language and culture语言与文化

foreign language is inseparable from learning its culture. We need to learn enough about the language’s culture so that we can communicate in the target language properly to achieve not only the linguistic competence but also the pragmatic or communicative competence as well. Through communication, some elements of culture A enter culture B and become part of culture B, this phenomenon is known as cultural diffusion. One typical example of cultural diffusion is the appearance of loan words. Intercultural or cross-cultural communication is communication between people from different cultures (their cultural perceptions and symbols systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event.) In cross-cultural communication, we need to pay special attention to the significant differences regarding social relations and concept of universe from different perspectives such as language, food, dress, attitude towards time, work habits, social behavior and religious belief that can cause frustrations in communications and contacts.

In any culture or region, language is much more than semantics, much more than what the written page or the spoken word can contain. This especially becomes clear when studying a foreign language and learning the ways of a particular culture. e.g. the use of introductions, salutations, everyday sayings, etc. This area in particular gives more weight to culture then to the words themselves. Anyone studying a foreign language has to be bicultural as well as bilingual to speak the new language in a way that it is not disparaging to the culture and its origin. Language does not end at the meaning or the use of words associated to a culture\history, and the culture of their origin and they must be used accordingly.

In a word, Language is the carrier of culture, the main expressional form of culture, which develops along with nation, country and society's development. Language is a part of a nation’s culture. Language and culture are closely related to and depend on each other through their history. The native language is acquired along with the ways, attitudes and patterns of behaving of the social group, and these ways, attitudes and patterns of behaving patterns find their expression through language. In the view of this, we can know that language is an inseparable or integral part of culture, and the medium through which culture is acquired.

Reference:

杨信彰：2008.《语言学概论》An introduction to linguistics，高等教育出版社 凌征华：2006.《英语语言学》English linguistics，湖南人民出版社 李瑞华：1997.《英汉语言文化对比研究》，上海外语教育出版社

顾嘉祖、陆昇：1990.《语言与文化》 language and culture，上海外语教育出版社 戴炜栋：1989.《新编简明英语语言学教程》，上海外语教育出版社