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Ivanova Dinara N.
Southern Federal University
Glazunova Larisa S.
Konstantinovsk Teachers’ Training College
Language and culture
Language and culture have always been
regarded as partners in communication. Any element of culture can be
represented in linguistic forms. We cannot accept the view that language is
abstract and devoid of materiality. In contrast, we assume that language cannot
stand apart from the “things: it represents. The goal of this paper is to
reveal how actual sociocultural trends are maintained in language. We will
focus on the materiality of language and its relations to the elements of
social culture. It has always been supposed that language is primarily a
collection of words, so the variability of social life observed across
societies can be studied by means of linguistic approach.
Our main task is
to characterize some of the basic sociocultural trends expressible through new
words in the English language. As for the linguistic data cited in this paper,
we have used periodicals and interviewees’ responses as well as the authors’
observations made in the UK in 2007-2013. Some of the material in this paper
has been presented at various conferences over the last three years, and earlier
versions of part of the argument have appeared in print in Russia.
Before we turn to
the analysis of such large scale social and cultural trends it is necessary to
attend to explain what constitutes our hypothesis. So, we argue that the
organization of social life is shaped by social and cultural trends that are
made through human activities and inhabited through them. In our understanding
“trend” may be conveyed through an enacted representation, a thing made or done
somewhere through some activity. The lexical unit this activity generates makes
this thing accessible for study.
One of the most curious things about
language is that it allows us to formulate social and cultural phenomena that
are highly abstract. Any such representation must be materially embodied in
order to become known to someone or communicable to another. In a very basic sense, these moments of
being made and communicated are the central moments through which reflexive
models of language and culture have a social life. And people live by these
models representing them in linguistic forms, change them and introduce new
ones. David Crystal formulates this point in the following way: “The process of
new word formation continues relentlessly, reflecting trends in society and
technology” [1, p.229].
When a new word
busts onto the scene and seems likely to last, it forces the society to notice
the trend through the referents. The general point at issue here is that the
referents of discourse presented in our paper are not merely “things” (as in
the folk-view) but things modeled through discourse as having certain
characteristics. The circulation of
these new words depends on interaction between people, as Sapir expresses “ whether face-to-face-communication , or
more indirect forms of communication linking persons to each other across
larger spans of space and time [Sapir,
p.108].
So, this paper is
an attempt to argue human activities yield new vocabulary that carries certain value or significance to those who perceive it. Yet new words,
in their turn, direct these activities and generate some particular trends of
the society development. This point is fairly obvious for some vocabulary that
can order and shape social arrangements as such words make modes of social
organization visible through enacted representations.
The repertoire of the linguistic forms - in our study “lexical items or their
phraseological extensions” - that express the cultural construct may grow or shrink. Any such vocabulary
typifies persons, identities, group membership and other facts of social being.
As cultural formations are dynamically altered by human activities and
practices, every social and cultural phenomenon has a social domain at any
moment of its history. And all cultural constructs are subject to social
transformation. As Asif Agna, Associate Professor at the
University of Pennsylvania, expresses it: “ When a cultural construct has a
recognizable reality only for a sub-group within a society, processes of
communicative transformation can readily bring the construct to the attention
of other members of society making it more widely known and thus presupposable
in use by larger segments of the population” [3, p. 78].
In our everyday
communication we commonly perceive language as comprised largely of words. The social life of lexical units and
their phraseological extensions is
mediated by social and cultural
processes. Even though these processes are sociohistorical in character the trends they yield and represent often appear “natural” to language users as they are
institutionally dominant. Let us
introduce some of the relevant examples in a preliminary way.
We explore some
of Britain’s social types which stood the test of time and are
institutionalized now. All these types specify some kind of conduct that Weber
called a “style of life” [4, p.68].
There is plenty of evidence that the British read newspapers and there
have been attempts to distinguish social types regarding what they read. Let us
call this visible trend as a social reader
and consider what types are represented in modern English.
Changes in
exemplary social reader are the
subject of extended commentary in public sphere discourse in Britain today and
elsewhere. We could find articles whose headlines declared that there are Guardian readers, Daily mail readers, Sun
readers, etc. Here is some excerpt:
“All “Non-Guardian Readers” petition to achieve a balanced view of
Politics
(HM Government, Department of Culture, Media and Sport)
In order to
understand how the British can be classified on the basis what they read you
may read a book by Duffy R. and Rowden L. “You are what you read?” whose main
goal is to study how newspaper readership is related to political and social
views.
Once the choice
is made, introducing new words, which identify a particular social type,
amplifies the process of which these
readers are a part. So, the case at issue here is a new social type.
Stereotypically, Guardian readers are
middle-class, university-educated and middle-aged. They see themselves as
open-minded, but other people perceive them as self-satisfied. Typical Daily Mail readers think of themselves
as serious but other see them as frightened white-right wingers who like to
imagine they are oppressed minority.
