Language and culture are both unique phenomena to human beings and therefore attract considerable anthropological, sociological, and linguistic study. In Chapter 14 of Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Everett evaluates the relationship of language and culture from a linguistic point of view. Although he titles this part of the book “The Partnership between Language and Culture,” in his discussion clearly exists an inclination to explore whether language or culture plays a determinant role. Everett makes the case that culture certainly determines language while language represents the complex interaction among culture, cognition, and language itself.
We are to first look at the dynamics among culture, language, and cognition; then, we will move to discuss different theories that deal with interface of culture, cognition, and language.
Language as determined by culture
According to Everett, Language is “the product of synergism between values of a society, communication theory, biology, physiology, physics (of the inherent limitations of our brains as well as our phonetics), and human thought… this is also true of the engine of language, grammar.” (Everett, 211) That is to say, language and its structure are dependent on the context in which they exist.
In this vein, the author offers us an example of eating a salad. When Xahóápati noticed Everett eating a salad, he pondered why the author would “eat leaves” as a meal, which was a rare occurrence in Pirahã culture. The Pirahã friend even kindly reminded the author that eating salads is why he could not master their language. This is a shocking discovery that Pirahãs take the role of their culture (here symbolized by following their lifestyle not to eat salad) so seriously that language acquisition won’t take place if one is not to actually live their culture. For Pirahãs, one has to acquire different life experiences so as to “speak … language well.” Cultures, as distinct eating habits, differ from one another; and it is the close correlation of culture and language that renders variations of languages, just as those of cultures.
The Essay on Language Culture Cause People
To What Degree Might Different Languages Shape In Their Speakers Different Concepts Of Themselves And The World? What Are The Implications Of Such Differences For Knowledge? The difference in languages can cause different perceptions of various cultures leading to distinctions or possible clashes. When I lived in France I faced some of the problems a language barrier can cause. The most common and ...
It is intriguing to observe that Pirahãs have essentially different reference of direction. In their culture, there are no counterparts for words like “left” and “right.” Rather, they adopt an “exocentric orientation” method, by which they navigate themselves with reference to external objects such as river. Living a jungle life, Pirahãs find it more convenient to use such reference of direction instead of left-and-right method. This unique culture pattern directly results in a lack of body-oriented language system that would force them to think more unambiguously and consistently about location. It is now clear that culture, tradition, and habits influence language fundamentally.
Another example to illustrate the culture root of a language is the absence of numeral system in Pirahã community. Although the Pirahãs have been trading with Brazilians for more than two hundred years, they have not borrowed any numerals to facilitate their trade. Nevertheless, their lack of numeral language doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have concept of counting (as Everett explained in the chapter) but they are just culturally more comfortable without saying numbers.
As Everett observed in another part of the book, “it is by [language] itself insufficient for full communication and understanding without knowledge of an enveloping culture.” This theory is utterly apparent in Pirahã language, which was categorized by the author as “esoteric.” (Everett, 204) In essence, an esoteric language is culturally centralized and is only known to a certain range of restricted community. Esoteric Pirahã language tends to rely excessively heavily on cultural consensus throughout community to convey specific meaning. However, we should note this “culture-orientated” theory is not completely true when it comes to more exoteric language such as English, which is already spoken through distinct cultural communities from the United States in the west to Hong Kong in the east. Behind intricacies of this world language, we perceive common human intelligence and meaning rather than exclusiveness of a specific culture. Whatever the case is, either esoteric of exoteric, culture serves as a base for language to survive and thrive.
The Term Paper on Sociolinguistics: Dialect Continuum and Language
1. Subject matter of sociolinguistics SL concentrates on the diversity of language in society according to various factors such as geographical distribution, age group, ethnic group, socioeconomic class, gender, etc. A broad definition of SL is “the study of language in relation to society”. SL is relatively young discipline, which became recognized as a separate branch of language study in the ...
