language function is referred to as creolization, and the end result is the term creole.
A creole, then, is a pidgin that has become the first language of a speech community.
Among the many places in the world where this process has taken place in Papua
New Guinea. There what once was an English-based pidgin of limited utility has been
elevated over the past several decades to one of the official languages of the now
independent country. Known as Neo- Melanesian, or Tok Pisin (from talk pidgin), it has
become the lingua franca of about 1 million people speak some a700 languages native to

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Papua New Guinea and the first language of some 20,000 households (Mühlhäusler
1987:178). Tok Pisin has acquired such prestige that more parliamentary debates are now
conducted in it done in English, in most recently it has been heard even in the country's
university lecture halls.
At least three-fourths of the Tok Pisin vocabulary derives from English, some 15% from
indigenous new guinea languages, especially Tolai (Kuanua), in the remainder from various
other languages, including german. For example, in singular, Tok Pisin personal pronouns mi
―I, me,‖ yu ―you,‖ and em ―he, him: she, her: it‖ remain the same whether they serve as
subject or object. In the first – person plural, the distinction is made between the inclusive
form yumi ‗we, us (including the hearer)‘ and the exclusive form mipela ‗we, us (excluding
the hearer),‘ end in all three persons of the plural the exact number (up to three) is usually
indicated, as in yutupela ‗you two' or yutripela ‗you three'; the form for the third person plural
of course in addition to the expected for. Possession is indicated by bilong, the predicate is
commonly marked by the particle I, and transitive verbs have the suffix im, which also
converts adjectives into causative verb forms. Accordingly, Mi kukim kaikai bilong mi
translates as ‗ I cook food,‘ Wanpela lek bilong mi I bruk as ‗ One of my legs is broken,‘ Em I
krosim mi as ‗He scolded me,‘ and Ol I kapsaitim bensin as ‗They spilled the gasoline.‘
A New Guinea road safety handbook (Rot Sefti Long Niugini), which instruct readers in
three languages, contains the following english paragraph and the Tok Pisin equivalent
(Crystal 2010:345):
If you have an accident, get the other drivers number, if possible, get his name and
address too and report it to the police. Don't fight or abuse him.
Sapos yu kisim bagarap, kisim namba bilong narapela draiva, sapos yu ken, kisim naim
bilong em na adres tu, na tokim polis long em. Nokem paitim em o tok nogut long em.
Even though crayons are languages and their own right and have in some instances
found their way into the mass media as well as into primary school instruction, they
nevertheless tend to carry less prestige than the standard European languages besides
which they are used and from which they derive the bulk of their vocabulary. Consequently,
some speakers of creoles, especially those who live in cities and hold semi-professional jobs,
try to improve their speech by using the standard language as a model. When this happens,
creoles undergo a change, moving in the direction of the standard language in a process
known as the decreolization. Such a change is currently taking place, for example, in English

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based Jamaican creole, giving rise to a continuum ranging from the basilect, the variety
most differentiated from the standard and used by members of the rural working class, to the
acrolect, an urban variety approaching the standard and therefore the same as more
prestigious.
The great majority of pidgins and creoles are found in coastal areas of the equatorial
belt wear contacts between speakers of different languages, including those of former
European colonists nations, have been a common occurrence because of trade. Some
reason pidgins, however, have been developing under different circumstances – for
example, the Gastatbeiter Deutsch spoken in the federal republic of Germany by several
million guest workers from southern and southeastern Europe.
Pidgins and Creoles have received the serious attention they deserve only during the
fourth quarter of the last century. Some of the most stimulating (but also controversial)
contributions to their study where made by Derek Bickerton. One important concept based
on the study of creoles is Bickerton's bioprogram hypothesis (1981), that is, the assumption
that the human species must have a biologically innate capacity for language. In support of
this hypothesis Bickerton links pidgins and creoles with children's language acquisition and
language origins. Because the syntax of Hawaiian Creole English, which Bickerton knew well,
shares many features in common with other creole languages, the cognitive strategies for
deriving creoles from pidgins are so much alike as to be part of the human species-specific
endowment. Furthermore, the innate capacities that enable children to learn a native
language are also helpful to children as they expand a pidgin into a creole. According to
Bickerton, some basic cognitive distinction (such as pacific versus general and state versus
process) must have been established prior to the hominization process (development of
human characteristics), and these distinctions are evident in the structures of chaos as well
as in the earlier stages of language acquisition.
Some of the recent researches concerning pidgins and creoles have resulted in the
blurring of these two types of speech (Jourdan 1991). It is now accepted the pidgin and
creole varieties of a particular language can exist side by side and that at creole can
become the main language of a speech community without becoming its native language.
In other respects, however, our understanding of pidgins and creoles has improved because
greater attention is being paid to the historical and socio-economic context in which pidgins
and creoles come into being.

