Language and culture.ppt社会语言学 2.pptVIP

Language and culture;Linguistic evidence of cultural differences 1.Speech acts in the form of routine formulas such as greeting; leave-taking, thanking, apologizing and so on also vary from culture to culture. For example: ①to respond to “thank you” ②to use “thank you” ;2.The patterns of actual use of imperatives in different languages differ considerably. For examples: ①When a British English speaker wants to convey a polite request or invitation, he would tend to choose some formulation such as an interrogative with “will, would, can or could”, like “Could I have an ashtray?” But Chinese people would like to use “you have to…”, “you must…”.;②A British speaker does not wish to force his guest to accept something she does not want. But for Chinese people, they want to use a very forceful and insistent imperative, practically obliging his addressee to accept the offer. ;3.Different features of written discourse differ from culture to culture. For example: A paragraph in English often begins with a statement of its central idea, known as “topic sentence”, followed by a series of sub-divisions of central idea. A paragraph in Spanish or in some other Roman language, its line of thought is sometimes interrupted by rather complex digressions. A paragraph in Russian often contains digressions.;Relationship between language and culture;2.Cultural cognition and value system influence language For example: Many phrases in Chinese related to mind work contain the character of xin such as xin shu, xin si, xin ji, for ancient Chinese believed that heart was the organ for thinking.;3.The size of vocabulary categorizing a concept in a language reflects the significance of what is reflected by the language. For example: ①In an Indian language in Mexico, there are different terms referring to the concept of “maize” depending on its types, part, growing process, harvesting, cultivating and cooking.;②Another example is addressing terms. Generally speaking, the