So, it is
generally found that some members of the society are viewed differently by various social groups. Thus, both are sociological constructs and
constitute a visible sociocultural trend referred to as social reader in our paper.
Once we
reconstruct social and cultural trends
in linguistic terms, there is nothing surprising about the fact that competing
models of cultural phenomenon can come to co-exist within a society. Let us
consider this issue. This point may be illustrated for the obvious social
trends concerning food. One of the
most obvious trends in food consumption almost all over the world is the fast food trend. Taken very literally
the trend implies the food designed to be served quickly and eaten “on the go”.
Very frequently people involved in this
trend do not even use traditional
cutlery, so fast food can be eaten as
a finger food. Fried chicken, burgers and pizzas, prepared fast and eaten fast
constitute perceivable behavior of those who belong to the category and who may
be understood as one of many kinds of possible social arrangements.
Thus
counter-trends come to co-exist society-internally with the first one. Thus fast food
and slow food are words for
introducing and maintaining two opposite trends in the English-speaking
community. It is quite clear that followers of the slow food trend take as much
time as possible over their food. Insofar as any cultural phenomenon can be
embodied in perceivable sings, the emblem of this revolutionary trend is a
snail. The slow foodies cook locally
grown food by slow methods, and eat it as slowly as possible for maximum
enjoyment.
I believe in slow food, eating locally and getting the freshest
ingredients, so I expected the Japanese oysters taste better. Oysters that come from 50 kilometers away ought to
beat those that have traveled 5,000 kilometers, right? They didn’t. (Bloomberg
News 7th June 2006)
There appear no
societies in which cultural trends concerning food consumption do not occur. At
the same time hardly any trend of such kind, however densely and rigidly
maintained, persists beyond a particular historical horizon. Our examples
include the trends which came into being not long ago, and we concentrate on
those trends that exhibit the characteristic qualities of the modern discourse
practices.
As we have
already appealed to the sociocultural trends referred to food consumption, we
intend to consider this issue further. We have already seen the counter-trends
co-existing in the society and the example below illustrates the same
sociocultural phenomenon. The word alfresco
generally refers to the idea of having meal outside. It also implies a
comfortable sitting-out area and attractive sights and pleasant scents. Yet
there has been an alternative to a picnic in the fresh air. In the 21st
century there are so many reasons to eat al
desko (whilst sitting at your desk) rather than alfresco.
… a quarter of British workers are believed to have their lunch “al
desko”, often eating a pre-packed chain store sandwich in front of their
computers.” (The Derby Gripe, 22nd August 2005)
The examples
above are linguistically very simple. These relatively new words slow food and al desko cleverly exploit the building blocks already present in
English to make a sensible representation of a new trend.
Now we turn to
some more social and cultural changes that have had their linguistic
consequences in the form of new words. For example, globesity can be regarded as a pointer of one of the most undesired
trends in the 21st century. The word is just the combination of the
parts of the words global and obesity. It highlights one of the major
health risks, the worldwide epidemic of globesity.
It is estimated, for example, that by the year 2017, 75 per cent of British men
and women will be overweight. The point may be illustrated by the conclusion of
the World Health Organization which has suggested that widespread problem of
obesity, especially in the developed countries, represents a more serious risk
than smoking.
Globesity gains ground as leading killer… It’s a bitter truth to
swallow: about every fourth person on Earth is too fat. Obesity is fast
becoming one of the world’s reasons why people die.” (Associated Press, 10th
may 2004)
This
noticeable trend contrasts to orthorexia
which labels those who are concerned with healthy eating. But the connotations
ascribed to this word are not positive as it refers to a nervous condition
characterized by an extreme obsession with health foods.
An obsession with healthy eating could be dangerous, doctors have
warned. So what’s it like suffering from ortthorexia?...Orthrexies exhibit an
over-enthusiasm for pure eating and healthy food.” (BBC News, 29th
March 2005)
Thus, in the
above examples, the individuals who produce the texts with these lexical units
become producers of messages shaping social and cultural trends of more or less
evanescent kind. The values ascribed to these words are illuminated for the
users by discourses. We have already seen how these human activities make
language such an exquisite research instrument as it is accessible to our everyday
awareness. Of course, we agree that these lexical units reflect nothing but a
fragment of social life. Nevertheless, if we examine the actual practice of
using language, they constitute some noticeable social and cultural trend.
These trends appear to have a national significance, invested in it by those
who follow this trend as well as those who produce its social meaning and value
in linguistic forms.
REFERENCES
1. Crystal, David. 2002. The English language, Penguin Books
2. Sapir, Edward. 1949. Communication. In Selected Writings of Edward
Sapir, ed. By David G. Mandelbaum,.Berkely: University of California Press
3. Agha, Asif, 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge University
Press
4. Weber, Max. 1978 Economy and
Society, 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press.