LANGUAGE, CULTURE,

& SOCIETY

What is Language?

• Mean of communication

• Use of signs, sounds and symbols

• Many animal and even plant species communicate with each other

• Is that language too???????

The difference between animal communication and human language is recursion ( the ability

to take discrete elements, like words or numbers, and recombine them in a way that

creates an infinite variety of expression).

• Human system of communication makes an extensive and varied use of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols

• Human language is unique in being a symbolic communication system that is learned instead of biologically inherited.

CanisPERRO

HUND Chien

What is culture?

• Appreciation of good literature, music, art, and food.

• For a biologist, it is likely to be a colony of bacteria or other microorganisms growing in a nutrient medium in a laboratory Petri dish.

• For anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns.

• Our written languages, governments, buildings, and other man-made things are merely the products of culture. They are not culture in themselves.

• Culture is the way we learn to look at the world and how we function in it.

• The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought typical of a population or community at a given time.

Non-human culture? This orangutan mother isusing a specially preparedstick to "fish out" food froma crevice. She learned thisskill and is now teaching itto her child who is hangingon her shoulder and intentlywatching.

What is society?

• Societies are groups of people who directly or indirectly interact with each other.

• People in human societies also generally perceive that their society is distinct from other societies in terms of shared traditions and expectations.

Culture and Society

• Culture and society are not the same thing

• While cultures are complexes of learned behavior patterns and perceptions, societies are groups of interacting organisms

• They are inextricably connected because culture is created and transmitted to others in a society

Relationship Between Language, Culture and Society

• In the normal transfer of information through language, we use language – to send vital social messages about • who we are• where we come from• and who we associate with

• We may judge a person’s background, character, and intentions based simply upon the person's language

Relationship Between Language, Culture and Society

• Sociology of language– Focuses on the manner in which social and

political forces influence language use.

• Sociolinguistics– Focuses on how language and language use reflect

the larger society

Sociolinguistics

• The relationship between language and society affects a wide range of encounters--from broadly based international relations to narrowly defined interpersonal relationships.

• The study of relationship between language and society.

• Sociolinguistics has become an increasingly important and popular field of study with globalization.

Orientation of sociolinguistics

• Micro-sociolinguisticsInvestigates how social structure influences the way people talk & how language varieties and patterns of use correlate with social attributes such as age, gender, class.

• Macro-sociolinguisticsStudies what societies do with their language, i.e. attitudes and attachments that account for functional distribution of speech forms in society.

Rules !

• Punctuality.• Regularity.• Course Pack- a must.• No retakes.• Strict deadlines.• No mobile phones.• Note-taking preferred.