UNIVERSITY OF CONTINUOUS TRAINING

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
HUMAN AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
DR. IRBIR LATIFA

LESSON FOUR
Language, Culture and Society
Learning Objectives
At the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
 Differentiate between culture and society
 Be able to understand the complex relationship between language and culture.
 Know the politics of how language powerfully constructs identities in relation to class, caste, race,
gender, history and colonialism.

INTRODUCTION:
The methodology of Humanities seeks to understand how culture constructs
reality through language. The importance of language in the production of knowledge
and identities is of prime importance in humanities.
LANGUAGE, SOCIETY AND CULTURE
In the twentieth century, "culture" emerged as a concept central to anthropology
including all human phenomena that are not purely results of human genetics.
Specifically, the term ‘culture’ as two meanings:
(1) The evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with
symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively.
(2) The distinct ways in which people living in different parts of the world
classified and
represented their experiences, and acted creatively.
An integral part of any culture is its language. Language not only develops in
conjunction with society’s historical, political and economic evolution but also decides
that society’s attitude and thinking. Language not only expresses concepts and ideas it
also shapes thought. Language and culture are inseparable. At the most basic level,
language is a method of expressing ideas. That is, language is communication. It is
usually verbal, visual (via signs and symbols), or semiotics (via hand or body
gestures). Culture, on the other hand, is a specific set of ideas, practices, customs and
beliefs which make up a functioning society as different from others.
Language is specific to a culture. It is a culture that creates a language as a medium
of
communication within a specific social group with distinct ethnic and cultural traits
passed down
as heritage from generation to generation. However any change in the language brings
a change in the culture .Language is the verbal expression of culture. Culture is the
ideas, customs and beliefs of a community with a distinct language - everything
speakers can think about and every way they have of thinking about things as medium
of communication. For example, the Latin language has no word for the female friend
of a man (the feminine form of amicus is amica, which means mistress, not friend)
because the Roman culture could not imagine a male and a female being equals, which
they considered necessary for friendship. Similarly there is no masculine gender for
‘virgin’ since culture does not dictate such sexual purity for men.
It is thus clear that a culture constructs its language according to social needs and
demands. Language is used to maintain and convey culture and cultural ties. Language
provides us with many of the categories we use for expression of our thoughts. Thus
our thinking is influenced by the language which we use. The values and customs in
the country we grow up in shape the way in which we think to a certain extent. It is
apparent that culture, as the totality of human’s way of living and as an imbued set of
behaviour and modes of perception, becomes highly important in language. A
language is part of a culture and a culture is part of a language; the two are intricately
interwoven so that we cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either
language or culture.
Language is a part of culture, yet it is more than that. It is central to culture since it
is the
means through which most of culture is learned and communicated. Infants learn the
language and
simultaneously acquire the culture of the society into which they are born. Only
humans have the
biological capacity for language, which allows them to communicate cultural ideas and
symbolic
meanings from one generation to the next and to constantly create new cultural ideas.
The capacity for language separates humans from other primates. In any language, an
infinite number of possible sentences can be constructed and used to convey an infinite
number of cultural ideas.
Because of this, human language is significantly different from any other system of
animal communication.
A culture uses language as a distinct medium of communication to convey its
defining
ideas, customs and beliefs from one member of the culture to another member.
Cultures can
develop multiple languages, or "borrow" languages from other cultures to use; not all
such languages are co-equal in the culture. Culture is often defined by the predominant
language used by its members. Languages, on the other hand, can be developed (or
evolved) apart from its originating culture. Certain languages have scope for cross-
cultural adaptations and communication, and may not actually be part of any culture.
Additionally, many languages are used by different cultures (that is, the same language
can be used in several cultures).
As cultures come up with new ideas, they develop language components to express
those
ideas. For example studies are being conducted on the influence of computers and the
internet on
language. The reverse is also true - that is, the limits of a language can prevent certain
