Being Human; Language, Culture, and Identity

Dr. Neha Soman | National institute of Technology Rourkela

 Presentation Outline

• Locating Language in society

• Types of Relationships
• Linguistic Relativity
• Linguistic Determinism
• Language & Culture
• Fictional Experiment

• Civilization Modelling by Tweaking its Language.

• “We must alter the mental framework of the Paonese

people, which is most easily achieved by altering the
language”.

• “every language impresses a certain world-view

upon the mind.”
• a scientific language induces its speakers to innovate more.

• a well-ordered language encourages its speakers to be industrious.

• a warlike language induces competitiveness and aggression.

• The new languages change the culture and Pao ousts their overlords
and develops a sophisticated modern economy.
 Language

• Social Reality & Entity

• Relationship of Language with Society & Culture
• Located and Situated in Socio-Cultural Context
• Does our perception of reality constrain our language or does our
language constrain our perception of reality?

• What kind of relationship does language share with social

structure and culture?
 Michael Halliday Dell Hymes Wardhaugh and Fuller
• Language is not just science • Communicative • 4 Types of
but source of meaning/ Competence relationship
make sense of structures • Socio-cultural between language
• Social structures and appropriacy of use and society
configurations are reflected • Form & function
in language structures converges into one
composite unit
 Possible Relationships

1. Social Structure influences/determines linguistic structure.

2. Linguistic Structure influences/determines social structure or world view.

3. Bi-Directional: Language Society.

4. No Relationship: Language Society

 Sociolinguistics

• Find correlations between social structures and linguistic structures.

• Observe the changes that may occur.
• Social evaluation of linguistic variants.
• Complex and divided
 Linguistic Relativity / Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• Principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers’ world view
and cognition.

• People’s perceptions are relative to their spoken language.

• Individuals experience the world based on the structure of the language they
habitually use.

• Our world views are constrained by the language we speak.

• If language determines our perception of reality, then whoever controls language

controls the perception of reality!!
• Newspeak - a language favoured by
the totalitarian state

• elimination or alteration of certain

words

• substitution of one word for another

• designed to diminish the range of

thought

• “Every year fewer and fewer words,

and the range of consciousness
always a little smaller.”
• Categories, structures, and concepts of language restrict our
understanding of the world.

• Constrain on cognitive ability imposed by language.

 Hopi Time Controversy
• Native Americans in the Southwestern United
States

• One of the oldest tribes of human civilization

• No words, grammatical concepts, or expressions

that directly refer to time

• No general intuition of time as a smooth flowing

continuum.

• No direct reference to “future”, “present”, “past”

• Tenseless language
 Linguistic Determinism

• Language and its structures limit and determine human knowledge or

thought. (memory, perception, and categorisations)

• People who speak different languages as their mother tongues have

different thoughts processes.

• Is it possible that the non-availability of certain category in my

mother tongue will limit my understanding of it?!
 Criticisms

• Structural differences in language determine cognitive abilities of

speakers – Strongly opposed by Chomsky, Pinker, Lenneberg

• Insufficient Clarity, Anecdotes and Assumptions but no Empirical

Evidence

• Linguistic categories only influence and not determine our

perceptions.

• Interdependent/Symbiotic relation between language and society

Symbiotics of Language and Culture

English
• Cultural orientations of English Objective Reality
is different. of Language is
Same across
Cultures but the
Choice of
• Grammatical components are Expression
Changes
the same but certain cultural
components of English are
society-specific.
Language and
• Spelling System Culture are
Intertwined.
Bi-Directional
Influence.
• Choice of Words
 Language Encodes Culture

Cultural Norms are mainly taught through Oral

Instructions (language)

• Biological Reality
• Overall Progress
• Remains the same across
• Socio-Cultural Context
Cultures and Languages
• Cultural Knowledge
• Morality
• Norms
Linguistic Instructions Inherited and
• Values Transferred through Language
• Taboo
• Social behaviours
• Manners
• Children are brought up within a social group and they learn the
dialect/variety and communication patterns of that group along with
the rest of the subcultural and behavioural traits that characterize the
group.

• Cultural understanding – Second language acquisition

• Politeness in culture and language.

 Identity

Esteem

Loss of Language Pride

Shared History

Shared Knowledge

Communal Consciousness
“we want to create a class of Indians
who are Indian in bone and flesh but
English in morality.”

Linguistic conflicts flared up to

political conflicts
 Major Takeaways
• Culture happened because language/speech was available.

• Cultural practices, social norms, and beliefs have deep influence on linguistic
structures.

• Cultural differences are difficult to translate from one language to other because of the
inherent symbiotic relationship.

• Bilingualism – Change in social behavioural patterns.

• Linguistic structures & Social structures – Intertwined

• Language cannot be learned as a tool or object.

 Thank You

Email: somann@nitrkl.ac.in
Contact No: 9994815821