语言学概论

How Dose Culture Influence Language Introduction:It is well known that different countries have different cultures. The cultural difference inevitably has impact on language. First of all, language is a part of culture, as well as the carrier of culture. Its content and form are influenced and restricted by culture. Also language is the basic element in people' daily conversation. As a result, the diversity of culture in different nations leads to distinctive conversation, which reflects in many aspects, such as content, pattern. Chinese usually talk about the topics which are ages, incomes, marriage, but the people in western countries regard it as taboos and not are allowed to talk about; In the way of expressing, the foreigners come straightly to the points, however, Chinese choose the indirect ways and explain too much before their topic. As a result, there exists the distinctive conversation between China and western country.BodyLanguage is a system of arbitrary vocal symbol used for human communication, and is a meaning of expressing cultural customs, as well as a part of language. Language cannot separate from culture to be independent. Culture is the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs value action attitudes, religion notions of the time, spatial relations, concepts of the universe and artifact acquired by group of people in thecourse of generations through individual and group striving. In accordance with the definition of language and culture, I believe that language is affected by culture and reflects the culture. The language is the basis of culture, no language, no culture. What is more, the different nations have its own way of thinking, values, concepts, habits and behavior, which are the elements of their cultures. Then it is called as cultural difference. As a result, they must communicate with other nation’s people under the condition of understanding the unique cultural background and the language features. Inevitably, people from different countries have distinctive conversations. This mainly reveals in many aspects. Such as the contents of conversation, the way of expressing, the same object in different understanding. Above all, are affected by cultural difference. So, if we want to understand and handle the relationship while communicating, we must know some cultural differences as much as possible.Culture can give the words new meaning. Chinese were changed influenced by culture.1919; the Soviet Union’s revolut ion is succeeded. China followed their way. So, red, this word, since then, is indicating politics in china. Before that, red is just a kind of color. This is a typical example of culture influence language. Culture gives red, a common word a particular meaning. In recent years, some Chinese people are sensitive and particular about something connected with number. Such aschoosing the number of lucky day, telephone number, and license number for eight, six or nine which are considered lucky numbers, the order of numbers had better be “888”, “666” expressing a kind of “lucky and good wishes”. In Chinese culture “8” is the homophonic with “发”, which means success while “6” corresponds to the homophonic of “六六大顺”which has the meaning of satisfactory and gratification. In our culture, we thirst for发and 顺. These all are the reflection of our culture.When I first communicated with my foreign teacher, I felt very nervous and didn’t know what to talk about in our conversation. It is well known that Chinese are usually allowed to talk about daily life. For example, food, health, ages, marriage, and incomes of people .Whereas such topic can be allowed to talk about freely in western countries. In western culture, people are willing to talk about weather, job, amateur, hobby or some national events. The topics such as ages, income, religions, belief or marriage are limited in their nations, which can be called taboos. In addition, in western culture, it is natural for men to compliment lady’s appearance, stature or wearing. If a British man compliments a Chinese woman to be sexy. It is unacceptable in China, and even arise some troubles, but this seems natural and common to English and foreigners. People with different cultures have different topics, and use different languages. That is the culture’s influence on language.Gender discrimination in English extensively exists in society. Language, as a mirror of a society, reflects the social views and values. Gender discrimination in society is thus inevitably reflected in the use of language. The causes of gender discrimination are the inequalities between male and female. For a long time, people have traditionally thought that men are always superior to women in the social economy, in the politics, as well as in the culture. As a result, the idea of gender discrimination has come into being and reflected in the language.Why these years we eliminate gender discrimination in English language. The crucial point is to uproot the sexism conception and improve women's social stat us. Women’s liberation especially 1960s let women have the same social status and rights as men in society. That is our culture. Culture changed, so the language must be change, for the language is the reflection of culture.Conclusion:In short, language is one of the most important carriers of culture and culture has a great impact on language in conditioning. They both cannot survive with each other. With the development of society，cultures content are more rich. These new cultures must reflect in the language. So language must be change in the future.姓名：姚召东学号：201015517。