The relationship between language and culture

The relationship between language and culture

Culture and language are intertwined and shape each other. It is impossible to separate the two. Language is not a matter of neutral codes and grammatical rules. Each time we select words from sentences. We all agree that language helps in communicating with people from different backgrounds. However, we may be less aware that cultural literacy is necessary to understand the language being used. If we select language without being aware of the cultural implications, we may at best not communicate well and at worst send the wrong message.

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbol used for human communication, and is a meaning of expressing cultural customs, as well as a part of language. language cannot separate from culture to be independent. culture is the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs value action attitudes, meaning hierarchies, religion notions of the time, spatial relations, concepts of the universe and artifact acquired by group of people in the course of generations through individual and group. In accordance with the definition of language and culture, I believe that language is affected by language and reflects the culture. The language is the basis of culture, no language, no culture. What is more, the different nations have its own way of thinking, values, concepts, habits and behavior, which are the elements of their cultures. Then it is called as cultural difference. As a result, they must communicate with other nations people under the condition of understanding the unique cultural background and the language features. Inevitably, people from different countries have distinctive conversations. This mainly reveals in many aspects. Such as the contents of conversation, the way

of expressing, the same object in different understanding. Above all, are affected by cultural difference. So, if we want to understand and handle the relationship while communicating, we must know some cultural differences as much as possible.

When people in different cultures communicate with others, they have to follow some norms limited and regulated by different cultures concretely. So, it is necessary to know such rules and differences when we make conversation and when we not make conversation, what to say and what not to say, and what kind of situations suitable, and how to say. The cultures in different countries are different , the norms of them are therefore different. Especially in people’s daily conversations . There will three parts to show distinctive conversation in different culture.

When I first communicated with my foreign teacher, I felt very nervous and didn’t know what to talk about in our conversation. It is well known that Chinese are usually allowed to talk about daily life. For example, food, health, ages, marriage, incomes of people exc. Whereas such topic can be allowed to talk about freely in western countries. In western culture, people are willing to talk about weather, job, amateur, hobby or some national events. The topic such as ages, incomes, religions belief or marriage etc are limited in their nations, which can be called taboos. In addition. In western culture, it is natural for men to compliment lady’s appearance, stature or wearing. If a British man compliments a Chinese woman to be sexy. It is unacceptable in China, and even arise some troubles, but this seems natural and common to English and foreigners. Above all, are some

limitation and contents of conversation in different cultures.

About how to express hopes, demands and opinions in conversation, there exist some differences. Different cultures always have different customs. Chinese are prefer to choose the indirect way, always give to much greetings before get to the point. In their conversation, greetings seem like a prelude, which may have little and even nothing connected with the subject. And the people’s attitudes are so humble. The western people tend to direct their expression which come straightly to the point and spoken frankly. In addition, they often show their stands when explaining the reason during their talks. Chinese often take different way by giving the conversation order, explain reasons first, then show their stands. Even if the modernized methods of communication are used, there still exist cultural differences in social intercourses. Take a phone call for example, a Britain who is wanted on the phone will certainly tell his name first without hesitation, but a Chinese would like to wait for the other’s name before he tell him, unless he gets the other’s name, or he will not be willing to show who he is. This is the difference in way of people’s expressing. It will inevitably affect the people’s conversation.

As we all know that different countries have different cultures, and also different language. Language and culture are interdependent and interactional. Language is one of the most important carriers of culture. On the other hand, culture have a great impact on language, that is culture conditioning.

Language plays a very important role in all human activity. It’s one of the

indispensable part of the social life of human. You can not imagine the world would be without language. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of human language is so mystical that people do not acquaint it entirely so far.

Culture is the product of social life and national spirit. In other words, culture is the genetic code of difference among the various nation, country and region. Every country has its own culture formation and individuality. This special culture is one of the most important source of affinity and cohesion of a country. For this reason, we must protect and develop the culture of the various nation, country and region, keep variety of our global culture.

