语言与社会期末问题及答案汇总

1.How do you understand the influence of culture on communication?1)Culture is everything and everywhere .Our culture supplies us with theanswers to those and countless questions about what the world looks like and how you live and communicate within this world.2)Culture is the foundation of communication,and when cultures arediverse,communication practices may be different.Countless aspects ofculture help determine and guide communication behavior.3)The world looks,sounds,tastes,and feels the way is dose because our culturehas given you the criterion of perception.2.What are the major factors that influence language communication?The three elements that directly influence our perception and communication:(1)cultural values.It inform a member of a culture about what is good andbad,right and wrong,true and false,positive and negative,and the like.Cultural values define what is worth dying for,what is worth protecting,what frightens people,what are proper subjects for study and for ridicule,and what types ofevents lead individuals to group solidarity.Most important,cultural values guide both perception and behavior.(2)worldview(religion).A worldview is a culture’s orientation toward such thingsas God,nature,life,death,the universe,and other phiosophical issues that areconcerned with the meaning of life and with “being”.(3)Social organization.The manner in which a culture arganizes itself is directedto the institutions within that culture.The families who raise you and thegovernments with which you associate and hold allegiance to all help determine how you perceive the world and how you behave within the world.3.Discuss the differences between positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies with examples.(1)Positive politeness strategies:those showing the closeness, intimacy, and rapport between speaker and hearerNagative politeness strategies:those indicating the social distance between speaker and hearer(2)Positive Politeness: is redress directed to the addressee's positive face, his desire that his wants should be thought of as desirable.Redress consists in partially satisfying that desire by communicating that one's own wants are in some respects similar to the addressee’s w ants.The linguistic realizations of Positive Politeness are in many respects representative of the normal linguistic behavior between intimates. Nagative politeness :Redressive action addressed to the addressee’s negative face.Addressee wants to have his freedom unhindered and his attention unimpeded.Specific and focused to minimize the particular imposition that the FTA effects.Politeness in Western cultures is always considered with negative politeness behaviour.(3)Categories of Positive Politeness:Claim common ground;Categories of negative politeness:use indirect speech acts;question;hedge (deliberately vague expression);be pessimistic;minimize the FTA;give gifts4.Try to find examples to illustrate the positive and negative strategies used in the Chinese cultural context considering the factors of “in-group”vs.”out-group”membership in communication.(1)Positive strategies: Use in- group identity markers；Using any of the innumerable ways to convey in- group membership: address forms, language or dialect, jargon or slang and ellipses.Examples:“Honey, can you give me the beer?”“Hey brother, what’s going on?”“How about a drink?”(2)Negative strategies:Opposing tensions: desire to give hearer an “out“ by being indirect, and the desire to go on record.Solved by the compromise of conventional indirectness, the use of phrases and sentences that have contextually unambiguous meanings which are different from their literal meaning.Examples:“Can you please shut the door?”“You couldn’t possibly tell me the time, please?”5.What are the distinctions between performatives and constatives according to Austin?(1)Conditions:true or false(constative)-the constatives utterance is verifiable and it is either true or false;felicity conditions(performative)-the performatives require not only “the appropriate circumstances.”but also the appropriate language.(2)grammatical criterion:the performative verb is in the present tense and each sentence has s first person subject(3)lexical criterion:”state”(constative)“hereby”(performative)6.Please explain the main distinction between the concept of utterance and the concept of sentence with examples.(1)Utterance can succeed as an act of communication even if the speaker does not possess the attitude he is expressingOccasionally utterances are both nonliteral and indirect. For example, one might utter 'I love the sound of your voice' to tell someone nonliterally (ironically) that she can't stand the sound of his voice and thereby indirectly to ask him to stop singing.When uttering the sentences, the speaker is actually doing something, instead of stating or describing something(2)There are many sentences whose standard uses are not strictly determined by their meanings but are not implicatures or figurative uses eitherThe sentence does not express a complete proposition.Sentences used for ethical evaluationSentence meaning is constituted by its literal meaning and reference in context. The meaning is conveyed by the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses (locutionary act) following the syntactic and semantic rules.7.Illustrate the function of context in interpreting the meaning of language in communication.文本一：Context to a certain extent, reduce the barriers of communication, make communication more smooth, so that communication can receive good results. Language environment is essential for understanding language.(1)Context is an important means to resolve ambiguity: Any languagehas many words are ambiguous, used in a sentence usually embodiesa meaning, it must make a choice based on context. In a languageenvironment, the speaker only people to express a meaning.Polysemy is also very common in English, and some kind of meaningcan often be reflected through the context. However, the existence ofpolysemy and ambiguity does not cause confusion in communication,because the specific context can make it simple.(2)Context is the basis for understanding the meaning of a sentence: Thesentence meaning besides the literal meaning and the impliedmeaning outside. The conversational implicature is people, because ofa discourse meaning does not comply with the principles ofconversation. It is the true meaning of words according to the contextof, interpretation of discourse implication overtones.