Language and Culture

Language and culture - these seemingly different conceptions are closely interrelated to each other. Language is the mirror of culture, as it reflects not only real world around us, not only real life conditions, events, and experiences, but also a public conscience and self-conscience of the nation, mentality, national character, way of life, customs and traditions, habits, moral, system of values, vision, world outlook, and world perception. Richard M. Swiderski examines the interrelation between language and culture by the example of Navaho language. According to the researcher's "Language and Culture", for a person learning to speak another language, may well be learning to think differently. From the viewpoint of the English speaker, who tries to learn Navaho language, it may seem that learning the language of completely different culture requires "mastering an entire new philosophy of the world which then must govern the most fundamental choices of word affixes and particles" (Swiderski, 1993). Modeling Navaho in English makes impossible to learn Navaho as a language, as Navaho language is the reflection of Navaho culture.

The researcher considers that although "linking language knowledge prematurely with language learning" remains the major approach for many teachers and learners, it is impossible to learn the language with learning no culture (Swiderski, 1993). The world of an English speaker significantly differs from the world of Navaho speaker, as Navaho common values and concepts are not always integral to English expressions. The language, therefore, is the index of culture. For example, an English speaker can learn a lot about Navaho culture by studying Navaho language, or, can learn about Navaho language by studying Navaho culture (Swiderski, 1993). The language is "a way of knowing about itself it is also a way of knowing about culture" (Swiderski, 1993).

In such a way, language is a treasury, a store of culture. Language preserves cultural values - both in its vocabulary, grammar, idiomatic expressions, proverbs, sayings, folklore, scientific literature and science fiction, as well as in its verbal and written forms. The language is linked with culture as it serves as culture medium (France, 1994). Language expresses culture, and is used to transfer cultural values from generations to generations. When children learn native language, they assimilate cultural experience of their past.

Language is the tool, the instrument of culture. It forms the personality of the individual; it is conductive to the development of the language speaker, as it educates a person through the mentality, through its vision, cultural values, relationships, and other important things. Evidently, the language cannot exist beyond the culture that can be characterized as socially inherited totality of practical skills and ideas characterizing our life patterns and mode of existence (Moerman, 1988). Language as one of the types of human activity is a component part of culture. Language is an important tool that allows learning one's culture in the most effective way. The interconnection of cultural models is embodied in language of the given culture. We can agree with the author that the attempt to understand, to perceive and examine culture with examining no language of that culture is amateurishness and dilettantism.

Language and culture are interdependent, as language is impossible without culture. Language, unlike any other components of culture is very sensitive to cultural changes. At the same time, vocabulary, in contrast to grammar, is more dependent on such changes. For example, loan-words, composition, word formation, modification of direct sense of the word -an be examined as the methods used by language to adopt to new conceptions, new subjects, new ideas and events.

In such a way, it is possible to make a conclusion that language and culture are interrelated and interdependent conceptions, as the language is a component part of culture. In case we examine the language from the viewpoint of its structure, functioning and the methods of language learning (both as native and a second language), we find out that social and cultural layer, or the component of culture, is a component of language or the background of its real existence (Wierzbicka, 1992). At the same time, the component of culture is not merely certain cultural information informed by the language. Inversely, it is the integral feature of the language innate to all its concepts, levels, and layers. Language, therefore, is a powerful public instrument responsible for formation of ethnos. It is the language that creates nation through storage and transfer of cultural values, traditions, public self-conscience, and other important things.

Correlation between language and culture is quite a complex and multifaceted conception. However, it is obvious that as far as each language speaker is simultaneously the bearer of culture, the units of language function as the units of culture. Culture operates and develops in its 'language' shell. Language serves culture, but hardly can define it. On contrary, language is the instrument, with the help of which the person is able to get information about culture. The language is not simply gives names to the major conceptions in culture, but rather expresses culture, forms it, as if ingrows in culture, and, at the same time, develops itself. Culture, in its turn, forms a complex and multifaceted language system that facilitates accumulation of human experience and makes possible the passing of this experience from generation to the generation.

References

France, A. W. (1994). Composition as a Cultural Practice. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.

Moerman, M. (1988). Talking Culture: Ethnography and Conversation Analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Swiderski, R. M. (1993). Teaching Language, Learning Culture. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.

Wierzbicka, A. (1992). Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific Configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.