新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋9 Language and Culture.pptVIP

Chapter 9 Language and culture What is culture? In a broad sense, culture means the total way of life of a people, including the patterns of belief, customs, institutions, techniques, language and etc. that characterizes the life of the 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, etc. There are generally two types of culture: material and spiritual. The relationship between language and culture The same word may stir up different associations in people under different cultural background, e.g. the word “dog”. 2. Language expresses cultural reality, reflects the people’s attitudes, beliefs, world outlooks, etc. 3. The culture both emancipates (解放；解脱) and constrains people socially, historically and metaphorically. 4. Culture also affects its people’s imagination or common dreams which are mediated through the language and reflected in their life. 5. On the one hand, as an integral part of human being, language permeates (渗透) in his thinking and way of viewing the world, and 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. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, proclaimed that the structure of the language people habitually use influences the ways they think and behave, i.e. different languages offer people different ways of expressing the world around, they think and speak differently, this is also known as linguistic relativity. Sapir and Whorf believe that language filters people’s perception and the way they categorize experiences. This interdependence of language and thought is now known as Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Two Interpretations about SWH Strong version believes that the language patterns determine people’s thinking and behavior; Wea