LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

MID-TERM TEST
Essentials of language and culture
CHAPTER I: Language Taking about Itself
Language is a tool that human beings can use it to communicate with each
other and it is a system of communication based upon words and the combination
of words into sentences. Language is an exclusively human property, among the
characteristics that make a relatively clear distinction between linguistic and
nonlinguistic communication meaningful, double articulation and syntax.
THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.
The origin of language has six sources: The divine source, the natural sound
source, the social interaction source, the physical adaptation source, the tool-
making source and finally the genetic source.
Firstly, the divine source, in most religions, there appears to be a divine
source that provides humans with language. To rediscover this original divine
language, a few experiments have been carried out, with rather conflicting results.
The basic hypothesis seems to have been that, if human infants were allowed to
grow up without hearing any language around them, then they would
spontaneously begin using the original God-give language. Our capacity for
language is not limited to one or two specific areas but is based on more complex
connections extending throughout the whole brain. If human language did emanate
from a divine source, we have no wat of reconstructing that original language.
Secondly, the natural sound source, a quite different view of the beginnings
of language is based on the concept of natural sounds. The primitive words could
have been imitation of the natural sounds which early men and women heard
around them. All modern languages have some words with pronunciations that
seem to echo naturally occurring sounds. Words that sound similar to the noises
they describe are examples of onomatopoeia. The sounds of a person involved in
physical effort could be the source of our language. Basically, the expressive
noises people make in emotional reactions contain sounds that are not otherwise
used in speech production and consequently would seem to be rather unlikely
candidates as source sounds for language.
 Thirdly, the social interaction source, the sounds of a person involved in
physical effort could be the source of our language, especially when that physical
effort involved several people and the interaction had to be coordinated. The
appeal of this proposal is that it places the development of human language in
social context. This is an important idea that may relate to the uses of humanly
produced sounds. Apes and other primates live in social groups and use grunts and
social calls, but they do not seem to have developed the capacity for speech.
Fourthly, the physical adaptation source, teeth, lips, mouth, larynx, and
pharynx. Human teeth are upright, not slanting outwards like those of apes and
they are roughly even in height. The human larynx or “voice box” differs in
position from the larynx of other primates such as monkeys. The assumption of an
upright posture moved the head more directly above the spinal column and the
larynx dropped to a lower position.
Fifthly, the tool-making source, the outcome of manipulating objects and
changing them using both hands is evidence of a brain at work. a similar
development is believed to have taken place with human hands and some believe
that manual gestures may have been a precursor of language. It may be that there
was an evolutionary connection between the language-using and tool-using
abilities of humans and that both were involved in the development of the speaking
brain. There was an evolutionary connection between the language-using and tool-
using abilities of humans and that both were involved in the development of the
speaking brain.
Finally, the genetic source. Human offspring are born with a special capacity
for language. The innateness hypothesis would seem to point to something in
human genetics, possibly a crucial mutation, as the source.
THE PROPERTIES OF HUMAN LANGUAGE.
Communication as the primary function of human language, it’s not a
distinguishing feature. Humans are clearly able to reflect on language and its uses.
Without this general ability, we wouldn’t be able to reflect on or identify any of the
other distinct properties of human language. In detail at another five of them:
displacement, arbitrariness, productivity, cultural transmission, and duality.

Displacement.
 Humans can refer to past and future time, this property of human is called
displacement. It allows language users to talk about things and events not present
in the immediate environment.
Arbitrariness.
There is no “natural” connection between a linguistic form and its meaning.
The connection is quite arbitrary. This aspect of the relationship between linguistic
signs and objects in the world is described as “arbitrariness”.
Productivity.
The potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite. Each
signal in the system is fixed as relating to a particular object or occasion.
Cultural transmission.
A language in a culture with other speakers and not from parental genes.
This process whereby a language is passed on from one generation to the next is
described as cultural transmission. Cultural transmission of a specific language is
crucial in the human acquisition process.
Duality.
Human language is organized at two levels or layers simultaneously. This
property is called duality (or “double articulation”). At one level, we have distinct
sounds, and, at another level, we have distinct meanings. This duality of levels is,
in fact, one of the most economical features of human language because, with a
limited set of discrete sounds, we are capable of producing a very large number of
sound combinations which are distinct in meaning.
LANGUAGE AND THE BRAIN
Neurolinguistics.
Establishing the location of language in the brain was an early challenge, but
one event incidentally provided a clue. Language may be located in the brain, it
clearly is not situated right at the front.

Language areas in the brain.