文本二：speakers of a language must possess in order to express their intentions and interpret those of others. In order to investigatehow we can “make meaning” by using language it is necessary tobring in the notion of context, that is, the way the various elementsare combined, how they relate to the world at large, and the purposesfor which they are used. This side of language study is generally calledpragmatics . The central message of pragmatics is that meaning doesnot come ready-made or ‘packaged’ in words or sentences, but isconstructed by speakers and hearers through processes ofinterpretation, in the context in which the language is used.There are three levels (or layers) of context: a) the linguistic context; b) the interactional context, or the ways in which people’sutterances are organized and follow one another in a regular manner;c) the social context, or the ways in which institutional, socio-economic, cultural, and political considerations influence and areinfluenced by the verbal actions of people.Therefore, to use English appropriately, effectively and critically ina wide range of situations, it is very important for learners of English,8.Please explain the differences of cultural context with examples.(课本178页划线部分)9.Explain the concepts of “language style”and “register”with yourown examples.(1) "language style" means due to the author's life experience and artistic accomplishment of the creation of the different features, language style is a writer with special style works of creative language.For example, Pure and fresh and elegant: li bai,Stall depressed:Du fu, QingJian popular:Bai juyi , The powerfulIn order to fully explain the relationship between language and gender, we should pay more attention to the differences and similarities between men and women. Although many scholars believe that men and women come from different cultures, this kind of culture is just a different sub culture. The mainstream culture plays a very important role in the process of the socialization of men and women. So whether it is male or female, they will be in the process of socialization to learn the values and behavior of the mainstream culture, but also learn to score the values and behavior of their own sub culture. In this way, their behavior, including language behavior, must have both similarities and differences. So it is not reasonable for researchers to study the differences alone. Therefore, in our study of language and gender should abandon such a concept: such as the overthrow of the null hypothesis; if only the overthrow of the null hypothesis (the difference that men and women have significant research) makes sense, actually keep null hypothesis research is found. Only in this way, we will not intentionally expose the facts and seek evidence to prove the existence of differences".11.Explain why bilingualism/multilingualism is a socially related phenomenon.In the traditional civilization period, the bilingual phenomenon exist in a natural way, bilingual phenomenon appeared during this period is mainly depending on the regional division. In the modern civilization period, the bilingual phenomenon mainly exists in the economic and diplomatic purposes. With the implementation of global integration, bilingual phenomenon and language phenomenon will be more obvious.Language is the product of society, so the bilingual phenomenon, both national between different languages and the different languages, between different families belong to a social phenomenon.People living in a particular social environment in the environment are commonly used in a particular language.As the change of its living environment, the language they use has been changed.At the same time, different areas or with different ethnic people communicate with each other also creates a person can take two or more than two language variant, it also makes what we call the bilingual or multilingual phenomenon.Therefore, it is not hard to find, bilingual phenomenon is a social phenomenon of language application.12.Discussion on the phenomenon of using English as a means of instruction of subject course in many Chinese universities from bilingual perspective.Multilingual applications in important international conferences, multilingualism in cultural exchanges, bilingual teaching, the introduction of foreign language education reform the original teaching materials, bilingual TV broadcasts, cross-cultural communication in international affairs and international trade, etc., all these phenomena show to the world that China is moving into a bilingual society closer.By accepting education of the school, almost all the Chinese students can speak at least two languages. In addition, since China joined the world trade organization, bilingual phenomenon also becomes more significant and prominent.In a variety of large and medium-sized city road signs can be seen everywhere, in both Chineseand English advertising and traffic also use the bilingual signs, many tourist attractions also asked the tour guide, driver and shops and restaurants waiters speak mandarin and English, some even asked for more languages.At the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 and further prove that the bilingual and multi-lingual phenomenon is must be the trend of the development of society.13.How to distinguish between a language and a dialect?Please use examples for your explanation.There are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, although a number of rough measures exist, which sometimes render contradictory results. The exact distinction is therefore a subjective one, dependent on the user's frame of reference. In some cases difference of dialect shades into difference of language. Where the line between them is not clear, groups that are linguistically distinct are considered to speak different dialects of the same language if they can generally understand each other, although what constitutes this mutual intelligibility is itself not always clear.The line between dialects of one language and separate languages is somewhat arbitrary.However, wherever we draw the line, three points should be clear:(1)Every language has multiple dialects.(2)Every speaker of every language is also a speaker of at least one dialect of that language.(3)Since the pronunciation conventions of a dialect constitute an accent, every speaker of every language speaks with some accent. There is no such thing as "speaking without an accent".14.Research on the influence of English on modern Chinese and report your findings with example.(1)From the perceptive of positive aspects: Firstly , with the spread of British democracy , Chinese people's sense of democracy has been strengthened greatly . Secondly , for Chinese people , the spread of British individualism is a revolution of thoughts , especially for the young people . Thirdly , British capitalist constitutional monarchy provided a good modal for Chinese exploration of political system.