7.8.language,culture_and_society 简明英语语言学 戴炜栋.pptVIP

Chapter 7 Language, Culture, and Society I. Language and Culture 1. What is language? Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. I. Language and Culture 2. What is culture? In a broad sense, it means the total way of a people, including the patterns of belief, customs, objects, institutions, techniques, and language 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. “Culture is a bunch of grapes. if one plucks away at a bunch of grapes, isolating each separate grape, the cluster disappears. ” “Culture comes in layers, like an onion. To understand it you have to unpeel it layer by layer.” I. Language and Culture 3. The relationship between language and culture. “Language is a mirror, in front of which culture is reflected.” Language determines culture (linguistic determinism) Culture determines language (culture determinism) 3. The relationship between language and culture. (1) Culture is a wider system that completely includes language as a subsystem. The relation of language to culture is that of part to whole. 3. The relationship between language and culture. (2) Language both expresses and embodies cultural reality. A language not only expresses facts, ideas, or events which represent similar world knowledge by its people, but also reflects the people’s attitudes, beliefs, world outlooks etc. 3. The relationship between language and culture. (2) Language both expresses and embodies cultural reality. Language embodies cultural identity. E.g. When a child acquires his mother tongue, he also acquires a language-specific culture and becomes socialized in certain ways. 3. The relationship between language and culture (3) Language plays a major role in perpetuating culture (or consolidating it over time), esp. in print form. E.g. USA, advanced computer tec