Culture & Language

Development

Prepared by: Mr. Jade Arjay A. Jacob

OUTLINE
• INTRODUCTION
• Language & culture
• The relationship between language and culture
• Language acquisition in societies
• Cultural influences upon language development
• Social norms and language use
 Introduction
• Human being is a social creature: A man is a receiver and sender of
messages who assembles and distributes information (Greimas,
1970).
• Sapir (1956): “every cultural pattern and every single act of social
behavior involves communication in either an explicit or implicit
sense” (p. 104).
• The tool for this communication is language: Language is an
instrument for humans' communications,
• It is due to language that human talents grow and develop since
they exchange and transfer their experiences, and on the whole, for
formation of society,
cont'd.
• The relationship between language and culture is as old
as mankind.
• Through centuries, people and their living practices have
evolved, resulting in wide-reaching changes in societal
culture.
• Culture has a direct effect on language.
• Language and culture are closely correlated.
Language and Culture
• With first language learners immersed in their own culture,
connections between language and culture often never come to
question.
• While it is impossible to separate language and culture, one has to
question the validity and implications such separation brings.
• Wardhaugh introduced the concepts of language and culture and
explored the viability of their relationship based on the three
possible criteria: (i.e. the structure of the language determines the
way we use language, cultural values determine language usage,
and the neutral claim that a relationship does not exist).
cont'd.

• The importance of cultural competency is considered for its

importance to language education and the implications it
holds for language learning.
• An understanding of the relationship between language and
culture is important for language learners, users, and for all
those involved in language education.
• Such insights open the door for a consideration of how both
language and culture influence people’s life perceptions and
how people make use of their pre acquainted linguistic and
cultural knowledge to assess those perceptions.
cont'd.
• The relationship between language and culture is a
complex one due largely in part to the great difficulty in
understanding people’s cognitive processes when they
communicate.
• Wardhaugh and Thanasoulas defined language in a
somewhat different way, with the former explaining it for
what it does, and the latter viewing it as it relates to
culture.
cont'd.
• Wardhaugh (2002) defines language to be: “a knowledge of rules and
principles and of the ways of saying and doing things with sounds,
words, and sentences rather than just knowledge of specific sounds,
words, and sentences.”
• While Wardhaugh does not mention culture per se, the speech acts we
perform are inevitably connected with the environment they are performed in,
and therefore he appears to define language with consideration for context,
something Thanasoulas (2001) more directly compiled in the following: …
language does not exist apart from culture,
• that is, from the socially inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs
that determines the texture of our lives (Sapir, 1970, p. 207). In a sense,
it is ‘a key to the cultural past of a society’ (Salzmann, 1998, p. 41), a
guide to ‘social reality’ (Sapir,1929, p. 209, cited in Salzmann, 1998, p.
41).
What is Culture?
• And if we are to discuss a relationship between language
and culture, we must also have some understanding of
what culture refers to.
• Goodenough (1957, p. 167) explained culture in terms of
the participatory responsibilities of its members. He stated
that a society’s culture is made up of whatever it is one
has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner
acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that
they accept for any one of themselves.
cont'd.
• Malinowski (Stern, 2009) viewed culture as an interactive design
which combines the three sets of needs:
1) The basic needs of the individual
2) The instrumental needs of the society
3) The symbolic and integrative needs of both the
individual and society
• For both Goodenough and Malinowski, culture is defined by
benevolence and expectation. While each person holds their own
individual roles and subsequent needs as part of a culture, the
various needs of the culture must also be kept in balance.
cont'd.
• Consequently, in composing a definition for culture, we can see
that the concept is often better understood in the context of how
the members of a culture operate, both individually and as a
group.
• It is therefore clear how important it is for members of any society
to understand the actual power of their words and actions when
they interact.
• Thanasoulas (as cited in Salzmann): ‘language is a key to the
cultural past’, but it is also a key to the cultural present in its ability
to express what is (and has been) thought, believed, and
understood by its members.’
The relationship between language and culture
• Edward Sapir, in his studies with Benjamin Lee Whorf,
recognized the close relationship between language and
culture, concluding that it was not possible to understand
or appreciate one without knowledge of the other” (taken
from Wardhaugh, 2002, p. 220).
• However, Wardhaugh (2002, pp. 219- 220) reported that
there appear to be three claims to the relationship
between language and culture:
Wardhaugh (2002) three claims to the relationship between
language and culture
• The structure of a language determines the way in which
speakers of that language view the world, or the structure does
not determine the world- view but is still extremely influential in
predisposing speakers of a language toward adopting their world-
view.
• The culture of a people finds reflection in the language they
employ: because they value certain things and do them in a
certain way, they come to use their language in ways that refl ect
what they value and what they do
• A ‘neutral claim’ which claims that there is little or no relationship
between the two.
1st Claim: Language determines the thoughts of culture

