Relation between language and culture

It has long been recognized that language is an essential and important part of a given culture and that the impact of culture upon a given language is something intrinsic and indispensable. As we' 11 show below, though the endeavor in the pursuit of this inter-relationship has never been dormant in the development of linguistic science, "this very embedding of language in society and culture has been the focus of intense and sustained research efforts since the 1960s" (Apte 1994: 2000). In order to provide the student an opportunity to know more about the situation, we introduce this chapter and focus our discussion on the relationship between LANGUAGE, CULTURE, and SOCIETY. This attempt can be alternatively understood as an effort to provide a different perspective to the study of language science in terms of some new tendencies and developments in the field of SOCIOLINGUISTICS, which has been proven to be an additional momentum to the study of language use in a sociocultural setting over the past decades. Bearing this point in mind, we organize our discussion in two parts, (1) language and culture, (2) language and society. 7.1 Language and culture 7.1.1 How does language relate to culture? It has become axiomatic to state that there exists a close relationship between language and culture. More evidence can be gathered to substantiate this claim if we have a brief survey of what has happened in

the field of linguistics over the past century. Admittedly, ever since the beginning of the eighteenth century, the linguistic inquiry of language has been either comparative and historical or structural and formalized in nature, some change, however, was observed at the start of the 20th century: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ORIENTATION in the study of language was developed both in England and in North America. What characterized this new tradition was its study of language in a sociocultural context. While Bronislaw Malinowski and John P. Firth can be regarded as the pioneers of this movement in England. Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and Benjamin Lee Whorl are naturally seen as the representatives of a parallel but independent tradition from North America. With their innovation, commitment, and perseverance, a lot of important and creative work has been done in the research of the relationship between language and culture. More importantly, a paradigm was thus set up, which has led to a diversity of research of the issue in the following years. As early as in the 1920s, a school of ANTHROPOLOTICAL STUDY OF LINGUISTICS came into being in England. For instance, when Malinowski, an anthropologist, did his field work on the Trobriand Islands off eastern New Guinea, he observed that in this primitive culture the meaning of a word greatly depended upon its occurrence in a given context, or rather, upon a real language situation in life. Take the word wood for example. In this culture, the word might be used either to refer to the solid substance of a tree as its English equivalent suggests, or more specifically, to designate a canoe, which served as a useful means of transportation to these islanders and therefore played an important role in the daily life of this SPEECH COMMUNITY. The second interpretation of

this word was, however, turned out to be heavily situationally or culturally specified and might not be easily captured by an outsider from a different cultural background. Based on phenomena like this, Malinowski claimed that "In its primitive uses, language functions as a link in concerted human activity .... It is a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection." ( 1923: 312 [ Sampson 1980: 224 ] ) Needless to say, the work by Malinowski paved the way for a cultural, rather, a contextual study of language use in Britain. Strongly influenced by this anthropological view of language and being fully aware of the importance of the context in the study of language use, Firth, a leading figure in a linguistic tradition later known as the London School, tried to set up a model for illustrating the close relationship between language use and its co-occurrent factors. In the end, he developed his own theory of CONTEXT OF SITUATION, which can be summarized as follows. A. The relevant features of the participants: persons, personalities: (i) The verbal action of the participants. (ii) The non-verbal action of the participants B. The relevant objects. C. The effects of the verbal action (Firth 1950: 43 - 44 [ Palmar 1981:53 - 54] ). In relation to the focus of our discussion here, two points can be made to show the strong culture-oriented implication of this theory. Like Sapir, though far less directly, Firth here seemed to suggest the creativity and diversity of linguistic idiosyncrasy in language use (cf. Darnell 1994:3655).

On the other hand, what Firth emphasized in this theory is quite similar to a more updating sociological axiom in language use, namely, "who speaks (or writes) what language (or what language variety) to whom and when and to what end" (Fishman 1972:46). And the Firthian tradition in this respect was further developed by the founder of systemic-functional linguistics, M.A.K. Halliday, whose contributions to sociolinguistics could be better seen from his understanding of language from a socially semiotic or interactional perspective, his functional interpretation of grammar as a resource for meaning potential, and his linguistic model in the study of literature(Downes 1998). Meanwhile, we also notice that linguists from the North American side began to make some substantial contributions to the study of the relationship between language and culture around the early 1920s. In fact, when we talk about a cultural study of language in America, we'll soon realize the fact that the American Indian culture formed an extremely fruitful source for early American anthropologists to look at this subject matter. From the 1920s to the 1940s, when engaged in a demanding but significant task--the reconstruction of American Native languages, those anthropologists such as Boas, Sapir, and Whorl came to know the significance of culture in the study of language use. For instance, from their field work, a lot of language data had been documented, providing much first-hand evidence to show how the interpersonal relationship is related to linguistic forms chosen by these American Indians in their daily communication. If things like this were not to be appropriately described and correctly understood, it would be very difficult to interpret some variations in the structure of these languages. This anthropological

approach to the study of language and culture laid a firm foundation in the history of linguistic development. The potential impact of this tradition can still be felt when we talk about the ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION, an authoritative research framework of our time in a linguistic study of social and cultural factors (Hymes 1962). Having talked so much on the heritage concerning the study of language and culture, now let us move on and introduce a very influential but also extremely controversial theory that has ever been made in the study of the relationship between language and culture. And this attempt will inevitably lead us to an important figure in American AN THROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS --Benjamin Lee Whorl and his famous hypothesis concerning language, thought, and culture. From the early 1920s, as an amateur linguist, Whorl began to show an interest in language, anthropology, and archaeology. Later on, he attended some linguistic courses given by Sapir at Yale University and "found particular resonance between his own ideas and those of Sapir" (Sram 1994: 4983). This experience and his study of Hopi, an American Indian language, helped him develop his unique understanding of linguistic relativity, which is widely known as the SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESES. What this hypothesis suggests is like this: our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express our unique ways of understanding the world) Following this argument, two important points could be captured in this theory. (On the one hand, language may determine our thinking patterns; on the other, similarity between languages is relative, the greater their structural differentiation is, the more diverse their conceptualization of the world will be.)For this reason, this hypothesis

has alternatively been referred to as LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM and LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY--a view which "was first expounded by the German ethnologist, Wilhelm von Humboldt" (Crystal 1985:262).