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第7章Language, Culture and Society第一部分Language and culture一、Language and culture 语言与文化的关系In a broad sense, culture means the total way of a people, including the patterns of beliefs, language, institutions, techniques, customs, and objects that shape the life of the human community. In a narrow sense, culture may mean local or specific practice, beliefs or customs, which can be found in folk culture, enterprise culture or food culture etc.The relationships are as follows:(1) Culture is a wider system that includes language as a subsystem. The relation of language to culture is that of part to whole.(2) Culture affects language. Culture universals and biological universals lead to linguistic universals. E.g. the seven days of a week. In addition, different cultural features produce different linguistic features. E.g. “24 jie qi” in Chinese.(3) Language both expresses and embodies cultural reality. A language not only expresses facts, ideas, or events which represent similar world knowledge by its people, but also reflects the people’s beliefs, attitudes and world outlooks etc.(4) Language plays an important role in perpetuating culture over time, especially, in print form. Therefore, on the one hand, language as an integral part of human beings, runs through his thinking and way of viewing the world. On the other hand, language, as a product of culture, helps perpetuate the culture.二、The Sapir-Whorf hypothesisThis hypothesis suggests that our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express speaker’s unique ways of understanding the world.Following this argument, there are two important points in this theory. On the one hand, language may determine our thinking patterns; on the other hand, similarity between languages is relative. And this hypothesis has alternatively been referred to as linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity.Consequently, two versions of the hypothesis have been developed, a strong and a weak version. The strong version of the theory refers to the claim the original hypothesis makes, emphasizing the decisive role of language as the shaper of our thinking patterns. The weak version is a modified type of its original theory, suggesting that there is a correlation between language, culture, and thought, but the cross-cultural differences thus produced in our ways of thinking are relative, rather than categorical.三、Culture in language teaching classroom? 怎样实现；两者关系There are at least three objectives for us to teach culture in our class:(1)To get the students familiar with cultural differences;(2)To help the students transcend their own culture and see things as the members of the target culture will;(3)To emphasize the inseparability of understanding language and understanding culture through various classroom practices.Therefore, successful mastery of a given language has much to do with an understanding of that culture, because language and culture are correlated with each other at different levels of linguistic structure.四、Firth 语境说的观点Firth tried to set up a model to illustrate the close relationships between language use and its co-occurrent factors. He developed the theory of context of situation:第二部分Language and society一、Language and society 关系Language is regarded as a mirror of society, through which we can understand social activities of a certain society better. Functionally, society provides language with a suitable context of use, in which we can enjoy aspects of language vividly and truthfully. However, language is not always used to exchange information as is generally assumed, it is sometimes used to fulfill an important social function, that is, to maintain social relationship between people. And users of the same language in a sense all speak differently. What each of them chooses to use is partly determined by one’s social background. Besides, when we speak we cannot avoid giving listener clues about our origin and our background. The social environment can also be reflected in language, and can often have an effect on the structure and the vocabulary.二、A situationally and socially variationist perspective 社会语境中的文体变异7个因素An appropriate language use in any social interaction not only has something to do with structural rules, but also involves some socially institutionalized norms in usage. The choice of one form over another is both stylistically and socially governed. The following social factors are believed to influence our language behaviors in a social context:(1)Age;(2)Class;(3)Gender;(4)Ethnic identity;(5)Education background;(6)Occupation;(7)Religious belief.三、What implications can we get from sociolinguistics? 应用First, sociolinguistics is believed to have made some important contributions in language classroom: sociolinguistics has contributed to a change of emphasis in the content of language teaching;it has also contributed to innovations in materials and activities for the classroom;it has contributed to a fresh look at the nature of language development and use;it has contributed to a more fruitful research in this field.Second, in law courts:The analysis of language data gathered as evidenceThe preparation of some legal documentsEnrich our understanding of the relationship between the concept of power and language use.Third, in clinic settings:The analysis of the dialogue between doctors and patients四、在跨文化交际的Case study中学到什么；由语言和社会得到的启示(1) When in Rome do as the Romans do.(2) Put yourself in other’s shoes.(3) One culture’s meat is another culture’s poison.(4) Honesty and sincerity are key points to mutual understanding.。
