language and culture语言与文化

英语语言学论文Language and culture

Class：English class 2

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Number：20

Language and Culture

Abstract: Language is the carrier of culture, the main expressional form of culture, which develops along with nation, country and society's development. Language is a part of a nation’s culture. The different nationality has different culture, history, manners，customs and so on, but various nationalities' culture and the social custom all display in this nationality's language. This article, by analyzing dialect,idioms and Chinglish, mainly reveals the relationship between language and culture is interdependent and interactive. Culture has a restricted effect on language and others outer factor according to the form and structure of language. As a word, Language is a mirror, in front of which Culture is reflected. There are many ways in which the phenomena of language and culture are intimately https://www.360docs.net/doc/1212852396.html,nguages are all influenced by cultural characteristics, and have a certain influence to the respective language and nationality's culture.

Key Words: language；culture; dialect; idiom; Chinglish；

teaching language.

Language and culture

As we all know, language is a kind of tool which is used for communication. So far, a lot of linguists have made researches on all aspects of language and come out a grate deal of theory books which provide some relevant reference for us, especially about the relationship between language and culture.

In the past years, I just only took all the concentration on the language and neglected culture to a certain extent. After reading some relevant theory books, I have a much more systematic understanding. Now let us discuss culture at first.

What is culture? It can be approached from different perspectives and consequently defined in quite different ways. If we look for the word in dictionary, we will know that culture refers to the customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular country or group. As a matter of fact, there is no satisfactory definition that enjoys a general acceptance by scholars of all sciences. However we still can give it a general notion. In a broad way, culture means the total way of life of a person, including the patter of belief, customs, objects, institutions, techniques, and language that characterizes the life of human community. In a narrow sense, culture may refer to local or specific practice, beliefs or customs, which can be mostly found in folk culture, enterprise culture or food culture and so on. Culture is an inclusive complicated system, and can be broadly divided into material culture and spiritual culture. Material culture refers to all the concrete and substantial cultural aspects of human society. Spiritual culture, on the contrary, refers to abstract and implicit cultural aspects of human society, including ideology, patterns of thought, values, beliefs, conventions, traditions, social norms and customs, assumptions, interpersonal relationships, etc.

Through mentioned above, we can have a general understanding of culture. Then what is the relationship between language and culture on earth? As far as I know, there exists a close connection between language and culture. No one would deny the relation of language to culture. Language expresses cultural reality, reflects the people’s attitudes, beliefs, world outlooks, etc. The culture both emancipates and constrains people socially, historically and metaphorically. Culture also affects its people’s imagination or common dream s which are mediated through the language and reflected in their life. On the one hand, language as an integral part of human being permeates in his thinking and way of viewing the world, language both expresses and embodies cultural reality; on the other, language, as a product of culture, helps perpetuate the culture, and the changes in language uses reflect the cultural changes in return.

Language plays an important role in all the social activities and is indispensable part of people’s activities in society. However human being’s linguistic phenomena is so mysterious that people have not known a lot yet. Since ancient times, linguists have tried to do research into the language in many ways, forming many kinds of linguistic school.

At the early start of the 20th century, people had realized that language was a basic and important component of certain culture and has intrinsic and indispensible effect. As we will refer to, although in the Long River of language science’s development, exploring the relationship between language and culture never took up any leading or dominant position. From the 1960s on, the language rooting in social and culture has long been the focus of everlasting linguists study. The anthropological approach to the study of language and culture laid a firm foundation in the history of linguistic development. Eugenc.Nida, a well-known linguist and translation theorist,

also made some brilliant views, concerning the relationship between language and culture: if we want to do a good job in cross-cultural communication, there are five types of sub-culture we should be fully aware of ecologic culture, linguistic culture, religions culture, material culture and social culture. In other words, language and culture are in a dialectical relationship. Every language is part of a culture, and it severs and reflects culture needs firstly. The relationship between language and culture reflects on words. The same word may stir up different associations in people under different cultural background. e.g. the word “dog”.

Language is closely related to culture and can be said as a part of culture. For many people, language is not just the medium of culture but also is a part of culture. It is quite common for immigrants to a new country to retain their old customs and to speak their first language amid fellow immigrants, even if all present are comfortable in their new language. This occurs because the immigrants are eager to preserve their own heritage, which includes not only customs and traditions but also language. This is also seen in many Jewish communities, especially in older members: Yiddish is commonly spoken because it is seen as a part of Jewish culture. From a dynamic view, language and culture interact with each other and shape each other. Language is the carrier of culture which in turn is the content of language. We can dig out cultural features from language and explain language phenomena with culture.

There are many ways in which the phenomena of language and culture are intimately related. Both phenomena are unique to humans and have therefore been the subject of a great deal of anthropological, sociological, and even mimetic study. Language, of course, is determined by culture, though the extent to which this is true is now under debate. The converse is also true to some degree: culture is determined by language - or rather, by the replicators that created both, memes. Dialects, idioms and Chinglish all are the concrete embodiment of language and culture.

Dialect is a mirror of culture. It reflects different culture in different area. Dialect is the form of language that is spoken in one area with grammar, words and pronunciation that may be different from other forms of the same language. The language different associated with dialect may occur at any level of language, including pronunciation, grammar, semantics, and language use. A language spoken by more than one small homogeneous community found to consist of two or more dialects. There are different ways of saying the same thing. Dialect is a reflection of the culture. The form of dialect has lots of reasons. Such as difference caused by education, occupation, status, age, race, gender, situations, region and other more language related issues. Dialects refer to different language variety used in different geographical region. When people are separated from each other geographically dialectal diversity develops. Geographical barriers like mountain ranges, big rivers, glaciers or other natural factors usually cause great transportation problems for people living in an out-of-way place. In addition, economy and politic are also important factors. With the time flies, dialects appear when language with its own characteristics develops. In China, dialects are very common. Different town has different dialect. If 2 persons coming from different place do not learn Putonghua, they will be confused by separate dialect. In college, there are many students coming from all over the country. They all have their own dialects.