• Edward Sapir (1884–1939) and Benjamin Whorf (1897–

1941): The power of language reflects culture and
influences thinking.
• The Sapir– Whorf Hypothesis: the way we think and view
the world is determined by our language.
• Instances of cultural language differences are evidenced
in that some languages have specific words for concepts
whereas other languages use several words to represent
a specific concept.
Example:
• The Arabic language includes many specific words for
designating a certain type of lion or camel (Crystal, 1987).
• E. g:
Lion: ‫ الغضنفر ألسد‬-‫ الوهر‬- ‫ الضبارم‬-‫الليث‬
Camel: ‫ البع‬-‫امجلل‬
• In the English language, where specific words do not
exist, adjectives would be used preceding the concept
label; such as, quarter horse or dray horse.
cont'd.
• The Sapir- Whorf Hypothesis is based on the following assumptions:
• We are, in all our thinking and forever, at the understanding of the
particular language which has become the means of expression for our
society, we experience and practice our expression by means of the
characteristics, peculiarities, and sometimes literary words encoded in
our language;
• The characteristics, peculiarities, and literary words encoded in one
language system are distinctive, typical, and unique to that system and
they are dissimilar as well as incomparable with those of other
systems;
• Since the culture of a particular place or nation is different from others,
sometimes the misunderstanding and misconception occurs when one
from another nation uses the language of that nation;
cont'd.
• In order to understand the specific words, literary terms, and even
sometimes the simple words in one language, we must be familiar with
the culture of that nation.
• In consideration of the various research, it does appear that the
structure of a language determines how speakers of that language
view their world.
• A look at how users of different languages view color, linguistic
etiquette and kinship systems helps to illustrate this point.
2nd Claim: The thoughts of a culture reflect Language

• This claim implies that cultures employ languages that are as different as the
cultures that speak them and therefore linguistic functions differ in terms of,
for example, a culture’s level of technological development.
• Wardhaugh (2002, p. 225) explains, we can assume that cultures possess
the ability and are free to create or to borrow them as needed, and that
cultures that have not done so have not yet experienced theneed.
• Wardhaugh also notes that people who speak languages with different
structures (e.g. Germans and Hungarians) can share similar cultural
characteristics, and people who have different cultures can also possess
similar structures in language (e.g. Hungarians and Finns). Examples like
these indicate that the second relationship between language and culture is
quite viable.
Language acquisition in Societies
• The structure of language acquisition:
L: (So, E) ST
L Learning function

So The initial state of the learner

E Experience in the environment

ST The terminal state

Language Acquisition

• A process whereby children become speakers of their

native language.
• A process by which language capabilities of a person
increases.
• Various theories and approaches have been emerged
over the years to study and analyze the process of
language acquisition
Theories of Language Acquisition
Behaviorist Theory