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In spite of the dominance of English, or the effects of electronic mass media and the
internet which are supposedly diluting some of the linguistic differences among us,
languages are still in contact in very complex ways. As an example of what might happen in
current contact situations, we can consider Japanese-English has been very much a
presence in the country everything's a Japanese infatuation with English began in the 19 th
century. Almost every Japanese take some six years of formal English instruction in school, yet
japan is hardly a bilingual nation. In fact, Japanese critics and English language instructors
alike often lament the poor English abilities of most Japanese, especially conversationally.
Nonetheless, the number of English loanwords is extensive. Estimates of the number of
commonly-used loanwords in modern Japanese range up to 5,000 terms, or perhaps as high
as 5 to 10% of the ordinary daily vocabulary (Stanlaw 2004, Stanlaw 2010). The presence of
some of these loanwords is not surprising: there for ―television‖, tabako (tobacco) for
cigarettes, and many baseball terms (e.g. battā for batter and pitchā for a pitcher) all came
as these things were imported. Many words however are wa-sei-eigo terms, or made in
Japan English -vocabulary created using English words as building blocks to coin words that
have no real correspondence in the United States or England. Examples include famikon
(FAMily COMputer) for a nintendo entertainment system, furaido poteto (fried potato) for
french fries, puraso-doraibā (plus driver) for a Phillips screwdriver, sukin-shippu (skin-ship) for
bonding through physical contact of the skin as with a mother and the child, uinkā (winker)
for an automobile turn signal, handoru (handle) dor the steering wheel of a car, romance-
gurē (romance gray) for the silver hair of an older virile man who is still sexually attractive and
the ubiquitous pokemon(POCKet MONster) for the Pokémon game and anime franchise.
Probably most of these vocabulary items are not immediately transparent native English
speakers.
Often English loanwords reflect changing Japanese cultural norms. For example, the
very productive English loanwords possessive pronoun mai (my) apparently is indicative of a
new view held in japan that the values of corporate allegiances or group loyalty which were
thought to be the mainstay of Japanese society are now being questioned. Terms such as
mai- hoomu (owning ―my home‖), mai- wafu ( adoring ―my wife‖), mai- peesu (doing things
at ―my pace‖), mai- puraibashii (valuing ―my privacy), or being a member of the mai-kaa-
zoku (the ―my own car tribe‖) suggest that individual interests and goals can compete on
equal footing with the traditional priority given to group responsibilities. In the mass media,

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this prefix is found on a vast array of products or their advertisements: my juice, my pack, my
summer, my girl calendar (Stanlaw 2004a: 17-18).
Besides pidginization, mixing, or one language dominating another there are other
possibilities that can occur when speakers of different languages come into contact.
Speakers of mutually and intelligible languages who wish to communicate with each other
have a variety of means available to them. One widespread method of bridging the
linguistic gap is to use a lingua franca, a language agreed upon as a medium of
communication by people who speak different first languages. In present-day India, for
example, the English that spread with British imperialism frequently served as a lingua franca
among speakers of the many different languages native to the subcontinent. In the United
States, the language used for communication with members of the many different Native
American tribes has been English, the speech of the dominant society. And in Kupwar, a
southern Indian village with speakers of four separate languages- Marathi, Urdu, Kannada
and Telugu - where almost all male villagers are bilingual or multilingual, the speakers of the
first three languages have been switching among them for so long that the structures of the
local varieties of these languages have been brought very close together making it easier
for their speakers to communicate (Gumperz and Wilson 1971).
Which should mention another possibility when discussing how people who speak
different languages try to communicate? Besides choosing a lingua franca or a pidgin, some
have proposed adopting an artificial or auxiliary language to facilitate international
communication. Although several hundred are known to have been devised over the past
several centuries, only a few have achieved any measure of acceptance and use, with
Esperanto, already more than 100 years old, and the most widespread. Despite efforts to
make Esperanto the official international language, however, English, the mother tongue of
some 400 million speakers and the official or semiofficial language serving will over a billion
people in the world, appears today to have a little, if any, serious competition (Crystal
2010:371).
The world of languages
It may come as a surprise to learn that no one knows exactly how many languages
are spoken in the world today. One standard or suggest the total is more than 6900 (Gordon
2005). This number includes creole languages but excludes pidgins, as well as the thousands

