Language and culture
Context of situation, context of culture
Anthropology in the 20th century began to study how culture moulded language or how language
was rooted in culture.
The terms context of situation and context of culture were coined by Bronislaw Malinowski:
language can only be fully understood when these two aspects are understood implicitly or
explicitly by the interlocutors.
In trying to 'translate' the language used by the Trobriand Islanders, Malinowski felt he add to
add a commentary making explicit what was implicit to them, including traditions and beliefs.
Malinowski (1949: 207): "Language has a setting… language does not exist apart from culture."
If you think of language in terms of meaning then the context of situation is important because
the meaning is the response you get, which depends on what surrounds the speech event but also
on the experience of the interlocutors.
One way of looking at meaning is to say that it is culture bound. Another, from semiotics, is that
the meaning of a sign is arbitrarily assigned according to context.
Malinowski's ideas were developed in Britain by Firth and later by Halliday.
Firth introduced the notion of sociological linguistics as early as 1935: its goal was to describe
and classify “typical contexts of situation within the context of culture ...[and]... types of
linguistic function in such contexts of situation” (Firth 1935, quoted in Halliday 1973: 27).
The framework later developed by Firth included the participants in the situation, their action
(both verbal and non-verbal), the effects of the verbal action, and other relevant features.
Firth's (1957) key contribution was to assert that all linguistics is the study of meaning and that
meaning cannot be divorced from the social context or context of situation.
Halliday, like Malinowski, looks at language as behaviour potential, an open-ended set of
possibilities: “The context of culture is the environment for the total set of these options, while
the context of situation is the environment of any particular selection that is made from within
them” (Halliday 1973: 49).
The translator, as a mediator between cultures, has to select, from among all the potential
meanings available, the one that is appropriate to the actual situation he or she is dealing
with at that particular juncture.
The focus of Halliday's approach is on what people actually say: language is a network of options
that are assigned functions when the language is used in a context and the main evaluative
criterion is not grammaticality but markedness
Markedness: the more obligatory an element is, the weaker is its meaning, while the more
unexpected a choice, the more marked it is and the more meaning it carries. However, the
more marked a choice is, the greater is the need for it to be contextually motivated in
some way.
Of course, all languages can convey anything in one way or another – some require more words
than others and may have to resort to paraphrase.
Jakobson (1959): "Languages differ in what they must convey and not in what they can convey."
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
"That the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of that language (the language
I understand) means the limits of my world." (Wittgenstein 1921)
Strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: that language determines what we think. Largely
rejected today – language and thought are not the same thing.
Weak version: that language influences thought, it is one factor that influences how we
understand reality, but it does not determine it.
Halliday (1992: 65): "grammar creates the potential within which we act and enact our being.
This potential is at once both enabling and constraining: that is, grammar makes meaning
possible and also sets limits on what can be meant."
Our perceptions are always mediated by our assumptions and beliefs, and by the language we
speak.
Colours: the spectrum divided differently by different languages. Several language have
no separate words for ‘blue’ and ‘green’, some don’t distinguish between green and
yellow. All languages seem to have black, white, red, but green/blue/brown/yellow varies.
e.g. Sioux Indians same word for green and blue.
e.g. Nias, Sumatra: black, white, red, yellow, while green/blue/violet all called ‘black’
Languages have different notions of relationships, e.g. brother, cousin, uncle, aunt etc.
Guugu Yimithirr (Australia) no words for left and right, but everything related to points of
the compass (N, S, E, W).
Gender in language:
Look at the two translations of this poem by Heinrich Heine (Jewish German poet, 1797 1856):
Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
Im Norden auf kahler Höh.
Ihn schläfert; mit weißer Decke
Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.
Er träumt von einer Palme,
Die, fern im Morgenland,
Einsam und schweigend trauert
Auf brennender Felsenwand.
A pine tree standeth lonely
In the North on an upland bare;
It standeth whitely shrouded
With snow, and sleepeth there.
It dreameth of a Palm tree
Which far in the East alone,
In the mournful silence standeth
On its ridge of burning stone.
Trans. James Thomson
There stands a lonely pine-tree
In the north, on a barren height;
He sleeps while the ice and snow flakes
Swathe him in folds of white.
He dreameth of a palm-tree
Far in the sunrise-land,
Lonely and silent longing
On her burning bank of sand.