Culture as represented and adjusted by language
Although language is derived from its unique cultural environment, the vast majority of cultural phenomena are represented by linguistic means, through speech, written communication, television, or the internet. Even those non-linguistic representations assume language and appear with certain degree of linguistic commentary. They may take the form of analysis of a piece of melody, a caption for a photo, etc. As Sapir noted in one of his famous papers that language is “the medium of expression for their society.” (Everett, 218)
A language is a repository of specialized culture experience. The entrenched establishment of immediacy of experience principle in Pirahã culture is exemplified by their linguistic utterance about their dreams. From their recounts of their dreams, Everett asserts that Pirahã classify dreams and reality “roughly the same: just types of experiences that we have and witness.” (Everett, 214-215) We come to know about and analyze Pirahã’s immediacy of experience through their linguistic recalls of dreams, either oral or written. Had it not been for the language evidence, we would never approach so close to their unique culture.
Everett also discusses practice of gender-neutral language among members of Linguistic Society of America. There lays an assumption in LSA’s strict guidelines against sexist language that the way we utilize language affects the way we perceive the world. According to Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of language-culture-cognition interface (Everett, 218), the guidelines not only represent the culture but further try to alter people’s sexist values and to ground different genders on equal basis.
The Term Paper on Language And Cognition: A Developmental Perspective
Table of contents 1. Introduction………………………………………………………..3 2. Summary of chapters 2.1 summary of chapter one ……………………………………4 2.2 summary of chapter two…………………………………….6 2.3 Summary of chapter three…………………………………..9 2.4 Summary of chapter four…………………………….……11 2.5 Summary of chapter five…………………………………..13 2.6 Summary of chapter six……………………………………15 2.7 Summary of chapter seven………………………………...18 2.8 ...
In effect, Sapir made this point quite clear by claiming that “no two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.” (Everett, 218) A specific language is a unique representation of certain culture entity. It is also hard to deny that a large part of the culture is represented through the specific language. Meanwhile, as language evolves in its cultural condition, it can insidiously alter the culture in turn. This is why linguistic differences can be often seen as the mark of another culture.
However, there’s another interesting way of looking at the relationship between language and culture. Some theorists view culture as “an aggregate of many different meme sets or memeplexes shared by the majority of a population. ” Memes first appeared through people’s imitation through each other and evolved finally into a form of language as people gathered together to form a coherent community. But after language came into being, it started to serve as a medium for spreading memes. Language, as a meme, loaded cultural meanings on itself and changes as culture changes with time. This is fairly compatible with the theories presented earlier in this section that language serves as a medium of culture yet it may change the culture in subtle ways.
Cognition as premise and essentials of culture and language
This conclusion may seem self-evident to readers as there definitely won’t be any culture and language if human beings are all unintelligent and unconscious of the world around them. This is a rather neurolinguistic problem which deserves less discussion when we investigate language, culture, and cognition from sociolinguistic perspective.
Different theories about relationship among cognition, language, and culture
In addition to a dialectical analysis into the dynamics among cognition, language, and culture, we are to take a more static stand to look at this issue. The following table, adapted from Everett’s book, shows theories about relationship among cognition, language, and culture on a paired basis, and it concerns mainly about question that which element takes the determinant role. Please note that “grammar” refers to language since we mainly evaluate the structure of language.
The Essay on Culture and Cognition
Culture may be defined as a combination of different traits of a social group. These traits or ways of life can be language, arts, sciences, thoughts, spirituality, social activities, interactions, and many more (“Definition”, n. d. ). The world has many peoples and thus many cultures, thus each has their own beliefs, traditions, and customs. Another characteristic of a certain culture may be ...
Cognition, Grammar, Culture Connections
Constraint Relationship | Representative Theory |
1. cognition → grammar | Chomsky’s UG |
2. grammar → cognition | Linguistic relativity (Whorf) |
3. cognition → culture | Brent Berlin and Paul Kay’s work on color terms |
4. grammar → culture | Greg Urban’s work on discourse-centered culture |
5. culture → cognition | Long-term effects on thinking of cultural restrictions on certain behaviors |
6. culture → grammar | Ethnogrammar; individual forms structured by culture |
With addition of this table, a thorough and holistic evaluation should complete. The relationship between language and culture now seems more emotional than materialistic: along with language go the identity of community and traditional spirituality. Each language is so unique because of the culture – behind the language – that approaches and appreciates the world uniquely. Linguistics is now “vital in teaching us different ways of thinking about life, of approaching our day-to-day existence on planet Earth.” (Everett, 277)
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[ 1 ]. From Language and Culture, .