concepts
from being part of a culture. Finally, languages are not solely defined by their
developing
culture(s) - that is, most languages borrow words and phrases ("loan words") from
other existing
languages to describe new ideas and concepts. Indian loan words that have come into
English in
recent times include ‘guru’, ‘mantra’, ‘curry’ and so on. In fact, in the modern very-
connected
world, once one language manufactures a new word to describe something, there is a
very strong
tendency for other languages to "steal" that word directly, rather than manufacture a
unique one
itself.
Language provides us with many of the categories we use for expression of our
thoughts.
Thus our thinking is influenced by the language which we use. The values and
customs in the
country we grow up in shape the way in which we think to a certain extent. Various
studies have
been carried out, among them, a well-known hypothesis is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
made by
two American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. The Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis describes the relationship between language, culture and thought. The core
idea is that man’s language moulds his perception of reality. We see the world in the
way that our language describes it, so that the world we live in is a linguistic construct.
Depending on the language we speak we see the world differently. His best example
was the comparison between the idea of snow of an English person and an Eskimo
person. The Eskimo has many words to describe snow, while the English only have
one. An Eskimo has specific words to describe wet snow, snow currently falling and
so on. Therefore an Eskimo perceives the snow in a different way from an English
person. Therefore, a ‘snow world’ in an Eskimo’s eye and an English speaker’s eye
would be different. This example shows that people’s perceptions of their
surroundings are modified by the conceptual categories their languages happen to
provide. Another example is the Dani people, a farming group from New Guinea.
They only have two words to describe the two basic colors: dark and bright. Hence a
Dani person cannot differentiate colors as well as an English person is able to.
This hypothesis dictates that language and culture influence one another. In a group
of people whose language has no word for "yellow", they may as a culture consider
yellow and orange objects to be the same color (whereas in English there are different
words for these colors so that the objects are seen as having completely different
colors). For a society that uses a language in which the word for "beautiful" is the
same as the word for "clean", it may be difficult or impossible for the people in that
society to accept that something dirty could be beautiful and they may equate
cleanliness with beauty.
Similarly, a society's culture will influence their language. If a group lives in a cold
area with heavy, constant snowfall, they may have many different, specific words for
snow, whereas a group living in a warm climate may only have one word for snow.
Similarly an interesting example is the concept of time in different cultures. In English
a watch ‘runs’ (as in time is running out), in Spanish it ‘walks’, in French it ‘marches’,
in German it ‘functions’. Here it becomes clear how different cultures value time. In
the Anglo value system time flies, the watch runs and time is money.
There is plenty of other linguistic evidence of culture differences. The relationship
issue for
example is often used to explain the cultural difference between Chinese people and
English
speakers. In Chinese, there are more precise terms for describing relationships than in
English.
Chinese people distinguish relatives on mother’s side from those on father’s side. They
have the
word ‘biao’ to call the brothers and sisters on mother’s side and the word ‘tang’ for the
father’s
side. Also, the uncles and aunts are addressed differently on each side. On the
contrary, in English,
there are limited words to describe relationships. This difference indicates that
relationships play
an important role in Chinese culture. Relationships among people are generally
considered
important for Chinese people. The precise terms for describing family and other
relationships
reflect the Chinese culture, and the language may in turn influence the Chinese way of
thinking.
Talking about relationships, in English, we have the phrase ‘-in law’ to address a
certain kind of
relatives, this may indicate that compared to relationships, law plays a more important
role in the
western culture. Another example can be found between English and French. English
borrows a lot of words from French, and a large part of them are the names of food.
Pork, veal, mutton are all French words. Even the word ‘cuisine’ is from French.
Judging from the language, we can tell that French cuisine must be more famous than
English food and the catering culture is more important in France than in English
speaking countries.
CONCLUSION
Human beings make sense of their life in society by building up patterns of
action, organising perceptions into coherent patterns, and organising their own actions
on patterned lines too. In other words, we fall into habitual ways of acting. When we
relate to others we relate to them as typical, as ideal types. Interaction takes place on
the basis of a mutual process.