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of languages in the course of history and prehistory that must have disappeared without a
trace. There are several reasons for the lack of precision in gauging the world's linguistic
diversity. A few languages are likely to be discovered in those regions of the world still only
partly explored, especially the equatorial rainforest of South America, Africa, and New
Guinea. Some languages are on the very verge of extinction, currently used by as few as a
handful of speakers and not even habitually at that. Then, too, it is not always easy to
determine whether to dialects are sufficiently divergent to become mutually unintelligible
and therefore merit the status of two separate languages. In respect, socio-cultural
considerations sometimes override the linguistic theory of mutual intelligibility. For example,
Czechs and Slovaks communicate with one another in their respective languages without
the slightest hindrance, all thought Czech and Slovak have separate standards and literary
tradition as well as dictionaries and textbooks. If these two languages were to be spoken in
nearby villages somewhere in New Guinea, they would unquestionably be classified as
dialects of one language. As for the number of dialects of the languages currently spoken in
the world, the total would reach tens of thousands if anyone were interested in making such
a count.
The figure of some 6900 languages amounts to an impressive number when one
considers that it represents a distinct means of communication with its own elaborate
structure and unique way of describing the cultural universe of its speakers. However, in
terms of the number of speakers, the great bulk of today's world population makes use of
relatively few languages. It is obvious that at this point in human history, speakers of some
languages have been more successful than speakers of others, whether by conquest,
historical accident or some other circumstance.

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Application
Think of a Philippine PIDGIN and discuss its characteristics or features.
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Also about 6900 languages, assignable to several hundred language groups (families)
are currently spoken, the overwhelming majority of people speak languages that belong to
only a dozen or so language families, within the European at the top of the list for most
speakers. The world wide spread of English and various other European languages dates
back to the beginning of the age of discovery in the mid-15th century.
Competency in one language only, typical of most Americans with English as their
mother tongue, is uncommon in the rest of the world, where hundreds of millions of people
are able to speak several languages or language varieties – that is , our multilingual or
diglossic. Among the great variety of languages, pigeons occupy a special: although
structured and efficient as a means of communication, their vocabularies are limited
because pigeons are not called upon to perform the broad range of functions that
characterize full-fledged languages.
Even though many people speak only one language, they are actively for at least
passively acquainted with several dialects and speech styles of that language. Their own
speech patterns differ from those of others even if only slightly. All speakers have their
individual idiolects.
The number of languages spoken in the world today is rapidly diminishing. According
to one estimate, of the 6,900 languages only 600 can be considered safe from extinction
during the 21st century. The primary reason for languages of small-sized a societies
becoming extinct is that in order to survive, small tribal populations must adapt to the
economic and cultural influence of the nation- states that encompassed them, in one of the
vital adaptive processes is the use of the language of the nation-states

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Assessment
1. Using a graphic organizer, differentiate PIDGIN from CREOLE.

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2. Discuss the BICKERTON HYPOTHESIS

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3. How does our culture/history affect the development of PIDGIN in the Philippines?
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Press.