 Based on Skinner
 The idea that animal and human learning are similar
based on Darwin’s theory.
 All behavior is a response to stimuli.
 No innate pre-programming for language learning
at birth (Hadley 2001, pg. 57)
 Learning can also occur via imitation.
 Corrective feedback corrects bad habits
 Language is learned just as another behavior
SKINNER’S VIEW ON LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
• Skinner viewed babies as ‘empty vessels’ which language had to be ‘put in
to’
• operant conditioning: A child goes through trial-and-error in other words; it
tries and fails to use correct language until it succeeds; with reinforcement
and shaping provided by the parents gestures (smiles, attention and
approval) which are pleasant to the child.
• Skinner in Verbal Behavior (1957) differentiated between two types of verbal
responses that a child makes :
- Verbal behaviour that is reinforced by the child receiving something it
wants.
- Verbal behaviour caused by imitating others.
Imitation
• Language has long been thought of a process of imitation,
and reinforcement.
• Imitation theory is based on an empirical or behavioral
approach.
• Children start out as clean slates and language learning is
process of getting linguistic habits printed on these slates.
• Language Acquisition is a process of experience.
• Language is a ‘conditioned behavior’: the stimulus
response process:
• Stimulus Response Feedback Reinforcement
Imitation

Repetition

Memorization

Controlled drilling

Reinforcement
cont'd.
Children learn to speak by imitating the utterances heard around
them;
Children strengthen their responses by repetitions, corrections,
and other reactions that adults provide, thus language is practice
based ;
General perception is that there is no difference between the way
one learns a Language and the way one learns to do anything else;
Main focus: inducing the child to behave with the help of
mechanical drills and exercises;
Learning is controlled by the conditions under which it take place
and that, as long as individual are subjected on the same condition,
they will learn in the same condition.
The Behaviorist School

The Behaviorist School

Language learning is Positive & Negative

Imitation & Association
Operant conditioning Reinforcement
Operant conditioning
• Operant conditioning: 'voluntary behavior'
• It is the result of learner's own free-will and is not forced
by any outside person or thing.
• The learner demonstrates the new behavior first as a
response to a system of reward or punishment, and finally
as an automatic response.
• In operant conditioned, reinforcement plays a vital role.
Positive Vs. Negative reinforcement.
Example:
Activity Type

The hunger or loneliness Stimulus

The baby cries Response

The mother comforts him The mother comforts him

Reinforcement
The same process happens again Repetition

The baby cries whenever hungry New behavior

Universal Grammar Theory/Nativist Theory
• A mentalist viewpoint related to nativism and cognitive theory.
• The idea that of Chomsky that all children are born with Language Acquisition
Device (Hadley 2001 pg 58).
• Language learning depends on biological mechanisms.
• Children are innately programmed to learn language.
• Each language has its own “parameter settings”.
• The principles that children discover represent their “core grammar” which
relates to general principles that correspond to all languages.
• All human brain contains language universals that direct language acquisition
(Horwitz 2008)
• It can be tested
CHOMSKY’S VIEW ON LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
• He argues that language acquisition is an innate
structure, or function, of the human brain.
• Chomsky believes that there are structures of the brain
that control the interpretation and production of speech.
• Children do not need any kind of formal teaching to learn
to speak.
Factors that Chomsky used to support his theory:

There is an optimal learning age. Between the ages 3 to 10 a child

is the most likely to learn a language in its entirety and grasp
fluency.
 The child does not need a trigger to begin language acquisition, it
happens on its own. The parent does not need to coax the child to
speak, if it around language production, the child will work to
produce that language on its own.
 It does not matter if a child is corrected, they still grasp the
language in the same manner and speak the same way.
During one stage, a child will make things plural that are already
plural.
The Language Acquisition Device
 Chomsky: Language is so complex that it is almost incredible that it can be acquired
by a child in so short a time;
 A child is born with some innate mental capacity which helps him to process all the
language heard. i. e. "Language Acquisition Device" (LAD);
 Language is governed by rules, and is not a haphazard thing, as Skinner and his
followers would claim.
 The unconscious rules in a child's mind: A child constructs his own mental grammar
which is a part of his cognitive framework.
These rules enable him to produce grammatical sentences in his own language.
Chomsky does not mean that child can describe these rules explicitly. For instance, a
four or five year old child can produce a sentence like, I have taken meal, he can do
that because he has a 'mental grammar' which enables him to
form correct present perfect structures and also to use such structures in the right or
appropriate situation.
The Mentalist School

