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

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

Chapter 9 Language and culture

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

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.

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

The relationship between language and culture

1. 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.

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

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.

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

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.

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

Two Interpretations about SWH

Strong version believes that the language patterns determine people s thinking and behavior; Weak version holds that the former influence the latter. ----The study of the linguistic relativity or SWH has shed two important insights (领悟) : There is nowadays a recognition that language, as code, reflects cultural preoccupations (偏见，成见) and constrains the way people think. More than in Whorf s days, however, we recognize how important context is in complementing the meanings encoded in the language.

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

Linguistic evidence of cultural differences

Denotative meaning (指示的，外延的，表示的) ---- a meaning that can be found in a dictionary. Connotative meaning(内涵的) ---- a meaning or idea suggested by a word or thing in addition to the formal meaning or nature of the word or thing. Iconic（图象的） meaning ---- the image or icon invoked（援引） in mind by a word. For example, “dog”.

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

Some cultural differences in language use

Greetings

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋

新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 戴炜栋