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Lesson 7: Language and Ideology: Variations in Class, Gender, and Nationality
It is obvious people speak quite differently, even those who share the same native
language. But there are other reasons why people speak the same language in different
ways. During the 19th century, most people thought that physical difference and language
were closely connected. That is, people were thought to speak differently because of race.
In the early 20th century, Franz Boas vehemently argued that there is no relationship between
race, language, and culture, though this often fell on deaf ears. That children of immigrants
learn to speak the language of the new country should be the obvious proof of this
statement. Likewise, language ability is separate from religion, occupation, financial status,
or other aspects of culture. Unlike many physical attributes, language and culture are
subject to change from generation to generation. In one sense, then, one‘s language and
culture is an individual choice. Thus, difference in language can be readily observed among
people in the same speech community.
Early sociolinguists and anthropologists thought that such variety was analogous to
geographic dialects. That is, just as differences in speech could result from geographic
isolation, social isolation due to ethnicity, nationality or race could also create linguistic
variation. Even gender could be a factor, because although women and men share the
same space geographically, they might live in different social environments. Language
ideology is the mediating link between social form and form of speech.
Lesson Objectives
1. examine and discuss class, gender, and nationality in the Philippine context;
2. explain the study of Jane Hill in 1987; and
3. discuss the role of culture in the use of language of both sexes.

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SELF-
SCORE COLUMN GRADE
RAW SCORE
Getting Started 20
Application 30
Assessment 20
Total 70
Getting Started
1. Differentiate GENDER from SEX. How do you see these two concepts from the
perspective of a future ELT?
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2. Is speaking the same language sufficient grounds for people to establish a nation?
Should all people in the same nation speak the same language? Why or why not.
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Discussion
Language, Social Class, and Identity

One of the most obvious manifestations of social class is found in language – perhaps
more so than personal possessions, style, or place of residence. For our purposes, we will
reduce class distinctions to differences in economics, education, familial prestige, and some
other ways people might rank themselves in society. Speech differences can characterize
different economic or social status. In the most extreme situations, such as castes in India,
hereditary social classes restrict the association of their members with members of other

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classes, and this is often reflected in language. In addition, even in places where class
differences are less pronounced, similar kinds of linguistic stratification can be found. In the
US, William Labov conducted a well-known study of sociolinguistic – linguistic change
understood in the context of the society in which it occurs.
Language and Gender

J.K. Chambers in this textbook on sociolinguistic theory (1995:102) states categorically
that ―in virtually all sociolinguistic studies that include a sample of males and females, there
is unequivocal evidence that women use fewer stigmatized and non-standard variants than
do men of the same social group in the same circumstances‖. Although admitting specific
cultural differences, he claims this finding holds true cross-culturally as well.
First, a few general remarks about the term ―GENDER‖ as it is used here. Among the
several senses of this term is SEX – meaning one of the two forms of most organisms that are
characterizes by differences in reproductive organs and related structures. The use of the
term GENDER rather than SEX avoids the misleading association with sexuality, but mainly it
acknowledges that gender is a social construct that is likely to vary from one society to the
next, or even from one social group to another within an embracing society or culture.
The choice of words by men and women varies according to the occasion, the type
of audience present, and various other circumstances. Profane or coarse speech is less likely
to be heard when children or people held in respect are within earshot, and a job interview
calls for a more considered vocabulary than a casual conversation between two close
friends. Nevertheless, some lexical differences between the speech of men and women are
fairly common and can be illustrated from American English. Certain words are used by
women much more frequently than by men. Among such words are expressive adjectives
that convey approval or admiration – for example, delightful, spectacular, charming, divine,
lovely, fascinating, and sweet – and fashionable color names – for example, beige,
chartreuse, fuchsia, magenta, and mauve.
Men are much more likely to phrase their approval or liking for something by using a
neutral adjective such as fine, good, or great, and reinforcing it, it necessary, with such an
adverb as damn. As a rule, men‘s color vocabulary is much less discriminating, hence,
somewhat poorer than women‘s.

