SOCIOLINGUISTICS
UNIT 12
TRƯƠNG VĂN ÁNH
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SÀI GÒN
UNIT 12: LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
I. INTRODUCTION
Every region has its main language and culture though it may have several minor languages and cultures imported from newcomers or immigrants. We consider language a property of cultures. This property is sacred because it expresses identity and ancestral link. It may be said that language is a tool to maintain and develop the cultures in a country, for language communicates traditions, experiences, customs, attitudes and behaviours. The relationship

between language and culture has been studied in many works in sociolinguistics.





II. GENERAL OVERVIEW
Linguists evaluate language much more than only a tool of communication. Its great influence is on not only culture, but also thought processes. In the early 20th century, both sociolinguists and anthropologists considered language to be more important than it actually is in the way how we perceive the reality in the world. Edward Sapir and his follower Benjamin Whorf stated that language pre-determines the image of the world around us or it plays the role of a polarising lens of a







camera in order to filter reality – the way we see the real world through the different kinds of language.
Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf gave the evidence of this hypothesis via cross-cultural comparisons of the colour terms they described in their works. Seeing colour in the real world, we are recognizing that portion of electromagnetic radiation - visible light. According to the two linguists, “the spectrum of visible light is a continuum of light waves with frequencies that increase at a continuous rate from one end to the other”. In fact, it is a continuum of colour waves,




and not different colours such as white, black, brown, blue, etc. It is culture that helps us recognize the colours via our very useful tool - language, and then we fix the kinds of colours as white, green, blue, yellow, violet, etc. Every human race sees their own kinds of colours. We can see the differences of words indicating colours in Vietnamese and in English. For example, we cannot translate the exact nuances of “blonde hair” into Vietnamese or, on the contrary, “da trắng vỗ bì bạch” into English.






It was stated that it is not the objective aspect to describe colours, and it is the nature that decides on them. Although there are differences in colour terms, normal people share similar sense perceptions of colours from one language to another. When a society`s economy and technology develop in complexity, the number of colour words also increases. Language and culture will meet the demand of social development in that language will create more categories of the spectrum of visible light.



III. LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
The technical terms in a culture mainly reflects social interests and concerns. For example, the United States of America with multicultural races typically has more than 20 terms for different types and ways of cooking foods (See Appendix 2). Conversely, the ways of cooking foods in England are limited to only fewer ways. In temperate countries, it is often cold or very cold, so there are many more English words that refer to different states of frozen water, such as blizzard, dusting, flurry, frost, hail, hard-pack, powder, sleet, slush, and snowflake. On the




contrary these terms are rarely used by people living in tropical or subtropical countries where it is often hot or very hot. A survey on smoking shows that the number of young people in Greenland smoke five times as much as the ones in hot countries. As a result, the kinds of smoking have more terms than the ones in the tropical countries.
In Vietnam, an agricultural country, there so many kinds of rice such as lúa nước, lúa rẫy, lài, nàng thơm, mùa, thần nông, IR, etc., while in England, a temperate country mainly growing




wheat, people know only two terms: rice and sticky rice. The rice of various kinds also affects the ways of cooking different foods or dishes from rice.
The environment or the place where people were born and grow up affects people’s language, culture and behavior. It is very difficult for people to acquire the language, culture and behavior of the foreign language; therefore, learners must try their best to study and teachers have to create the similar environment so that learners can get the maximal acquisition of the foreign language.




IV. CULTURE, SOCIETY AND COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
Ethno-scientists who categorise things in the environment in their research provide important insights into the interests, concerns, and values of their culture. Ethno-scientists have made use of two approaches called etic and emic in order to describe categories of reality. Etic categories are used by the visitor to classify the new world. Conversely, emic categories are used by the native people to classify the own environment. The latter approach may be slight objective reality; however, it is very insightful in


understanding how other people perceive the reality in that they filter their language and culture.
Socialisation through language learning makes up conformity to social norms and transmits the culture of the community. A child learns language in order to learn the social structure of the culture and learn the appropriate linguistic form. This is part of communicative competence which is not only knowing how to speak the specific language(s) used in the community but also knowing how to use language appropriately in any environment of the community. The learners


have to master the linguistic forms and the rules to choose the appropriate form in their communications.
Communicative competence contains acquisition of language in social contexts, including: how people greet, what people say when they meet each other, who may or may not speak in certain settings, when people may speak and when people may keep silent, whom people may speak to, how people may talk to people of different statuses and positions, what appropriate nonverbal behaviours people use in various contexts, what the routines for turn-taking


people use in conversation, how people ask for and give information, how people request, how people give advice, how people offer or decline assistance or cooperation, how people refuse, how people give commands, how people command/order, all of which are culturally defined.



V. CONCLUSION
People choose and use different ways of language when they are in social communications. The choice expresses social information about the users. Therefore, some linguists explain that there are regular relationships between language use and social structure. As a result, the use of language varieties depends on the different structures of society. People who use their language in specific linguistic forms and codes belong to a specific group and live in a specific







environment. It is natural that they are under influence of these factors.







VI. SUMMARY
People in a social context use language under the influence of the culture of that context. When they make wrong use of language, they are called not one of ‘us,’ but one of ‘them’. That is, they are outsiders, not belonging to the same community. Sometimes they may be evaluated “below the level of consciousness”. That is, they do not develop mentally normally or there is something mentally wrong. Each group of people is identified through specific features of their speech. These kinds of feature are considered code markers and based on cultures.







VII. EXERCISES
1. How does social context influence language?
2. What is the relationship between culture and language?
3. What role do language and culture play in sociolinguistics?
4. What is the role of agriculture in language use in our country?
5. What affects the spectrum of colours?
6. How does social context affect the ways of cooking in the USA?





Good luck!