The Relationship between Culture and Language
Language is employed as a medium to convey information at the same time maintains culture ties.
As a basic vehicle of communication, language plays an important part in daily life, becasue people depend on language to express their needs, convey ideas and thoughts. We need language to initiate an intimate conversation with friends, or give an inspiring speech in front of many people. Also, language is supplied in bullet, magazines and textbooks etc to convey information.
Language and culture are definitely interrelated with each other. The relationship between language and culture is deeply rooted. The meaning of a language represents the backward special culture. Learning a language not only involves alphabet, grammar rules and arrangement of words but also means get contact with a spirit or behavior of a society behind that culture. For example, I’ve met many comman sayings when I learned the English, such as “Lucky Dog” which means a person is very lucky. In English, dogs are associated with many good things, because they love dogs for their loyalty and consider them as members of the family. However, dogs’ reputation is not so good since ancient China. “Looking people with dog eyes” means acting like a snob in Chinese. If we have some glimpse of these cultural background, we won’t feel surpurised about these differences exist in various culture.
Second, culture influences language. There are many inverted sentences in English. People who speak English are used to say results first and the reason always come in second place, which often confuses the language learning beginners. In contrast, Chinese people like to put a sentence in a normal order. The difference in arranging words reflects the cultural discrepency. To be more specific, western people are more outgoing that they tend to express ideas and feelings in a more straightforward way, while Chinese people always choose a more implicit way to convey their thoughts. It is the diversity in culture that contributes to the languages’ formation.
Besides, language will change as the culture develops. In ancient times when monoculture dominated, the lack of diversity in language was a universal phenomenon. For insance, we outgrow the Anglo-Saxon and find them unwanted or unnecessary as time pass by. Instead, the modern language and cyber language take the place of the Anglo-Saxon as the development of the internet that helps to give birth to a new special culture. Like the word “ASAP” represents as soon as possible. “IC” means “I see”. This new language renders the expression more vivid.
In a nutshell, we may safely draw the conclusion that the word men use not only express but shape their ideas. Language is an instrument that has much do with culture and interrelate with each other.