 The specific parts in the brain that are related to language functions. The
most important parts are in areas above the left ear. Two important pars are the left
hemisphere and the right hemisphere. If we put the right hemisphere aside for now
and place the left hemisphere down so that we have a side view, we’ll be looking at
something close to the accompanying illustration.
Tongue tips and slips.
We have all experienced difficulty, on some occasion(s), in getting brain and
speech production to work together smoothly. The tip of the tongue phenomenon
in which we feel that some word is just eluding us, that we know the word, but it
just won’t come to the surface. This experience also mainly occurs with
uncommon words and names.
Aphasia.
Those people suffer from different types of language disorders, generally
described as “aphasia.” Aphasia is defined as an impairment of language function
due to localized brain damage that leads to difficulty in understanding and/or
producing linguistic forms. The classification of different types of aphasia is
usually based on the primary symptoms of someone having difficulties with
language.
CHAPTER II. WHAT IS CULTURE?

Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people,

defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music, and
arts. The word “culture” derives from a French term, which in turn derives from
the Latin “colere”, which means to tend to the Earth and grow, or cultivation and
nature.
DEFINITION OF CULTURE.
Here, then, are three very different understandings of culture. Part of the
difficulty in the term lies in its multiple meanings. But to compound matters, the
difficulties are not merely conceptual or semantic. All of the usages and
understandings come attached to, or can be attached to, different political or
ideological agendas that, in one form or another, still resonate today.
THERE ARE SOME KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE
Culture us manifested at different layers of depth.
There are three fundamental levels at which culture manifests itself:
observable artifacts, values, and basic underlying assumptions. When one enters an
organization, one observes and feels its artifacts. To really understand a culture and
to ascertain more completely the group’s values and over behavior, it is imperative
to delve into the underlying assumptions, which are typically unconscious, but
which actually determine how group members perceive, think, and feel.
Culture affects behavior and interpretations if behavior.
Hofstede makes the important point that although certain aspects of culture
are physically visible, their meaning is invisible. Choice of clothing can be
interpreted differently by different groups of people, in terms of indications of
wealth, ostentation, appropriateness, and so on
Culture can be differentiated from both universal human nature and unique
individual personality.
Culture is learned, not inherited. It derives from one’s social environment,
not from one’s genes. Culture should be distinguished from human nature on one
side, and from an individual’s personality on the other. The personality of an
individual, on the other hand, is her/his unique personal set of mental programs
which (s)he does not share with any other human being.
Culture influences biological processes.
The great majority of our conscious behavior is acquired through learning
and interacting with other members of our culture. Culture can influence biological
processes. In fact, the natural biological process of digestion was not only
influenced, but it was also reversed. A learned part of our culture actually triggered
the sudden interruption of the normal digestive process.
Culture is associated with social groups.
Culture is shared by at least two or more people, and of course real, live
societies are always larger than that. People unavoidably carry several layers of
mental programming within themselves, corresponding to different levels of
culture. Individuals are organized in many potentially different ways in a
population, by many different criteria. No population can be adequately
characterized as a single culture or by a single cultural descriptor.
Culture is both an individual construct and a social construct.
The idea of culture focuses less on patterning and more on social and
cognitive processing than older ideas of culture. By linking culture to individuals
and emphasizing the number and diversity of social and experiential settings that
individuals encounter, we expand the scope of reference of culture to encompass
not just quasi- or pseudo- kinship groups (tribe, ethnic group, and nation are the
usual ones) but also groupings that derive from profession, occupation, class,
religion, or region.
Culture is always both socially and psychologically distributed in a group, and
so the delineation of a culture’s features will always be fuzzy.
The corollary of the social complexity issue and two individuals do not share
the same sociological location in a given population. Psychogenic, reason culture is
never perfectly shared by individuals in a population. Many culture theorists have
preferred to think of culture only as “out there”, in publish and social
constructions, including symbols, that are wholly independent of mind of cognition
and affect.
Culture has both universal (etic) and distinctive (emic) elements.
Humans have largely overlapped biologies and live in fairly similar social
structures and physical environments. The words “etics” for universal cultural
elements and “emics” for the culture-specific, unique elements.
Culture is learned.
Culture is learned from the people you interact with as you are socialized.
Culture is also taught by the explanations people receive for the natural and
human. Enculturation is the process of social interaction through which people
learn and acquire their culture.
Culture is subject to gradual change.
Change is a constant feature of all cultures. Culture change occurs as a result
of both internal and external forces. Mechanisms of change that operate within a
given culture are called discovery and invention. Cultural diffusion is a selective
process and cultural borrowing is a two-way process.
The various parts of a culture are all, to some degree, interrelated.
Cultures should be thought of as integrated wholes. A change in one part of
the system is likely to produce concomitant changes in other parts of the system
and the reason for these changes is that cultures tend to be integrated systems with
a number of interconnected parts, so that a change in one part of the culture is
likely to bring about changes in other parts.
Culture us a descriptive not an evaluative concept.
Culture is a state of high development in art and thought existing in a society
and represented at carious levels in its members. Culture is often linked with terms
and concepts. Culture is not something exclusive to certain members, it relates to
the whole of a society. It is not value-laden, they are similar or different to each
other.