Магистрант Ашанбаева Р.

Региональный социально-инновационный университет

To the Question of Culture and Language Interaction

Language is a significant part of any culture as all the other elements of culture , for example, view of world can be transferred by means of the language. Besides this, people by means of a language, express their thoughts. Language is a transmitter and carrier of a culture; it hands down the treasure of national culture saved in it from generation to generation. When mastering a mother tongue, children assume generalized cultural experience of the previous generations with it. Language is a tool and instrument of a culture. It forms human personality and a native speaker through the language, imposed on him and the world view included in it, mentality, attitude towards other people and etc, i.e. through the culture of a nation who use the given language as a means of communication.

So, language does not exist beyond culture as “a socially inherited combination of practical skills and ideas characterizing our way of life”. Language becomes an integrated part of a culture characterized as the combination of results of a person’s activities in different spheres of his life: industrial, social and spiritual. However, as a form of existence of thinking, precisely, as means of communication, language stands in one line with culture.

At the same time the component of culture is not just some cultural information transmitted by language, it is an attribute of a language peculiar to its all levels and spheres. Language is a powerful social instrument that forms groups of people into ethnicity, which forms in its turn a nation, through preserving and transmitting culture, traditions and social self awareness of this linguistic collective. “The first place among national-specific components of any culture is taken by language. Language, first of all, enables culture to be both a means communication and separation of people. Language is a sign of its speaker belonging to a certain socium.”

Language, as a specific attribute of an ethnicity, can be considered from two points of view: 1) in the direction to the “inside”, when it acts as a main factor of ethnic integration; and 2) in the direction to “outside”, when it is a main ethno-differentiating attribute of an ethnicity. Dialectically combining in it these two opposite functions language becomes an instrument of both self-preservation and individualization of “ins” and “outs”.

Language is what lies on the surface of human existence in a culture, so since the XIX century (J. Grimm, R. Raek, W. Humboldt, A. Potebnya) till the present days the problem of the relationship and interaction of language and culture is one of the central problems in linguistics.

As can be seen from the above, the interrelation of language and culture is a complicated and multi aspect problem. There are numerous attitudes towards the interrelation of language and culture.

A certain group of theorists have peculiar approaches towards culture and cultural differences. Based on the communicative tradition they differ in the points to the extent of the influence of language and culture on people but agree on the fact that communication is a key moment in considering culture and cultural differences. Kincaid A. and his followers consider communication as work necessary for the functioning of people’s community. This work is the transformation of information between separate individuals, groups of people and between cultures as well. The connecting moment for each group is common ideas, values and models of behavior. Culture is not more than a common world view and behavior which are developed as a result of isolated communication within one group.

In the concept “language and culture” are converged the interests of all the human sciences, it is a transparent idea which breaks down the boundaries between disciplines that study human being because we cannot learn beyond his language. Language is a main form of expression and existence of a national culture. Sepir E. noted: “Culture can be defined as what a certain community does and thinks. Language is what they think”. Thereby, language acts as a realized inner form of the expression of a culture, as a means of accumulation of the knowledge of a culture.

The main function of culture is to be a means of spiritual enrichment of a person. A person submerges with “the world of language” mastering many languages that are specific for material and spiritual cultures. National character of a culture suggests interrelation of languages and cultures of different nations, their mutual enrichment till the holistic "fundamental basis” – the world culture, achievement of the whole humanity. Culture, as a nation’s creature, is national (specific) and general (international) unity. The most complete correlation of “language-culture” is reflected in the works of V. von Humboldt, who wrote: “A person primarily: lives with objects the way they are presented by language: Each language describes around the nation to which he belongs, a circle, from which a person can come out as it comes into range of another language".

Humboldt’s followers consider “the world view” as “intermediate linguistic world” created by the spirit of nation as a form of presenting this national culture and as contrastive interference of different cultures reflected in different national languages. [86;79]

Worf B.L. in his work “Correlation of norms of behavior and thinking with language” noted that language and culture had developed together influencing on each other. But in this union the nature of language is the factor that restrains its development: “This happens because language is a system not just a complex of norms. Structure of a big system is subjected to significant changes very slowly, while in other spheres of culture the changes take place rapidly. Language, in this way, reflects mass thinking; it reacts to all changes and innovation, but the reaction is weak and slow, while in the mind of those who make these changes, it happens immediately”.

Cultures differ from each other as contacts between cultures are weaker than the contacts inside them. If people communicated with the representatives of other cultures in the way they communicate inside their own culture then cultures would have disappeared at all. Haslett believes that people possess culture and communication simultaneously: one cannot exist without the other. Culture is “a common, shared by everybody, way of life and this community might exist owing to only the communication”. People communicate in the environment which restricts the form and nature of communication. As a result of communication, members of a culture share common perspectives, though not all the members may equally share them.

Whatever opinions are there about the interrelation between language and culture, these two phenomena are closely connected with each other, moreover, while culture has in itself the collective experience of all the generations of a certain ethnicity, language acts as a link between the generations and serves as a “resource and means of transmitting extra linguistic collective experience.

Bibliography:

1. Savignon S. J. Communicative Competence Theory and Classroom Practice. Graw-Hill: 1997.

2. Тер-Минасова С. Г. Язык и межкультурная коммуникация. Издательство М.: «СЛОВО/ SLOVO», 2000.

3. P. Lantolf James. Sociocultural Theory and second Language Learning. Oxford: 2000.