Cultural Values and Language
Understanding beliefs in context
Why is Language Important to the
Study of Cultural Values and
Beliefs?
Language, its grammatical structures can influence
our worldviews:
the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: the grammatical
structure of a language influences the way we
perceive the world. E.g. lack of past and future
tenses in Hopi.
however, language may influence perception, but
not determine it, e.g. gender distinctions in French,
Italian and Spanish.
Example of Gender Symbols in
Medical Textbooks
What is a symbol? Something that represents something else.
All language is symbolic.
In the medical textbooks of the 1980s, conception was
viewed through the conventional ways that scientists
interpreted existing gender relations.
1950s-1980s: models of conception relied on a perception
that the sperm was active and the egg was passive.
Late 1980s: models gradually changed to show that both
egg and sperm contributed to conception.
But sometimes, conventional gender stereotypes still
prevailed: egg is represented as a ‘temptress’ that
entraps the sperm.
National geographic concept of the active sperm.
What are the Characteristics of
Language?
1. It is universal. All human cultures possess language.
2. It is symbolic: i.e. in language, an abstract symbol stands for something
else. Consider the example of the word dog. How is it expressed in different
languages?
Do these abstract symbols look like a dog, smell like a dog, act like a dog? NO.
In language, signs represent something completely different than themselves.
3. It is conventional: There is no necessary or inherent relation between the
symbol and what it represents. The fact that the symbol d-o-g represents a
four-legged furry animal is a product of culture and history.
4. It is productive: humans can combine words and sounds into new
utterances that have never been used before.
It can express displacement. This means that through language, you can express
things that happened in the past, in geographically distant places, and what might
happen in the future. This is possible due to the abstract and symbolic character
of language.
Self and Other in the Structure of
Language
Universe of young infants seen as a continuum.
Distinguishing self and other in the ‘mirror’ phase: involves a recognition that
the infant and its caregivers are separate.
Recognition of the self as separate from others forms a basic dyad of
language.
Self=Subject of Action, Other=Object of Action
Language and naming breaks up the world into separate objects.
Binary Oppositions: Bringing Order out of Chaos. The fact that language is
based on binary distinctions means that gender becomes an important
metaphor for social differences. Other important binary distinctions are:
nature/culture, night/day, up/down; inside/outside.
Key Symbols: Often the human body is used as a symbol to express
differences between Self and Others, Self and the Outside World. Parts of the
body that leave us are often treated with ‘taboos’: e.g. urine, blood, feces,
hair, fingernails, sweat, mucous. They bridge the boundary between
self/other and hence have the potential to ‘break’ up the ‘natural’ order of
things.