Trans. Emma Lazarus
From Mark Twain’s essay The Awful German Language (1880):
Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in distribution; so the gender of
each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to
have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a
turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous
disrespect for the girl. (“Where is the turnip?” “She has gone to the kitchen.” “Where is
the accomplished and beautiful maiden?” “It has gone to the opera.”)
“It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, how he rattles; and see the
Snow, how he drifts along, and oh the Mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is
stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its Basket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by
the Scales as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale has even got into its
Eye. And it cannot get her out. It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes
out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm.”
Number: how can ‘door’ be plural and ‘potatoes’ singular? How can a place be plural?
Lexical maps seem to be culturally specific.
e.g. research among Mexican and US college students: what do 'Estados Unidos' and 'United
States' mean:
'Estados Unidos' – money, power, exploitation, wealth, development, progress
'United States' – love, patriotism, government, politics, freedom, justice, union
Political correctness
Aim: to make language less wounding or demeaning to those whose sex, race, physical condition
or circumstances leave them vulnerable.
Proponents of PC believe that language perpetuates prejudice.
Idea that language should not insult or demean widely accepted in English-speaking countries.
e.g. early Microsoft thesaurus contained 'savage' and 'man-eater' as synonyms of 'Indian' –
amended after complaints
e.g. Open University writing guide covers areas such as:
age
avoid: old fogey, old codger, old dear, old folk, the elderly, dirty old man, mutton
dressed as lamb
cultural diversity
avoid: Blacks, non-white, coloured, Red Indian, Eskimo
use: Afro-American, Black British, Native American, Inuit
disability
avoid: polio victim, the disabled, mental handicap
use: X has polio, disabled people, people with learning difficulties
gender
avoid: 'he' as a general term, generic 'man', modifiers such as 'woman doctor'
use: s/he, he or she, they, people/humanity, doctor
PC seen by some as limiting intellectual and artistic freedom, or as censorship
Enid Blyton's Noddy books from 1949 were changed in the 1980s for BBC TV series.
Female character Dinah Doll introduced. Big Ears becomes White Beard. Golliwogs replaced by
goblins.
The PC debate different in different cultures. Which countries have legislation on sexism in
advertising? USA, Canada, UK, Scandinavia, Netherlands, India.
Categorisation
We seem to organise what we perceive into categories.
But not the same as cultural labelling.
Example is the common misconception that the Inuit have more words for snow. What they do
have is more technical expressions connected with snow (just as skiers or mountaineers do).
Lexical and conceptual gaps
If a concept is lacking in a language we can borrow, do without or invent its own label.
L'Académie francaise has the task of coming up with French terms. Law in 1977 made the use of
loan words in official texts illegal.
What is the situation in Slovene?
Borrowing is often used by bilinguals when there seems to be a gap in the target language
culture:
He's very simpatico.
Bon appétit!
We can pay him through študentski servis.
English has borrowed foreign terms when conceptual equivalents are lacking:
French: aide memoire, agent provocateur, avant garde, bon vivant, cachet, carte blanche,
cordon bleu, crème de la crème, cul-de-sac, déjà vu, double entendre, éminence grise, en
route, en suite, fait accompli, femme fatale, haute cuisine, joie de vivre, sang-froid, savoir
faire, sommelier; see http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/french-phrases.html
German: Angst, Doppleganger, Schadenfreude, Umwelt, Weltanschauung, Wunderkind,
Zeitgeist
Italian: al dente, (al) fresco, cupola, graffiti, Mafioso, paparazzi, prima donna
More common in English is inventing new words, especially through compounding.
Examples from American English (Br Eng in brackets):
eggplant (aubergine), doghouse (kennel), sidewalk (pavement), boardwalk, bullfrog,
catfish, bluejay, bobcat, rattlesnake, timberland, underbrush
Both Sapir and Whorf later became interested in grammar as a self-contained symbolic system
that reflects cultural priorities.
Difficulty of translating product names and advertising slogans between languages: e.g. the brief
dynamic feel of Nike's Just Do It! not really achievable in many languages. The slogan reflects
the Can do US culture also seen in Obama's slogan Yes we can! Japanese attempts led to slogans
with a different kind of message, e.g. Hesitation makes waste (back-translation).