Relationship between language and culture can be summarized as the following:

Language is part of culture. Like other cultural phenomenon, language is also a social phenomenon, it occurred with the production of society, and develops with the development of society. The language is with nationality, different nationalities often have different languages; Language is also human creation. It is the most important spiritual wealth of human society .We can say that language has all the attributes of culture, so language is also a kind of culture, one of the many cultural phenomena. The human language is not only an integral part of culture, and also the most important part.

Language is the main carrier of culture. Although language is part of culture, other cultural phenomenon generally can't exist being independent from

language. Only through language, culture can be preserved, extended and spread.

Language is the foundation of the development of culture. When we said the cultural development, it's pointing to the development on the original basis which is preserved and spread by language. The development of culture cannot do without thinking, and thinking activity cannot do without the language: the development of culture must rely on the collective of creation of social members. Only by using language which is a good communication tool, can social members communicate and achieve mutual understanding. Different culture should learn from each other through language. Above all, culture must use language as tools to develop. So, the language is the foundation of the development of culture.

Above all, we can conclude that language and culture not only in close relationship, but also the special relationship.

Because language is part of culture, also the carrier of culture and foundation of cultural development, it can reflect the characteristics of national culture and the cultural differences between different nationalities to a maximum extent. From different nationalities' languages, we can find the evidences of different nationality's values, is or not standard, customs, and religious beliefs, social system, and so on. These cultural factors have restriction on language and language communication. But his own people are not always easy to detect that. Only through the comparison of the different nationality's language and language communication, it can be revealed. The so-called \"language communication culture\

nation's mental state, values, life style, moral standards, non standard, aesthetic taste, and the customs and habits etc .This cultural factors mainly reflects in the words system , grammar system and pragmatic system of language.

We will illustrate some examples of culture in the language communication through comparison between China and Western Countries.

Due to the differences between Chinese and western culture tradition and customs, the way of greeting is, of course, not the same. Because China is a long period of farming community, there’s lot of ‘food’ in the daily expression. When people meet with each other, they will say ‘have you eaten? ’ for greeting. This way of greeting is just the same as ‘hi’ or ‘hello’ in western country. In China, it is a common way to say ‘hello’, but the western people don’t think so. They may think this greeting seems to be saying: ‘I have nothing to eat. Come on. Let’s go to eat something.’ Or ‘ I was going to ask you to go to my house for a dinner.’ All in all, this means that say ‘hello’ invitation to dinner sometimes. Another way of greeting in china is ‘where are you going?’ or ‘where have you been?’. In china, this greeting is just polite formula. But if you use these sentences to greet to western people, they will feel unhappy. Their reaction is likely to be: it’s none of your business! Western people always talk about the weather when they meet. Such as’ the weather is fine. They respect the privacy of others, and will not ask others privacy issues.

In short, when people make a greeting, they should pay attention on different cultures. They should consider the time, place, object, cultural background, social

customs and other factors. The use of appropriate greetings can make communication more smooth and natural.

Between the social and cultural customs between china and western country are different, the farewells are different, too. For instance, Chinese people go to other people’s homes. When it is the time to say goodbye, they often say: I’d better be going now. You must be very tired or you will have to go to work tomorrow, I should go now. But the American people, by contrast, most of them will find out their reasons to say good-bye. For example, I must say good-bye, my wife is waiting for me or I think I’d better to leave now. Chinese people are always more politely, while westerners are always somewhat straightforward.

In cross-cultural communication, taboo is the most sensitive topic. Cultural taboos research therefore becomes an important content of cross-cultural communication. The so-called taboos are the words that people can’t say in daily life or their work. Taboo is almost everywhere, from daily life to the political and economic aspects. We here just talk some about common taboos. In the conversation, western people are unwilling to say their age, income, marriage, love, property, fat, and so on. But in china, it is very normal to talk about marriage, income, love, age and so on. In addition, western people should not talk loud in public places, they always speak in quiet. But Chinese people always talk loud in public places. There are lot of this kind of taboos, taboos language reflects different countries’ culture.

In short, language is one of the most important carriers of culture and culture

has a great impact on language in conditioning. They both cannot survive with each other. On the other hand, the difference of language and culture may arouse inconvenience and misunderstanding. Therefore, learning the difference of cultures between different countries is very important. Realizing the difference of cultures between different nations is good for us to communicate with different languages.