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Other differences between the speech behavior of men and women were suggested.
For example:
1. When women talk to with other women on a social basis, topics are about
relationships, social issues, house and family, workplace, and personal and family
finances.
2. When men talk with other men, topics are work, recreation and sports, and WOMEN.
In other researches, women interviewees found to be more cooperative and polite, and offered
more information than did men.
SOCIAL POWER THEORY goes back to the 1980s when William M. O‘Barr and Bowman K. Atkins
(1998) studied how witnesses speak in court. They studied courtroom witness testimony for a two and
a half years, looking at ten speech differences between men and women. They concluded that
speech patterns were ―neither characteristic of all women nor limited only to women‖. Instead, they
found the women used lowest frequency of women‘s language traits had unusually high social or
economic status – being well-educated professionals with middle-class backgrounds. A similar
pattern was found for men – men with high social or economic status spoke with few women‘s
language traits. O‘Barr and Atkins argued that it was power and status, rather than gender that
accounted for these differences. A powerful position that ―may derive from either social standing in
the larger society and/or status accorded by the court‖ allowed speakers – both male and female –
certain linguistic advantages.
Some scholars argue that women‘s language is also significantly shaped by the style of
COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGY. For example, Jane Hill (1987) studied the social expectations, gender
roles, power differences, and language in Malinche Volcano Communities near Mexico City. She
found that local women changed their native language Nahualt to be ―more Spanish‖. By the mid-
1970s, many Nahuatl-speaking men were earning relatively good wages in Mexico City where
Spanish was the elite language. The men saw Spanish language as the language of capitalism and
hegemonic power, but they used Nahuatl to maintain local social solidarity. The women remained
behind to take care of fap7aw8-qqqqrm field. They had the responsibility to pass the Nahautl
language on to the children. Understandingy the importance of maintaining the language of their
ethnic group, but also wishing to show their appreciation of modern things and education, the
women began to speak a form of Nahuatl highly influenced by Spanish pronunciation.

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Language and Nationality
In the last decades of the 21th century, many scholars argued that “ethnicity is not
always the survival of cultural diversity born of geographical and social isolation, but may be
the outcome of intensive interaction, a constellation of practices that evolve to channel
complex social relations”.
As part of contemplating, we ask, “Is speaking the same language sufficient grounds
for people to establish a nation? Should all people in the same nation speak the same
language?” if the answer to these questions is NO – and probably most people in the 21st
century would agree – what should be the status of ―minority‖ languages in multilingual
societies? Because of the symbolic value of language, language choice, maintenance, and
shift are some of the most important personal and political social issues of any community.
In this discussion, we will focus on language and the nation-state. We will look at how
the symbolic value of languages is used by the people to pursue political power and ends,
and foster consciousness among members of the group. We will look at two of four case
studies: INDIA, SPAIN, Czech Republic, and Canada.
INDIA. Occupying an area only one-third as large as US but with the second largest
population in the world, India is one of the most multilingual countries in the world. what
makes India one of the world‘s most linguistically diversified nations is that more than 400
languages are spoken there; they span at least four language families – Indo-European,
Dravidian, Austroasiatic, and Tibeto-Burman), as well as some isolates. There are 22 official
―scheduled‖ languages recognized in the constitution.
How does India, a federal republic, deal administratively with such a vast collection of
languages? On a regional basis, eastern India is dominated by three Indo-European
languages – Bengali, Oriya, and Assamese - , western India by two – Maratji and Gujarati –
northern India by four – Hindi and Urdu, Panjabi and Kashmiri, and southern India by four
languages of the Dravidian language family – Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam. The
principal official language in six of the 25 states of the republic as well as of the country at
the federal level is Hindi. However, as long as many non-Hindi-speaking citizens are reluctant
to accept Hindi, English serves as the associate national language and as a lingua franca
acceptable in both Hindi-speaking north and the south.

