Another prominent sociolinguist and anthropologist is Dell Hyme who pioneered with other researchers the

study of the relation between language and society as a multidisciplinary topic of research. He delved into the
connection between speech and social relations; he invested ethnographically contrasting patterns of language use
across speech communities (group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations regarding the use
of language. It is a concept mostly associated with sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics). He proposed the
term ‘communicative performance’ instead of Chomsky’s division into competence (knowledge of grammatical rules
to decode and produce language) and performance (knowledge necessary to use language in social contexts) as an
object of living inquiry. Dell Hymes insists on researching his concept of communicative competence, which he does
with his SPEAKING Model, namely, the identification of components that enter into the communicative process of
linguistic interaction; these components are Setting and scene (setting refers to the time and place of a speech act ),
Participants (speaker and audience),Ends(purposes),Act(Form and order of the event), Key (clues that establish the
"tone, manner, or spirit" of the speech act ), Instrumentalities(Forms and styles of speech ), Norms(social rules
governing the event and the participants' actions and reaction), Genre (the kind of speech act or event : to entertain
or teach a moral).

Besides, a leading thread among these leading linguistic anthropologists is the notion of cultural conceptual
meanings encoded in language and will present themselves as social ideologies for Michael Silverstein. Again these
ideologies refer to socially grounded beliefs and conceptualizations of language. He saw language ideologies as
orienting speakers’ use of language and in the end change that language. Our language is based on what we believe
we can do with language and in this way we are able to change it. Thus language ideologies form the bridge between
language patterns and social and cultural structure, as the socially grounded beliefs and the expectations they
generate: this connection between usage and beliefs is called metapragmatics, namely, the articulation of beliefs
and language in language use (for example using a language of respect with old people). When second-language
learners acquire a metalinguistic awareness, they have already acquired the knowledge of the social meaning of
second-language forms and awareness of how these forms are used in different social contexts. The second language
learner has consequently acquired the social and cultural background of language use and can therefore become an
advanced learner of the language. This is a crucial force in language learning since the learner becomes aware of
language use (different forms in different language contexts).

As with most of the above cultural theorists , Claire Kramsh, whose main interest is applied linguistics,
asserts that language expresses a cultural reality: the words people say refer to common experience: facts, ideas,
events, are communicable because they refer to a stock of experience about the world that other people share.
Added to the content of their utterances, we must add attitudes, beliefs, points of view. Members of a community
also create experience through language through different mediums such as speaking on the phone or writing a
letter. They also understand the tone of voice, accent, conversational style, gestures, and facial expressions
therefore through its verbal and non-verbal aspects language embodies a cultural reality.

Like Clifford Geertz, Max Weber and Dell Hymes before, Claire Kramsch is referring to language as a system of
signs that have a cultural value. Speakers identify themselves through their use of language. Their language is
synonymous of social identity. When the language of a group is prohibited, the members feel rejected as a social
group and culture. Consequently language embodies a cultural identity.

She also defines ‘communities of language users’ by focussing on the social group who shares common ways of
viewing the world through their interactions with other members of the same group. These can be members of the
same family, neighbours, professional colleagues, people belonging to the same nation. The cultural process is
reinforced through institutions like the family, the school, the workplace, the church, the government, and other
sites of socialization throughout their lives. Members of the group use language in such a way that they disclose their
common beliefs and values. This group showing common aspects of speaking is called a speech community: they use
the same linguistic code; when the group uses common ways in using the language to meet their social needs, we
talk of discourse community: this community can use an accent which is the way they present information, the style
with which they interact etc.… this accent is called discourse accent (for example, teenage talk or professional
accent).

Another view Claire Kramsh gives us in her book Language and Culture is that it can have a historical dimension.
Natural behaviour, for example, can be sedimented in the memories of group members and passed on in writing and
speaking from one generation to the next. This is the case for social rites for instance. They become part of traditions
and of the group’s historical identity. Material culture like paintings, monuments, works of art, and institutions like
museums, libraries, schools…keep the culture alive through what artists and writers have said and written about
those material artefacts. Consequently, language is not a culture- free code. Language plays an important role in
preserving culture especially in its printed form. Combined with the above two layers of culture (diachronic
historical) and synchronic (social), there is a third layer to culture which is the imagination. We can illustrate that
with Londoners for example: London is inseparable in their imagination with Shakespeare or Dickens, therefore,
there exists a culture of the imagination which is intimately linked to language. Besides, if we look at just language
study and accept the fact that even knowledge that is acquired is taught in a social, historical, academic context, it is
certainly again a cultural activity.

Finally, Claire Kramsch gives a definition of culture by contrasting it to nature: she takes the example of rose
perfume that needs the natural roses to become a perfume; therefore, culture is always the result of human
intervention in the biological processes of nature. At last, she summarizes culture as membership in a discourse
community that shares a common space and history and common imaginings. A member of this discourse
community will retain a common system of standards for believing, evaluating, acting. These standards are what is
called his culture. Taking into account globalisation in our contemporary world, Kramsch (AILA Review 27, 2014,
p51) adds that a lot of initiatives are undertaken to encourage tolerance and openness between different cultures
such as intercultural communication, intercultural learning, mediation between cultures.

As a conclusion, Wilhem Von Humbolt was extremely illuminating and foreboding in terms of the theories of
Sapir and Whorf when they both pointed that the structure of a language reveal how people view the world
around. As to Geertz, he was famous for his interpretative anthropology and his view of culture which is semiotic:
these are cultural conceptions expressed through symbolic meanings to communicate and develop their knowledge
and attitude towards life. Geertz was concerned with the operation of these cultural conceptions. As far as Michael
Silverstein is concerned, his cultural conceptions are what he calls stereotypes and their organisations, linguistic
ideologies, recurrent linguistic practises that become recurrent according to types of persons. As to Dell Hymes, he is
well known for his SPEAKING model and his study of the social relations and social exchanges. Finally, Claire
Kramsch’s definition of culture is membership in a discourse community that shares a common space and history
and common imaginings. All the above cultural theories have underlined how the social cultural framework, namely,
how people relate to their world is encoded through symbolical signs and encoded through language. This social
cultural framework is intrinsically woven within the fabric of language. It is therefore a must to introduce a course of
cultural anthropology for the language being studied: this is very likely to improve language learning and foster more
understanding between cultures.