语言及文化的关系.pptVIP

Language and Culture Major researches on language and culture Interaction of language and culture Major researches The connection between culture and language has been noted as far back as the classical period and probably long before. The ancient Greeks, for example, distinguished between civilized peoples and bárbarosthose who babble“; The German romanticists of the 19th century such as Herder, Wundt and Humbolt, often saw language not just as one cultural trait among many but rather as the direct expression of a peoples national character, and as such as culture in a kind of condensed form. Herder for example suggests, “Since every people is a people, it has its own national culture expressed through its own language”. Language in culture: Boasian tradition. Franz Boas 1858-1942 Established modern American anthropology Handbook of American Indian Languages, 1911 Anthropological orientation Franz Boas, like his German forerunners, maintained that the shared language of a community is the most essential carrier of their common culture. Boas was the first anthropologist who considered it unimaginable to study the culture of a foreign people without also becoming acquainted with their language. the fact that the intellectual culture of a people was largely constructed, shared and maintained through the use of language, meant that understanding the language of a cultural group was the key to understanding its culture. We can learn from the citation: Language is the most important branch of ethnology. Ethnology is the scientific study and comparison of cultures of different races of people (New collegiate Dictionary). Language is a component part of culture. Cultural relativism While transcribing native texts and translating them, Boas became fascinated by the different ways in which different language classify the world and the human experience. He proposed cultural relativism—the view that each culture should be understood in its own terms rat