戴炜栋语言学-Language and Culture

戴炜栋语言学-Language and Culture

● 9.1Introduction

● 9.2 What is culture?

● Culture, in a broad sense, means integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and

behavior that is both a result of and integral to the human capacity for learning and

transmitting knowledge tosucceeding generations.

● In narrow sense, culture may refer to local or specific practice, beliefs or customs,which

can be manifested in folk culture, enterprise culture or food culture, etc.

● from the content: 2 types of culture: material and spiritual

● 9.3 The relationship between language and culture语言和文化的关系

● In a word, language expresses culturalreality.

● the language he uses embodies his cultural identity and background. To dig it further, a

language, as asystem of signs with their own cultural substances and values, may

beviewed as a symbol of social identity.

● To sum up, since the knowledge and beliefs that constitute a people's culture are

imperceptibly encoded and transmitted in the language of the people, it is extremely

difficult to separate the two. On the one hand, language as an integral part of human being

permeates his thinking and way of viewing the world. It both expresses and embodies

cultural reality. On the other, language, as a system of spoken or written symbols used by

people in a shared culture to communicate with each other, reflects and affects a culture's

way of thinking and helps perpetuate and change the culture and its influence, which also

facilitates the development of this language at the same time.

● 两个术语：话语社区discourse community 话语口音discourse accents

● People in a local community identify themselves asmembers of a social group and

have acquired common ways of viewingthe world through their interactions with other

members within thegroup. Such commonness is constantly reinforced mainly through

theirlanguages used in various activities and forms of socialization in theirlife. They

speak of discourse communities

● The uniqueness of each group'slanguage uses in grammatical, lexical and

phonological aspects, the waysthey talk and the style with which they talk, etc.

constitute differentdiscourse accents.

● 9.4 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说

● Sapir and Whorf believe that language filters people’s perception and the way they

categorize their experiences. This interdependence of language and thought is now known

as Sapir- Whorf Hypothesis(SWH).

● a strong vision and a weak vision:the strong version believes that language patterns

determine people's thinking and behavior, the weak one holds that the former influences

the later.

● 2 important insights:

● 1. There is nowadays recognition that language, as code, reflects

culturalpreoccupations and constrains the way people think.

● 2.More than in Whors days,however, we recognize how important contextis in

complementing the meanings encoded in the language.

● 9.5 Linguistic evidence of cultural differences文化差异的语言证据

● Any linguistic sign may simultaneously have a denotative, connotative, or iconic kind of

meanings.

● 9.5.1 Greetings and terms of address

● English:

● greet new people: How do you do?

● old friends: How are you?

● Chinese:

● 您好

● 吃过了吗？你去哪里啊？

● terms of address: Chinese同志；English:Mr. Mrs. Miss. Ms.

● kinship terms亲戚术语：such as uncle, aunt, grandpa, granny,; respectful titles--Chairman Jiang, Premier Zhou;Director Ma

● 9.5.2 Gratitude and compliments

● It is noted that people in the West tend to verbalize their gratitude and compliments

more often than Chinese speakers do and that they tend to accept thanks and

compliments more directly and frankly than Chinese do.

● when express gratitude

● Chinese: no, no

● English: I'm glad to hear it./I'm glad to be of help./Not at all. /It's nothing.

● when hear compliments:

● Chinese: no

● English:thank you

● 9.5.3 Colour words

● people speaking different languages divide the colour spectrum in the different way

or use different terms that designate the same range of hue.

● diferent languages provide different colour related associations. For example, in

English "green" is associated with envy or jealousy like “green with envy" or “gren-eyes",and “greenhor"refers to a person without training or experiences." Blue"

suggests sentimental or unhappy feelings as in "blue, blue is my love", or "he is in a

blue mood".Meanwhile “blue" is also associated with high social position or being

aristocratic as in “He's a real blue blood." Another example is that people call a book

with well-known names blue book in America.

● 9.5.4 Privacy and taboos

● As the saying goes "A man's home is his castle".western people place a high value on