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2. Branches of linguistics
• Topic:
Culture and Language
• Sehrish khokhar

3. Topic: Culture and Language and its
Relationship:
• What is culture?
Culture is defined as the set of learned behaviors,
beliefs, attitude, values, and ideas that are
characteristics of a particular society or population.

4. Culture:
• There are different cultures in the world.
• For example:
• American Culture
• Pakistani Culture
• Indian Culture
• Chinese Culture etc.

6. Cont…….
• What is language?
• Language is a system of symbols with standard meaning.
• Form or style of verbal expression.
• Language allows a person communicating with others in meeting their needs.
• Language is the key to the heart of people.

8. Cont….
• Language has three main functions:
1. From a cultural perspective, it is the primary means of preserving
culture and is the medium of transmitting culture to new
generations.
2. It helps establish and preserve community by “linking individuals
into communities of shared identity.”
3. At the societal level, it is Important to all aspects of human
interaction because it “often relates to political goals”.

9. Relationship between Language and
Culture:
• Language is an integral part of culture and human culture cannot exist without
it. Through the use of language, wide vistas of reality have been opened. What
we have experienced, as well as our norms, values and ideas exist because we
have learned to identify or experience these things through language.
• If culture can affect the structure and content of its language, then it follows that
linguistic diversity derived in part from cultural diversity.
• The linguistic relativity hypothesis asserts that language determines thought and
therefore culture. In reality language and culture influence each other. (Edward
Sapir)

10. Relationship between language and
culture:
• The most significant invention made by culture.
• Language is used to learn Culture.
• Human culture cannot exist without language.

11. Sapir and Whorf
• Who is Sapir?
• Sapir (1884-1939) ,American anthropologist-linguist, a leader in
American structural linguistics, Author of Language and An
Introduction to the Study of Speech
• Born in Lauenberg, Germany.
• Pupil of Franz Boas, teacher of Benjamin WhorfEdward

12. Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941)
• He graduated from the MIT in 1918 with a degree in Chemical
Engineering and shortly afterwards began work as a fire prevention
engineer (inspector). Although he met, and later studied with Edward
Sapir, he never took up linguistics as a profession. known for his work
on the Hopi language. He was considered to be a captivating speaker
and did much to popularize his linguistic ideas through popular
lectures and articles written to be accessible to lay readers.

13. Introduction
• Edward sapir (1884-1939) Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) SAPIR-
WHORF First discussed by Sapir in 1929, the hypothesis became
popular in the 1950s following posthumous publication of Whorf's
writings on the subject.
• After vigorous attack from followers of Noam Chomsky in the
following decades, the hypothesis is now believed by most linguists
only in the weak sense that language can have some small effect on
thought

14. • Popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the
principle is often defined as having two versions:
• the strong version that language determines thought and that
linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories
• the weak version that linguistic categories and usage influence
thought and certain kinds of nonlinguistic behaviour

15. Franz Boas
• Franz Boas
• embraced forms of the idea to one extent or another, but Sapir in
particular wrote more often against than in favor of anything like
linguistic determinism Edward Sapir.

16. SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS I
Linguistic relativity:
• Can the theory of language determinism be accepted?
• If the theory of language determinism is right, the cross language and
cross-cultural communication will never occur. If the theory of
language determinism is right, the translation toward foreign
language is impossible. If the theory of language determinism is right,
the foreign language lerning will never occur

17. SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS II
Language Determinism
• Language does not exist apart from culture, that is, from the socially
inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs that determines the
texture of lives (Sapir,1921: 207) CULTURAL LANGUAGE THOUGHT
PATTERN

18. • For example because Indonesia has collective culture, the kinship
system is very prominent in their language. We’ll see the expression
like:
• Bapak/Ibu/Saudara/Kakak/Adik tinggal di mana? In English, we’ll find
the expression as:
• Where do you live?

19. CONCLUSION
• The extreme version of this idea, that all thought is constrained by
language, has been disproved • The opposite extreme – that language
does not influence thought at all – is also widely considered to be
false.

20. Culture effect languages in different ways
• The relationship between language and culture is as old as mankind.
• Physical environment
• Social environment
• Kinship relations
• Media culture
• Change of vocabulary
• Change in pronunciation
• Same words having different meaning in different cultures

21. Change in vocabulary
• 1: What it means in the U.S.: The floor at ground level.
What it means in the U.K.: The floor above the ground level floor.
Potentially confusing sentence: “That super-important meeting is taking place on
the first floor — don’t be late!”

22. • 2: What it means in the U.S.: A storage container.
What it means in the U.K.: A trash can.
Potentially confusing sentence: “I put all my grandmother’s valuables
in a bin.”
• 3: In British the word used anti clock wise while in U.S it is called
counter clock wise.

23. Effect of culture on language
• As every culture is different so need different languages to speak.
• Physical environment - reflected in language, normally in the lexicon
i.e Eskimo (people lives in northern Canada and green land). There
are so many words used to refer snow. ( many of which describes
the varying stages of the melting process)
• Song. Fifty words for snow.

24. Kinship relations
One of the clearest examples of lexicalized categories are
words use to refer to people who are the members of
thesame family or kinship term. All languages have kinship
term (e.g. brother, mother, grandmother), but they don’t all
put family members in the same category. In some languages
the equivalent of the word father is used not only for male
parents but also for male parent brother.

25. • In English we use the word uncle for this other type of individual. We
have lexicalized the distinction between the two concepts. Yet we use
this same world for the female parent brother. That distinction is not
lexicalized in English but is in other language it would see that
distinction in age among uncles is important in Mopan Mayan culture.
Other distinction among relatives can also be lexicalized in the world
language. For example, in Norwegian the distinction between male
parent mother (farmor) and female parent mother (mormor) is
lexicalized, but in English word grandmother generally used for both.

26. Social culture effect language
• As in arabic culture. Camel is the well known animal and the people use
different 40 words to refer camel.
• It is undoubtedly true that the Hawaiians have 65 words alone for the fishing
nets. 108 for sweat potato, 42 for sugarcane.

27. • The differing of cultural attitudes towards time are well articulated by
their vocabularies.
• Kinship relations have also effect on language.
• There are some special words which belongs to few languages or a
single language.
• For example: it is in punjabi that they have the word "PARSON"
Meaning either the day after tomorrow or the day before yesterday.

28. • Changes in society may causes
so me corresponding linguistic
changes. Such as road side
signals indifferent cultures.

29. Media culture effect language
• As now a days kids watch cartoon in Hindi and they use words from
their language. Shakti as taqat
• Indian dramas has also influenced our language. For example an Urdu
word “phir” is pronounce in Hindi as fir.

30. Conclusions
• Languages, cultures and thoughts intricate to each other in different
ways.
• Effect of environment and society on language use is obvious in
several areas (lexicon, kinship relations) but there is also evidence for
the structure of language to determine the world view of the speaker.
• Each social group differs from other in the way they are constrained in
their language use by culture but no social group uses language quite
uninhibitedly.
• Language use is sensitive to social changes, in that changes society
and culture will appear in language use.