(2)From the view of negative aspects: Some Chinese indulge in British culture , which is unfavorable for Chinese cultural hesitance .Take the English forexample ,now Chinese people are learning English with the highly enthusiasm since English has become the language which is used all over the world . And English plays an important role in our education , employment , promotion and communicati on . That is to say , English has become a part of Chinese people’s daily life . However , the Chinese language learning is in an embarrassing situation . Compared to learning English with highly enthusiasm , more and more Chinese students hold an unconcerned attitude towards Chinese culture .15.Discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of English as a global language with examples.The English language is everywhere. It is the most widely studied language in the w orld.There is no doubt that English has become a global language in business, diplomacy, education and politics.Advantages(1) Everyone would have a reasonable expectation of being able to communicate no matter where they were.(2)International trade would be facilitated by increased opportunities for communication between nations.(3)Some hostilities between nations might be averted if language barriers were no longer a factor.Disadvantags:(1) Many languages have died because of the spread of English. Many still have losta large number of speakers and are bound to be doomed in the near future.(2) English has a diversity of accents and spelling conventions depending on country, so teaching English creates uncertainty as to which spelling and colloquial rules should be followed.(3)English is associated with colonial forces like England and the US which continue to exert political and economic pressures on countries so that they feel they must learn the language rather than desiring to learn it.(4)New ideas would be less common as people's thinking began to conform to the same epistemology.16.In what sense is language a part of human social behavior?(1) Language is one of the most powerful emblems of social behavior. In the normal transfer of information through language, we use language to send vital social messages about who we are, where we come from, and who we associatewith.Given the social role of language, it stands to reason that one strand of language study should concentrate on the role of language in society.(2) Sociolinguistics has become an increasingly important and popular field of study, as certain cultures around the world expand their communication base and intergroup and interpersonal relations take on escalating significance. (3) A slightly different concern with language and society focuses more closely on the effect of particular kinds of social situations on language structure.(4) Another approach to language and society focuses on the situations and uses of language as an activity in its own right. (5) In approaching language as a social activity, it is possible to focus on discovering the specific patterns or social rules for conducting conversation and discourse(6) It is also possible to examine how people manage their language in relation to their cultural backgrounds and their goals of interaction.17.Why is it important to understand the interrelationships between language and society?文本一：The relationship between language and society has for long been a subject of interest for scholars and still continuous to be so. The present study discusses the relationshipbetween one specific area language use, namely linguistic etiquette, and socio-cultural relatives of the Hindi-speaking community. These are two findings of the present study, which are worth noting: (A) the use of the linguistic etiquette system reflects social stratification and (b) social change brings about a corresponding change in the system of linguistic etiquette. On the basis of these, the study supports the view that the relationship between society and language, at least one aspect of it, is causal.文本二：The use of language forms a closed loop, since it is modelled on the loop of projection and introjection. The difference between the two loops is simply that the psychological one is based on individual meanings and the linguistic one on social values. This link between language and social values is one of identity, but only as long as society is static or is evolving slowly. In a static society, the language is the society. Society is its language. The two are one.Language and society are two different systems since the structure within language centres on the static signifier whilst the structure within consciousness orientates on the dynamic signified. In times of stability the dynamic structure of consciousness is put on hold, so linguistic values and social values are one. However, as society changes so the dynamic structure gradually comes into the foreground. Perhaps it is more accurate to put this effect the other way around: as the dynamic structure of consciousness becomes accentuated, so society begins to change.18.Explain your own understanding of the inter-relationships between language and sociocultural aspects with examples from real life.When we talk about the functions of language, we actually mean the functions of language in our socio-cultural life. How language functions in society and how it is maintained in our socio-cultural life.●Language can be used to fulfill social nguage can indicate one’s geographical nguage can indicate one’s social nguage pervades social life. It is the principal vehicle for the transmission of cultural knowledge, and the primary means by which we gain access to the contents of others' minds.(1)Language as a symbol of cultural reality:Language is a system of signs that is seen as having itself a cultural value. Speakers identify themselves and others through their use of language. They view their language as a symbol of their social identity.(2)Language as an expression of cultural reality:Language is a system of signs that is seen as having itself a cultural value. Speakers identify themselves andothers through their use of language. They view their language as a symbol of their social identity.(3)Language as a reflection of culture:One obvious way in which languages may differ is in the nature of their vocabulary. The physical environment where a group of people live and the social oganization and structure can all be reflected in the language of a society by the users of that language19.Discuss the role of language in socialization from your own life experiences.(1)A language can affect a society by influencing or even controlling the world-view of its speakers.(2)Socialization through language examines how language is used as a medium or tool in the socialization process. Language enables a novice to become a competent member of a community by socializing through the content of communication and through language use.(3)Socialization processes may be either explicit or implicit .Explicit socialization may be directed at both the acquisition of language and sociocultural knowledge.For example,caregiver speech: Adults interact with children differently across cultures and communities. In some communities, for example, caregivers use simplified, child-directed speech: baby-talk. In others, adults make no or few adjustments when they speak to young children.。