Chapter 9

Language and Culture

What is culture?

In a broad sense, culture means the total way of life of  people, including the patterns of belief, customs, objects, institutions, techniques, and language that tharacterizes the life of the human community.

In a narrow sense, culture amy refer to local or specifice practice, beliefs or customs, which can be mostly found in folk culture, enterprise culture or food culture, etc.

There are generally two types of culture:

material and spirits culture

The relationship between language and culture

The same word may stir up different associations in eople under different cultural background, e.g. the word"dog".

Language expresses cultural reality, reflects the people's attitudes, beliefs, world outlooks, etc.

The culture both emancipates and constrains people socially, historically and metaphorically.

Culture also affects its people's imagination or common dreams which are mediated through the language and reflected in their life.

On the one hand, language as an integral part of haman being, permeates in his thinking and human being, permeates in his thinking and way of viewing the world, language both expresses and embodies cultural reality; on the other, language, as a product of culture, helps perpetuate the culture, and the changes in language uses reflected culture changes in return.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis（假说）

Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, proclaimed that the structure of the language people habitually use influences the ways they think and behave, i.e. different languages offer people different ways of expressing the world around, they think and speak differently, this is also known as linguistic relativity（语言相对性）.

Sapir and Whorf believe that language filters people's perception and the way they categorize experiences. This interdependence of language and thought is now 

Strong version （强硬派）&  weak version （微弱派）

Strng version believes that the language patterns determine people;s thinking and behavior;

Weak version holds that the former influence the latter.

The study of the linguistic relativity or WEH has shed two important insighta:

there is nowadys a recognition that language, as code, relects  cultural preoccupations and constrains the way people think.

Linguistic evidence of cultural differences

Denotative meaning（字面意思） ----a meaning that can be  found in a  dictionary.

Connotative  meaning (内涵意思）--- a meaning or edea suggested by a word or thing in addition to the formal meaning or nature of the owrd or thing.

Iconic meaning (图标意思）---the image or icon invoked in mind by a word.

Some cultural differences in language use

Greetings and terms of address