The Relationship

between Language and

Culture
SOCIOLINGUISTIC
NABIELA MAULIDA
MURIYAH
 Focused Problem
To find out the relation between language and culture
Literature Review

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 Language
 Language plays a crucial role in cognitive  a knowledge of rules and principles and of the
development, at least from the time the ways of saying and doing things with sounds,
child promotes language competence. words, and sentences rather than just
Language, first developed as a means of knowledge of specific sounds, words, and
social communication, is later internalized sentences. Language serves as an organizer of
and becomes an essential tool in the knowledge. Wardhaugh (2002, p. 2 as cited in
shaping of cognitive processes relevant Elmes, 2013)
for the elaboration of the abstract
symbolic system that will enable the child
to organize thought. Vygotsky (1962, as
 Language, in light of what was claimed by
cited in Nunan, 2010),
Jiang (2000) is the mirror of culture in the
sense that people can see a culture through its
language.

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 Culture
 Socially inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs that
determines the texture of people’s lives. Sapir (1921)
 An organization of conventional understandings manifest in
act and artifact, which, persisting through tradition,
characterizes a human group (Redfield, 1940).
 Essentially a construct that describes the total body of belief,
behavior, knowledge, sanctions, values, and goals that mark
the way of life of any people. Herskovits, (1948)
 The various standards for perceiving, evaluating, believing,
and doing that. Goodenough (1981).
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 Whorfian hypothesis
- Linguistic patterns (such as grammars) in different languages have
impact on people’s habitual thinking. The differences in linguistic
structure between languages are reflected in habitual thought and
habitual behavior. [ Sapir and Whorf ]
- If one language makes distinctions that another does not make, then
those who use the first language will more readily perceive the
relevant differences in their environment.[Fuller and Wardhaugh ]
- Every language form we use has meanings, carries meanings that
are not in the same sense because it is associated with culture and
culture is more extensive than language.[Khatib, Tabari, and
Mohammadi ; 2016) ]

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 Internalized Language

Internalized language
(grammar) is the physical
mechanism of our brain. The
rules and principles in a
human being’s mind are
physical and a matter of truth
and falsity without a doubt.”
[Noam Chomsky]

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 SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

In physiology and sociology,

social behavior is behavior
directed towards society, or
taking place between,
members of the same species.
While many social behaviors
are process of communicating.

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 Conclusion
Several possible relationships between language and culture:
• Social structure may either influence or determine linguistic
structure and/or behavior.
• Linguistic structure and/or behavior may either influence or
determine social structure or worldview. if we change the language
we can change social behavior.
• The influence is bi-directional: language and society may influence
each other.
• There is no relationship at all between linguistic structure and
social structure and that each is independent of the other.

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Thanks!

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