Гребенник А.Ю., Дидович Г.И.

Национальный Технический Университет

«Харьковский Политехнический Институт»

Linguistic Aspects of Culture

The main function of language is to store the culture and pass it from one generation to another. Due to this factor language plays so significant and even decisive role in forming personality, national character, ethnic community, nation and people. Studying the works by specialists in ethnolinguistic and cross-cultural communication, we can find out that “far from being a technique of communication, it is itself a way of directing the perceptions of its speakers and it provides for them habitual models of analyzing experience into important categories. And to the extent that languages differ markedly from each other, so should we expect to find important and formidable barriers to cross- cultural communication and understanding”.

Many years ago, Benjamin Whorf wrote that language functions were not only to report information but in fact to shape our perceptions of reality. This idea revolutionized linguistic science and intercultural communication experts recognize today the continuing importance of language and culture on perceptions.

Language reflects the man’s life and culture. The term linguistic relativity applies to language as the shaper of reality. As languages differ, linguistic communities differ in their perceptual experiences of the world around them. Language acts like a filter, molding perception. Let us focus on linguistic relativity for the moment.

It’s clear, that language categorizes our world. Just as the biologist uses a scientific taxonomy to classify organisms, so the usual speaker uses language to classify reality. For instance, one word may stand for an entire cluster of things, like the word animal, which refers to an entire class. You may already know that colours are categorized differently in different languages. What you may not realize is that the native speaker’s actual perception of the colours is influenced by this categorization process. For example, English contains seven basic colours on a type of colour spectrum ranging from red on one end of the spectrum to violet at the other end. Harris and Moran point out that “when this spectrum is laid end to end and compared linguistically with two tribal languages, the Shona and the Basa, the result is that the Shona language has four words and the Basa language has only two words for the spectrum. Undoubtedly, few people would argue that the Basa tribe sees nothing but “hui” (the bluish end) and “ziza” (the reddish end)”. Certainly, they can see the physical colour, but Whorf’s theory suggests that the language classification forces a category system that changes our perceptions where shades of difference become relatively unimportant.

Various sources also underscore this point between language and cultural thought and activity. In English the word “snow” is a category for all types of snow, although we can use phrases to describe variations, such as “fluffy snow”, “wet snow”, and so on. In Eskimo languages, however, one word is insufficient, and some claim that there are some twenty-five different words for snow. In Brazil, scores of words exist for coffee. Kluckhohn (1972) reported that Arabic language contains numerous words for a camel and its parts.

These examples, and for that matter the entire Whorfian theory, do not imply unequivocally that people of one culture cannot think of objects for which their culture has plentiful vocabulary, like the camel parts. The fact is not that we cannot, but we do not. That we do not think of such specificity may mean that such matters are unimportant or irrelevant to our life-styles. Language categorizes our experiences, almost without our full awareness. If we were to describe our experiences in linguistic terms, the very act of description would then reinforce the initial mental implant of the experience. For example, how would you describe this text when you go to the library? Do you call it a book? A pamphlet? A text? A volume? Your perception of this “thing” is a perception partly influenced by what your culture – whether you are a college student or a professional person – by your experience with books and by your language, which tells you what it is. You perceive the book partly by what you call it (a book is usually “better” than a pamphlet, for instance), and you name it based on how you perceive it. Every time you describe the book, you reinforce the very linguistic concept of the book. Since other people in your culture also reinforce the use of the term book, then language and its perceived meanings become culturally shared. That is one reason why many cultural members share similar perceptions.

Several years ago, a U.S. Commission on Foreign Languages and International Studies noted that, in some foreign markets, cars with the interiors labeled “Body by Fisher” were advertised as having “Corpses by Fisher”. When Pepsi was first introduced to Taiwan, the slogan “Come Alive” was translated into Chinese as a rather sacrilegious message: “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave”.

Such nuances of language remind us how language becomes a keyhole through which to view culture. However, that relationship extends beyond the language and culture to include ethnolinguistic variations. This term refers to language used by a group of persons, called a linguistic community, and has unique features in pronunciation, vocabulary, or style usage. Many investigators have examined the existence and effect of dialectical differences.

Mulac and Rudd wrote in 1977 that “empirical research has clearly established that listeners form differential attitudes toward speakers on the basis of dialectical characteristics of speakers’ linguistic presentations”.

Clearly, speech behavior is related to social groups and attitudes that others hold toward those groups. Additionally, speech patterns serve as a cue causing listeners to assign certain characteristics to a speaker with one dialect or another.