The Mentalists School

Input Mental Grammar

Language learning is
LAD (own rules)
Innate ability
Output Grammatical sentences
Krashen’s Monitor Theory
• Adults have two ways of developing competence in the second language:
acquisition (subconscious learning) and learning (conscious learning).
• The natural order hypothesis: acquisition of grammatical structures follow a
predicable order when is natural (Hadley 2001).
• The monitor Hypothesis: Acquisition is responsible for all second language
utterances and fluency. On the contrary, learning is the “editor” and “monitor” for
the output (Hadley 2001).
• The input hypothesis: speaking fluency emerges over time. Acquisition on
language will happen when we are exposed to the language that is beyond our
level.
• Effective filter hypothesis: low effective filter contributes to good learning.
• Error correction should be minimized and only use when the goal is learning.
• Students should not be required to produce speech until they are ready.
Cognitive Theory
• Based on internal and mental processes.
• Focuses on transferring, simplification, generalization, and
restructuring that involve second language acquisition.
• Language learning is the result from internal mental activity. Emphasizes that
knowledge and new learning is organized in a mental structure.
• Learner acts, constructs, and plans its own learning
• Analyzes own learning
• Positive and negative feedback is important for restructuring.
• Proficiency develops trough practice and then it becomes automatic.
• Once new information is acquired, existed knowledge is reorganized.
• Ausubel emphasizes that learning language needs to be meaningful in order
to be effective and permanent (Hadley 2001, pg 69)
Conversation Theories
• The idea of learning a second language by participating in
conversations.
• Importance use of scaffolding (Scaffolding is a process in which
teachers model or demonstrate how to solve a problem, and then step back,
offering support as needed. The theory is that when students are given the
support they need while learning something new, they stand a better chance
of using that knowledge independently)
• Gives feedback and suggest ways of improvement
• Does not require production of full sentences but
encourages speaking
• Errors should be corrected
Schumann’s Acculturation Theory
• Based on a Social Theory
• Learning a language to function in the target language
culture.
• Examines how social forces affect language learning.
• Attitudes and stereotypes towards the target language
affect learning.
• Errors can be corrected for better acculturation
Cultural influences upon language development
• Language: a symbolic system in which a series of sounds
make up words to represent an idea, object, or a person and
eventually becomes a medium through which we speak.
• INDIVIDUALISTIC VS. COLLECTIVIST CULTURES:
• Individualistic Cultures: a culture in which emphasis is
placed on the individual alone and learning at a pace specific
to their abilities. Success and failure, especially concerning
learning, revolves around the actions of that individual and
are not tied to a group. Ex. America has an Individualistic
culture: "The American Dream"
cont'd.
• Collectivist Cultures: these kinds of cultures emphasize family
and group goals above individual needs as well as success and
failure.
• These are cultures such as China and Japan.
• In all cultures, children are born with the capability for language
acquisition;
• Learning from and imitating the adults around them: Learning the
sounds and learn vocabulary from adults>Experiementing
syntax and grammar> Being able to speak with fluency
• Environmental factors including culture, socio_x0002_economic
status and parenting styles play a major role in child language
development.
Baby Talk
• When parents use baby talk with their children, it helps to
reinforce child language acquisition by providing positive feedback
for the child.
• However, in some cultures, parents may choose to use baby talk
long after it is useful, when children should be learning how to use
the correct grammar and syntax instead of the incorrect version
that results from child experimentation during acquisition.
• Parents should stop using baby talk with their children after age 6
at the latest.
• Baby talk and similar styles of language acquisition are similarities
shared by all cultures
Home Environment and Parent Interaction
• A child's home is the first place they are exposed to language: It is the place
they are introduced to interactions, activities, involvement and
communication.
