language and culture语言与文化

英语语言学论文Language and culture

Class：English class 2

Name：

Number：20

Language and Culture

Abstract: Language is the carrier of culture, the main expressional form of culture, which develops along with nation, country and society's development. Language is a part of a nation’s culture. The different nationality has different culture, history, manners，customs and so on, but various nationalities' culture and the social custom all display in this nationality's language. This article, by analyzing dialect,idioms and Chinglish, mainly reveals the relationship between language and culture is interdependent and interactive. Culture has a restricted effect on language and others outer factor according to the form and structure of language. As a word, Language is a mirror, in front of which Culture is reflected. There are many ways in which the phenomena of language and culture are intimately nguages are all influenced by cultural characteristics, and have a certain influence to the respective language and nationality's culture.

Key Words: language；culture; dialect; idiom; Chinglish；

teaching language.

Language and culture

As we all know, language is a kind of tool which is used for communication. So far, a lot of linguists have made researches on all aspects of language and come out a grate deal of theory books which provide some relevant reference for us, especially about the relationship between language and culture.

In the past years, I just only took all the concentration on the language and neglected culture to a certain extent. After reading some relevant theory books, I have a much more systematic understanding. Now let us discuss culture at first.

What is culture? It can be approached from different perspectives and consequently defined in quite different ways. If we look for the word in dictionary, we will know that culture refers to the customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular country or group. As a matter of fact, there is no satisfactory definition that enjoys a general acceptance by scholars of all sciences. However we still can give it a general notion. In a broad way, culture means the total way of life of a person, including the patter of belief, customs, objects, institutions, techniques, and language that characterizes the life of human community. In a narrow sense, culture may refer to local or specific practice, beliefs or customs, which can be mostly found in folk culture, enterprise culture or food culture and so on. Culture is an inclusive complicated system, and can be broadly divided into material culture and spiritual culture. Material culture refers to all the concrete and substantial cultural aspects of human society. Spiritual culture, on the contrary, refers to abstract and implicit cultural aspects of human society, including ideology, patterns of thought, values, beliefs, conventions, traditions, social norms and customs, assumptions, interpersonal relationships, etc.

Through mentioned above, we can have a general understanding of culture. Then what is the relationship between language and culture on earth? As far as I know, there exists a close connection between language and culture. No one would deny the relation of language to culture. 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 dream s which are mediated through the language and reflected in their life. On the one hand, language as an integral part of 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 reflect the cultural changes in return.

Language plays an important role in all the social activities and is indispensable part of people’s activities in society. However human being’s linguistic phenomena is so mysterious that people have not known a lot yet. Since ancient times, linguists have tried to do research into the language in many ways, forming many kinds of linguistic school.

At the early start of the 20th century, people had realized that language was a basic and important component of certain culture and has intrinsic and indispensible effect. As we will refer to, although in the Long River of language science’s development, exploring the relationship between language and culture never took up any leading or dominant position. From the 1960s on, the language rooting in social and culture has long been the focus of everlasting linguists study. The anthropological approach to the study of language and culture laid a firm foundation in the history of linguistic development. Eugenc.Nida, a well-known linguist and translation theorist,