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In a country where many languages are spoken but do not all enjoy the same degree
of prestige, bilingualism, multilingualism, and diglossia are of common of common
occurrence. For interethnic communication of an informal nature, Hindi or Urdu is used to a
varying degree throughout the country. For reasons of cultural prestige, there has been
some resistance to the use of Hindi as a contact language in the Dravidian-speaking part of
the country and in Bengal. For formal or written communication, English-language
newspapers and periodicals accounted for, respectively, 26 and 20 percent of the total
published, and those in English had the highest circulation.
Today, more than a half century after India gained independence, knowledge of
English is still considered indispensable for high government positions, and although only a
very small percentage of the population speaks and reads English, Indians with knowledge
of English tend to be the cultural, economic, and political leaders.
Throughout much of the world, dialectal differences have tended to diminish rapidly in
recent decades as a result of the mass media, education, and mobility. This has not
happened in India, where caste differences are effectively symbolized by speech
differences. As long as the old and well-established social hierarchy persists, linguistic
differences serve a useful function and are likely to be retained.
SPAIN. Although the official language of Spain is Castilian Spanish, some dozen other
languages are spoken in the county. Catalan and Basque are two of the most important
minority languages, and they are spoken by 15% and 1.4% of the population respectively.
Both are important because of the issues of nationalism and ethnic pride associated with
each.
Euskara or Basque, is the language of the Basque people who inhabitant northeast
Spain and southwest France. There are about 650,000 Basque speakers in Spain and some
100,000 in France. The language is an isolate, with only disputed affiliations with other
languages. It has five major dialects. Under the language policy of the Franco Regime (1939-
1975), from 1937 until the mid-1950s, it was prohibited to use the Basque language in public.
After the Basques regained some political sovereignty, they were once again allowed to use
their language in public. The Royal Academy of the Basque Language created a standard
orthography. Although many Basque speakers were reluctant to accept such standards at
first, Euskara Batua gradually became accepted and is now used by the Basques at all levels
of education.

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Unlike Basque, Catalan is a Romance language of the Indo-European family, and

shares 85% lexical similarity with Spanish. Its history goes back to the 3 rd Century BCE when
the Catalonia area was ruled by Rome. Because of close contact with Rome Catalan
developed from a more modern and more popular form of Latin than did Castilian. Currently
about 7 million people in Spain speak catalan as their first language. It is also spoken in small
areas in southwest France, and Sardinia in Italy.
Right after World War II, the Franco government took severe repressive measures
against Catalan language and culture, partly because of the resistance put up be
Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. Barcelona, its capital, was then a center of
revolutionary leftist activity. Much of Catalonia‘s prewar autonomy was lost and the public
use of the Catalan language was prohibited. During the latter days of the Franco regime,
some folk celebrations and religious observances in Catalan came to be tolerated. But
because of the institutionalized language discrimination, and its similarity to Spanish, today
there are few, if any, monolingual Catalan speakers.
Application
1. You have read about India and Spain. Now, your task is to discuss the same topic in the
Philippine Context.
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2. Explain the study of Jane Hill in 1987.

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3. What does SOCIAL POWER THEORY imply?

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Although we often think language variation is largely due to geographically based

dialects, much of the time the differences in language use we hear around us are due to
other reasons. Many languages exhibit differences according to whether they are spoken by
women or men. In some languages, these differences are limited to a few sounds; in others
they are lexical. Gender is not the only source of this kind of variation – some differences are
correlated with class and ethnicity. Language reflects personal identity, but sometimes this
conflicts with social expectations. Language is also an important marker at another level.
Although not every language has a country, and few countries have only one language, for
many people there is an almost visceral connection between a nation-state and some of
the languages used within its boarder. Should one language be privileged over others, and if
so, for what reasons? What does this mean for those who are its native speakers, and for
those who are not? These are by no means trivial questions, as the world‘s many language
wars have demonstrated. And as the world becomes more globalized and the boarders of
countries more porous, issues of language and nationality can only become more complex.

98
Assessment
1. How does this lesson characterize the differences between men’s language and
women’s? Provide examples/situations where you yourself noticed the difference.
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2. From your answer in item number 1, what is the role of gender/sex with the use of
language?
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Press.
Course Outputs: Examine the following texts. I want you to write a paper for each text
discussing the relationship between and among Language, Culture, and Society based on the

100
facts/details from the text. On your last paragraph in each text, I want you to write what you have
learned and how will that learning help you as a future global ELT.
Text 1: ―The End Piece‖