• Children whose mothers reported that they frequently read to them, went to
the library and puppet theater or cinema, were involved in the process of joint
reading, and stimulated their reading and learning of the letters, and guided
them to the zone of proximal development achieved higher scores on the
Language Development Scale and told more coherent stories with a text less
picture book (Fekonja, Podlesek, & Umek, 2005).
• These children are getting all of the essentials to prepare them for preschool
and most likely be more successful than the children that did not receive this
stimulus the beginning years of life, or will not require assistants to catch
them up with the peers.
cont'd.
• Not only should parents expose their children early and in a variety of ways,
but they should also begin their children's phonological awareness correctly
in a standard form.
• Liow (2005): the families speak a non- standard form of language at home,
yet the children learn to read and write the standard form at school. When
given a spelling test at school from a tape recorder of words verbally stated,
the children incorrectly spelled words as a result of hearing the non-standard
words at home. Thus, the results confirmed that home language does
influence the nature of literacy development.
• McHale and Cowan (1996) proved that conversations with all three
components_x0002_father, mother, and child are most beneficial.
Conversations are the most effortless involvement; they can be done while
driving in the car, shopping, or even while cooking dinner.
Socio- economics and Race
• A 2009 study done by Elizabeth Pungello, et.al at the University of North Carolina found
that children rose with more sensitive and positive parenting styles, rather than negative-
intrusive parenting styles, had a higher rate of growth in language acquisition.
• This study was complicated by socioeconomic status and race, with European American
children performing higher with language acquisition than African American children.
• Researchers concluded that the correlation between low socioeconomic status and race
in the U.S. often leads to higher rates of depression in African American mothers, which
led to more negative parenting styles than those of affluent European Americans.
• Socioeconomic status also correlates with fewer literacy resources in the home and a
lower rate of literacy among adults, so that children born into a family of low socio-
economic status tend to learn fewer vocabulary words before preschool than affluent
children.
• Often, the difference in language acquisition between children is not about culture, but
about socio- economic status and the many factors associated with disemp
Vygotsky's Theory
• Although children are born with the skills for language
development, development is affected and shaped by
cultural and social experiences.
• The culture in which a person develops will have its own
values, beliefs and tools of intellectual adaptation.
• These all have an effect on cognitive functions, including
language development.
• Language is a result of social interactions and that
language is responsible for the development of thought.
Social norms and Language use
• Every society has expectations about how its members should/ should
not behave.
• The significance of learning in behavior varies from species to species
and is closely linked to processes of communication.
• Only human beings are capable of elaborate symbolic communication
and of structuring their behavior in terms of abstract preferences that
we have called values.
• Social life, including language use, is governed by norms— socially
shared concepts of appropriate and expected behavior.
• The most basic of these concepts are acquired in early childhood
through socialization.
cont'd.
• Norms: the means through which values are expressed in behavior.
• Norms: the guidelines/ or expectations for behavior.
• Norms: the rules and regulations that groups live by.
• Each society makes up its own rules for behavior and decides when those
rules have been violated and what to do about it.
• Social norms are rules developed by a group of people that specify how
people must, should, may, should not, and must not behave in various
situations
• Some norms are defined by individuals and societies as crucial to the society
• Social norms or mores are the rules of behavior that are considered
acceptable in a group or society. People who do not follow these norms may
be shunned or suffer some kind of consequence. Norms change according to
the environment or situation and may change or be modified over time.
 Different Settings