Idioms as a special form of language exist in both of them and carry a large amount of cultural information such as history, geography, and religion, custom, nationality psychology, thought pattern and etc, and therefore are closely related to culture. They are the heritage of history and product of cultural evolvement. Consequently, we can know much about culture

through studying idioms and in turn get better understanding of idioms by learning the cultural background behind them. Idiom basically comes from the folk, and to a great extent, reflects a nationality’s cultural characteristics, the different nationality’s experience of life and the national character. Same as novel, poetry and other literary work, idiom is the essence of various national languages. The very many idioms are even very difficult to find in common dictionaries, but have vivid life feature and trueborn national characteristic. This is also a phenomenon which worthy of the language researchers and learners’ attention. Idiom is also an important rheto ric method of language, the independence, anomalistic but the fixed factor of language. The idioms of different languages are both influenced by cultural characteristics, and have a certain influence to the respective language and nationality's culture. Like Chinese idiom, English idiom is also a vivid language form. It is brief and to the point, vivid, harmonious, and so on. If we are not familiar with the human custom of one country, cultural or historical background, this kind of meaning in the characters will be ignorant. Especially this kind of meaning of word is the most difficult to deal with in translation. The production of the idiom is related to people’s living environment, custom, religious belief, and historical allusion and so on For example, to rest on one's oars(暂时歇一歇), to keep one’s head above water(奋力图存), all at sea(不知所措), a pack of rogues(狐朋狗党), you are a lucky dog(你是一个幸运儿),every dog has his 3 day(凡人皆有得意日)，old dog will not learn new tricks(老人学不了新东西), “God helps those who help themselves”(天助自助者), “Go to hell”(下地狱去), Between Scylla and Carbides(进退维谷), Pandora's box(潘多拉的盒子:无穷的灾难)and so on. If we don’t know the origin of the idioms, we can not understand them correctly. Idioms are a kind of language block which carry rich cultural elements. They are even called as the live fossil of culture.

Chinglish is more and more popular in Chinese lives. The appearance of Chinglish is also reflecting the relationship between language and culture. Certainly, it shows a special kind of relationship between English language and Chinese culture. We all know that every country has its own mother language and particular culture. With the teaching of English popular with the youth in China, young boys and girls begin to use it in our daily lives. Using single words or phrases substitute Chinese character. For example, we translate “好好学习，天天向上”into “day day up, good good study” , “让我看看”becomes “let me see see”, “好久不见”is “long time no see” and so on. The wind of Chinglish sweeps across the country especially on the internet. Now almost all the people know it and will use it once in a while. Even the westerners start to accept it gradually. As a new kind of communicative ways, Chinglish maybe become a kind of new language and new culture. Although we do not know whether it would exist or not for a long time, we can get a conclusion: different language merges into different language and different culture, which is likely to develop a new kind of language. Language is a communicative tool and has been staying develop and change. As long as we can understand the meaning of people’s words and have no trouble to normal conversation. The coinage of Chinglish is also a perfect language to a certain extent. It is much simpler than English. We do not need to worry about the grammar and sentence structure. It has arbitrary nature.

A language does reflect the culture of a society, but only in certain aspects, especially in its hierarchy of vocabulary and its discourse patterns. A language may boast an abundance of terms in certain domains, which may indicate the focus of culture. Changes in culture result in new types of discourse. The popularity of certain types of discourse may also reflect cultural concerns.

The significance of cultural teaching in teaching language is very important. Learning a

foreign language is inseparable from learning its culture. We need to learn enough about the language’s culture so that we can communicate in the target language properly to achieve not only the linguistic competence but also the pragmatic or communicative competence as well. Through communication, some elements of culture A enter culture B and become part of culture B, this phenomenon is known as cultural diffusion. One typical example of cultural diffusion is the appearance of loan words. Intercultural or cross-cultural communication is communication between people from different cultures (their cultural perceptions and symbols systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event.) In cross-cultural communication, we need to pay special attention to the significant differences regarding social relations and concept of universe from different perspectives such as language, food, dress, attitude towards time, work habits, social behavior and religious belief that can cause frustrations in communications and contacts.

In any culture or region, language is much more than semantics, much more than what the written page or the spoken word can contain. This especially becomes clear when studying a foreign language and learning the ways of a particular culture. e.g. the use of introductions, salutations, everyday sayings, etc. This area in particular gives more weight to culture then to the words themselves. Anyone studying a foreign language has to be bicultural as well as bilingual to speak the new language in a way that it is not disparaging to the culture and its origin. Language does not end at the meaning or the use of words associated to a culture" words represent beliefs, history, and the culture of their origin and they must be used accordingly.

In a word, Language is the carrier of culture, the main expressional form of culture, which develops along with nation, country and society's development. Language is a part of a nation’s culture. Language and culture are closely related to and depend on each other through their history. The native language is acquired along with the ways, attitudes and patterns of behaving of the social group, and these ways, attitudes and patterns of behaving patterns find their expression through language. In the view of this, we can know that language is an inseparable or integral part of culture, and the medium through which culture is acquired.

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凌征华：2006.《英语语言学》English linguistics，湖南人民出版社

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