A couple came to the counselor in tears. They‘ve been arguing for weeks. Each took
their turn to explain their issues. Several sessions passed discussing the harsh words and metal
pain that they both suffered. The counselor was trying to find an underlying cause for this
breakdown. Finally, the husband, besides himself with anger and frustration blurted out ―She
has absolutely no respect for me. My ego cannot bear it anymore.‖ The counselor asked,
―Can you remember a time or event when you first felt this feeling toward her?‖ He
answered, ―Yes, every day for breakfast, she gives me the end piece from a loaf bread. Why
doesn‘t she give me the good bread? When I grew up, my family would feed the dry, crusty
end piece to our dog or throw it away in the garbage. This is an insult!‖ The wife was visibly
shocked by his words. She burst into tears and exclaimed, ―Where I am from Italy, the end
parts of the bread loaf is considered to be the best part. When I grew up, my family would
fight for the end piece. To respect my husband, every morning for breakfast, I sacrificed my
own enjoyment to give the end piece to him. I‘m sorry I didn‘t understand.‖ He was from the
USA and she was from Italy. Suddenly, he cried. ―I‘m sorry I didn‘t understand you.‖ They had
failed to understand what was valued by the other. They made up, and grew from the
whole experience.
Text 2: The Kuuk Thaayorre People

101
The language we speak shape the way we think? These are the Kuuk Thaayorre
people. They live in Pormpuraaw at the very west edge of Cape York. In Kuuk Thaayorre,
they don't use words like left and right and instead, everything is in cardinal directions: north,
south, east, and west. And when I say everything, I really mean everything. You would say
something like, " oh, there's an ant on your southwest life." Or, " move your cup to the north
north-east a little bit." In fact, the way that you say "hello" in Kuuk Thaayorre is " which way
are you going?" And answer should be, "north north-east in the far distance. ―How about
you?" People who speak languages like this stay oriented really well. Listen oriented better
than we used to think humans could. We used to think that humans were worse than other
creatures because of some biological excuse: "Oh, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in
our scales.' No; if your language and your culture trains you to do it, actually, you can do it.
Lots of languages of grammatical gender , so every noun gets assigned a gender , often
masculine or feminine. In this gender differs across languages. Could this have any
consequence for how people think? Actually, it turns out that's the case. So if you ask
German and Spanish speakers to , say describe a bridge , like the one here - "bridge"
happens to be grammatically feminine in German, grammatically masculine in Spanish -
German speakers are more likely to say bridge are "beautiful" "elegant" and stereotypically
feminine words. Whereas Spanish speakers will be more likely to say they're "strong" or "long"
these masculine words. Languages also differ in how they describe events. In English, it's fine
to say, "He broke the vase." In language like Spanish, you might be more likely to say "The
vase broke," or " The vase broke itself." If it's an accident you wouldn't say that someone did
it. In English, quite weirdly we can even say things like, "I broke my arm" now, in lots of
languages, you couldn't use that construction unless you are a lunatic and you went out
looking to break your arm - and you succeeded. People who speak different languages will
pay attention to different things, depending on what their language usually requires them to
do. And that gives you the opportunity to ask, "why do i think the way that I do" , " how could
I think differently?" And also, "What thoughts do I wish to create?"

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for commercial purposes or be changed or included in any other Colleges and
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publishing or incorporating them to another module unless prior permission has
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Language, Culture, and Society

Learning Module No. 1

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Lesson 1: Defining and relating LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

SUMMARY SHEET FOR LESSON 1:

Assessment (True or False) 10

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Who were you talking

What was the

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

At the point when you experience childhood in a particular society, it is inescapable

Homologous relationship of culture and language

The expression, language is culture and culture is language is regularly referenced

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Influencing the way people think

Transmission of culture and language

Conversely, culture is transmitted in a large part, by language, through teaching.

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Language, Society, and Culture

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Language and Social Context

We arrive at meaning through conversational interaction, which follows many social

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Travis: ―How are you?‖

Some conversational elements are highly scripted or ritualized, especially the

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Language and Cultural Context

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Culturally influenced differences in language and meaning can lead to some

Customs and Norms

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Additional readings on the topic:

I think, language, culture and society have a correlation because language is an

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Relationship between language and society

Relationship between language and culture

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Summary of the Lesson:

The interrelatedness and interconnectedness of the three concepts, language,

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

2. How do the overlapping concepts/interconnected concepts of ―Language, Culture,

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Lesson 2: Language, Culture, and Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology

Learning Module on LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Summary Sheet for Lesson 2

Final Grade for Lesson 2