Cultural Theories: The Relation between Language and Literature

Our purpose is to introduce a few of the main cultural theories that have
raised the relation between language and culture. From Wilhem Von Humbolt to Sapir and
Whorf to Michael Silverstein, Clifford Geertz, Dell Hymes to finish with Claire Kramsch, our
journey is quite exhaustive and begins in 1836.

As far back as 1836, Wilhem Von Humbolt’s (Re-printed edition, 1999, p2) essay
entitled The Heterogeneity of Language and its Influence on the intellectual Development of
Language clearly showed that

The character and structure of a language expresses the inner life and knowledge of its
speakers, and that languages must differ from one another in the same way and to the same
degree as those who use them.

He carries on making the link between language, thought and their way of perceiving
their world. We can therefore conclude that his work was indeed a forerunner to Sapir(1929)
and Whorf’s work called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The latter offers a concept of the
relation between language and thought, and the theory has from the very beginning
attracted many researchers such as philosophers, psychologists and linguists Their theory,
coming from Humbolt, claimed that different people speak differently because they think
differently and they think differently because their language provides them with a way of
perceiving the world around. Based on these studies, the American anthropologist and
linguist Edward Sapir(Language: An introduction to the Study of Speech, 1921) and his
student Benjamin Whorf suggested a very influential but controvertial theory in the study of
the relation between language and culture. Whorf suggested the idea that our languages
help mould our way of thinking and, consequently different languages may probably express
our unique ways of understanding the world. We can deduce that language may determine
our thinking patterns –the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or linguistic
determinism or it may only influence our thinking patterns- this is the weak version of the
Sapir- Whorf hypothesis or linguistic relativity. As a matter of fact, the strong version has
been rejected and only the weak version has been retained. The Latter highlights a great
influence of language on our thinking and culture. Language helps us put certain ideas and
beliefs to the fore, and so enables us to express our emotions and feelings. The weak version
implies there are cultural differences evoked in the associations of the words or concepts.
Cultural awareness of a people is embedded in language, but it does not mean that language
constrains what people can think or believe. Language only influences the way we think by
conveying cultural identities. According to the weak version of the hypothesis, each
language has its own conceptual system, and one who learns another language cannot
master it. But since languages can be learned, the conceptual systems are not that different.
As a conclusion, there are many aspects which need more scrutiny. There is no unanimous
conclusion about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; it has strong and weak points. It is quite true
that language influences our thinking and culture, but the hypothesis stresses the
omnipotence of language neglecting the social cultural aspects of language. Despite its
drawbacks, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a real breakthrough on the way to understanding
the relation between language and culture. Sapir and Whorf created a pioneering work
which has paved the way for future research. Thanks to this hypothesis, many future
researches have made the link between language and culture, between people and their
perception. The hypothesis is still studied in the social and human sciences. Whorf, Sapir’s
student, even proposed that the words and structures of a language influences how its
speaker behaves, feels about the world, and ultimately the culture itself. Simply put, Whorf
believed that you see the world differently from another person who speaks another
language due to the specific language you speak. To a large extent, the real world is
unconsciously built on the habits in regards to the language of the group. We hear and see
and otherwise experience broadly as we do because the language habits of our community
predispose choices of interpretation. For example, the lexicon or vocabulary is the inventory
of the articles a culture speaks about and has classified to understand the world around
them and deal with it effectively. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis presents a view of reality being
expressed in language and thus forming in thought. But the hypothesis raises another
question; is reality formed in language and then thought or in thought and then language?
Regardless of its age, the theory is still important today, and it triggered a whole set of
reactions and questions. The theory still prevailed in the 1970’s, was left aside by the 1990’s,
it has now been resurrected with Neowhorfianism. The latter is the weak version of the
Sapir Whorf hypothesis that holds that our thoughts and perception of the world are subtly
influenced by the grammatical structures of our language. This idea was in fact already
expressed by Wilhem Von Humbolt as early as 1836. With Whorfianism, there is an overt
rejection of determinism, namely that different words mean different things in different
languages. Whorf’s most known example is his argument for linguistic relativity which he
considered a fundamental difference in the concept of time among the Hopi, a Northeastern
American tribe. He highlighted that time for this tribe is not a series of countable examples
like ‘six days ‘or ‘eight years’. Whorf’s theory on Hopi conceptualization is an example of the
structure-centered approach to linguistic relativity which will find connections with thought
and behaviour: Whorf has shown the discrepancy of time conceptions through the grammar
of the language of Hopi and English. His main contribution in 1956 was the publication of his
writings on linguistic relativity. Besides, Neowhorfian linguistic Relativity and culture throw
light on the relation between language and culture, a relation that has remained implicit. To
understand it, it is important to grasp Michael Siverstein’s theory of culture which he
explains in his papers on ‘Cultural Concepts, and the Language-Culture Nexus’. For Silverstein
(2004, p 621),

Cultures are properties of population of people who have come to be by degrees tightly
or loosely bounded in respect of their groupness, their modes of cohering as a group
(cultural concepts).

Silverstein propounds that culture is linked to language through what he terms cultural
concepts,’ the nexus’ between language and culture. Cultural concepts are people’s
conceptualisation of their universe and are indirectly experienceable. They are composed of
two features:1) stereotypes, and ii) the organisation of the stereotypes into a structure. A
STEREOTYPE is symbolical knowledge about an object in the world. The organisation of
stereotypes into a structure is a kind of logic, evaluation stances (good, bad, normal, deviant
etc…). It organises stereotypes in an ordered set of serially structured value position
according to Silverstein. Together, stereotypes and their organisation form the mediating
object between language and culture. In fact, linguistic forms, social use, and human
reflections on the forms in use influence and have an impact on one another. To understand
any one of them, we must take into account both of the other two. If not, we have not just a
partial explanation, but only a partial object. We can deduce that social and cultural
processes are mediated in significant part by language, and systematic study of language use
enriches our understanding of them, for example, language users rely on models that link
types of linguistic forms with the types of people who stereotypically use them, even when
the model is used in unexpected ways. Silverstein describes these models of typical language
as linguistic ideologies. Any appropriate account of language use, Silverstein tells us, must
refer to language ideologies and we must describe how they become salient in practice. In
fact, linguistic anthropologists study linguistic forms in use, as construed by ideologies as
these forms and language ideologies move across speech events. Moreover, he suggests that
cultures like languages are ideational and mental, made of conception which are evidence of
knowledge, feeling, belief, even creating and transforming knowledge, feeling, belief. These
concepts belong to a socio-historical group. Silverstein asks fundamental questions like: can
we actually study the social significance of language without understanding this
sociohistorical unconscious that it seems to reveal?