Norms

Different countries
Different time periods
Different settings Example
Wherever we go, expectations are placed on our The way we are expected to behave in the mosque
behavior. Even within the same society, these norms differs from the way we are expected to behave at
change from setting to setting. wedding parties, which also differs from the way we
should behave in a classroom.
Different countries Example
Norms are place-specific, and what is considered In some African countries, it’s acceptable for people
appropriate in one country may be considered highly in movie theaters to yell frequently and make loud
inappropriate in another. comments about the film. In the United States,
people are expected to sit quietly during a movie,
and shouting would be unacceptable.
Different time periods Example
Appropriate and inappropriate behavior often In the United States in the 1950s, a woman almost
changes dramatically from one generation to the never asked a man out on a date, nor did she pay
next. Norms can and do shift over time. for the date. While some traditional norms for dating
prevail, most women today feel comfortable asking
men out on dates and paying for some or even all of
the expenses
 Theories/ Models of
Communicative Competence
DELL HYMES
Ethnography of Communication
• The descriptive study of the use of language, deeply
embedded in its cultural context (Dell Hymes)

Pioneering the study of Focused on poetics

the relationship between (poetic organization
language and social of Native American
context oral narratives)

Hymes
Communicative Competence
• Sometimes referred to as pragmatic or sociolinguistic
competence
• Knowledge necessary to use language in SOCIAL
context, as an object of linguistic inquiry
• Coined by DELL HYMES (1966) in reaction to Noam
Chomsky’s notion of “linguistic competence” (1965)
Linguistic vs. Communicative (Competence)
• Question: What do you (as a language learner) think is
the goal of LANGUAGE COURSE?
• Probable Answer: It is to teach the GRAMMAR and
VOCABULARY of that language.
• Question: What is YOUR own PERSONAL GOAL as an
L2 learner?
• Probable Answer:It is to be able to COMMUNICATE in
the L2 of your choice.
What does this mean?

–In linguistics terminology, a language course should not only have

“linguistic competence” as its goal, but “communicative competence”
in GENERAL.
• a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences not only as
grammatical, but also as appropriate. He /or she acquires
competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk
about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In short, a child
becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take
part in speech events, and to evaluate their accomplishment by
others.” (Hymes 1972, 277)
• – A language learner/user need to use the language not only
CORRECTLY but also APPROPRIATELY
FOUR COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE

• Linguistic
• Discourse
• Sociolinguistic
• Strategic
Linguistic competence:
• is the knowledge of the language code, i.e. its grammar
and vocabulary, and also of the conventions of its written
representation (script and orthography)
• Grammar component includes:
– Phonetics
– Phonology
– Morphology
– Syntax
– Semantics
Sociolinguistic competence:
• the knowledge of socio cultural rules of use, i.e. knowing how to
use and respond to language appropriately
• appropriateness depends on:
– setting of the communication
– Topic
– relationships among the people communicating
– knowing what the taboos are
– what politeness indices are used
– what the politically correct term would be for something
– how a specific attitude (authority, friendliness, courtesy, irony
etc.) is expressed
Discourse competence:
• the knowledge of how to produce and comprehend oral or
written texts in the modes of speaking/writing and
listening/ reading respectively. It is knowing how to
combine language structures into a cohesive and
coherent oral or written text of different types.
• discourse competence deals with:
– organizing words, phrases and sentences in order to
create conversations, speeches, poetry, email messages,
newspaper articles, etc.
Strategic competence:
• the ability to recognize and repair communication breakdowns
before, during, or after they occur.
• For instance:
– the speaker may not know a certain word, thus will plan to either
paraphrase, or ask what that word is in the target language.
– During the conversation, background noise or other factors may
hinder communication; thus the speaker must know how to keep the
communication channel open.
– After, clarifications can be made if the presentation of the topic
was not clear enough.
The "S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G" Model
• Hymes developed a valuable model to assist the
identification and labeling of components of linguistic
interaction that was driven by his view that, in order to
speak a language correctly, one needs not only to learn
its vocabulary and grammar, but also the context in which
words are used.
• Hymes constructed the acronym SPEAKING, under
which he grouped the sixteen components within eight
divisions:
THE MODEL: SIXTEEN COMPONENTS THAT CAN BE APPLIED TO MANY SORTS
OF DISCOURSE:

1- MESSAGE FORM;
2- MESSAGE CONTENT;
3- SETTING;
4- SCENE;
5- SPEAKER/SENDER;
6- ADDRESSOR;
7- HEARER/RECEIVER/AUDIENCE;
8- ADDRESSEE;
9- PURPOSES (OUTCOMES);
10- PURPOSES (GOALS);
11- KEY;
12- CHANNELS;
13- FORMS OF SPEECH;
14- NORMS OF INTERACTION;
15- NORMS OF INTERPRETATION; AND
16- GENRES
• S – setting and scene
• P – participants
• E – ends: the desired or expected outcome
• A – Act: how form and content are delivered
• K – key: mood or spirit (serious, ironic, etc.)
• I – instrumentalities: the dialect or language variety
• N – norms: speaking conventions
• G – genres: different types of performance (speech, joke,
sermon, etc.)
Thank you