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1、Chapter 7,Language, Culture and Society,What is culture?,Broadly speaking, it means the total way of life of a people, including the patterns of belief, customs, objects, institutions, techniques, and language. In a narrow sense, it refers to local or specific practice, beliefs or customs. L-C: L is
2、 a part of C; C is transmitted or realized in L.,7.1 Language and Culture,1. L-C: L is the carrier of C; C is represented though L use. 2. 20th century: an anthropological orientationlg in a sociocultural context in England (Bronislaw Malinowski & John P.Firth) and North A.(Franz Boas, Edward Sapir,
3、 Benjamin Lee Whorf),3. 1920s, Anthropological study of Ls in England, Malinoski (1884-1942) did field work in Trobriand Islands about the primitive culture the meaning of a word greatly depended on its occurrence in a given context, or on a real lg situation in life. (“wood”:-tree, transportation)
4、in that speech community. He claimed that “lg function as a link in concreted human activityIts a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection” (1923:312)a cultural, contextual study of lg,4. Firth (1890-1960)(London School): L useits co-occurrent factors, context of situation: A. The relevant
5、 features of the participants, persons, personalities. (non)verbal action) B. The relevant objects. C. The effects of the verbal action. “who speaks (or writes) what lg (or what lg variety) to whom and when and to what end” (Fishman, 1972:46) Firthian tradition is the founder of SFL, M.A.K. Halliday
6、 study L from socially semiotic or interactional perspective; grammar-source of meaning potential, lc model-study of literature,5. 1920s, a cultural study of lg in A. Dell Hymes (1927-) ethnography of communication: a lc study of social and cultural factors, elements of this framework: (1) speech co
7、mmunity (2) situation, event, and act (3) SPEAKING components -speech community: a group of people who “share not only the same rules of speaking, but at least one lc variety as well”.,-situation, event and act are three units of interaction. They form a hierarchy used to study how members from a gi
8、ven community speak to each other. “Speech acts are part of speech events which are, in turn, part of speech situations”. -components of speech make possible the description and analysis of communicative behavior: Situation（场景）, Participants（参与者）, Ends（目的）, Act sequence（相关形式与内容）, Key（语气）, Instrument
9、al（语式）, Norms（准则）, Genres（体裁）,6. A. anthropological lt Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941), based on Sapir (1884-1939): hypothesis of lg, thought and cultureSapir-Whorf Hypotheses: Our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express speakers unique way
10、s of understanding the world. Lg determinism: L may determine our thinking patterns. Lg relativity: similarity between lgs in relative. different languages offer people different ways of expressing the world around.,7. Lt & translation theorist Eugene Nida:L-C, Bible translation, cross-cultural comm
11、unication, five sub-cultures: (1) ecological culture (2) linguistic culture (3) religious culture (4) material culture (5) social culture,7.1.2 More about Sapir-Whorf Hypo.,Our lg will mould our view of the world. 1. Two versions of this hypo.: The strong version: the original hypo., emphasizing the
12、 decisive role of lg as the shaper of our thinking patterns. The weak version: a modified type, a correlation between lg, culture and thought, but the cross-cultural differences thus produced in our ways of thinking are relative, rather than categorical.,2. controversy of the theory: (1) Hopi, an A.
13、 lg, how lg may differ from each otherpositive sth. special about grammar; one feature separating it from other lgs is that it doesnt use the same means to express time, a “timeless lg” Criticism: its basis on Europian lgs but not a universal perspectiveLc University (similarities possessed by most
14、lgs),(2) Dani, a Papuan lg in Irian Jaya, lg relativity may equally meet some cross-cultural examples (color word)challenge Brent Berlin & Paul Kay: a cross-lc investigation of basic color vocabulary, 98 lgs. Finding: color word systems in different lgs are not like what has been assumed by this hyp
15、o., being culturally determined and hence absolutely different from one another. A universal evolutionary process of development made this color system different in terms of stages of their evolution.,7.1.3 Case studies,Lg analysis-interplay of L and C and their selection ranging from textual struct
16、ure to phonological variation. 1. Kaplan (1966): the structural organization of a text tends to be culturally specific. 2. phonological differences or dialectal accents reveal more than geographic origins of speakers. (RP/GA, educated/educated & extrovert, a foreign accent: elegant-vulgar, educated-illterate),3. A cross-cultural study of meaning of idioms or metaphorical uses in a given social context, words-idiomatically-governed and culturally-specific (Nida,1998:32-4
