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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

By: Niasdi Basri/108026000039

Fifth semester, Student of English Letter Department

INTRODUCTION

Language is such a central part of our lives that we tend to take it for granted until we come across the wonder of a tiny child becoming able to speak, or until we turn our attention to it as an object of scholarly inquiry. Language is intimately and intricately linked to our ability to think, to be awere of our own existence and of the perspectives of others, to share information and feelings, and to investigate its own nature. Human language is a very complex phenomenon.  It is unlikely that a single theory producing a single model, will be able to describe language comprehensively and in ways that are useful for all purpose.

We believe that culture is an important aspect that we can not separate from language. They need each other. Members of a social group need the language to communicate to others and do everythings, while  language is not a language before someone use it to communicate with his friends or whoever in his life. I just want to present or write something about both language and culture according to my study in the class, and my experience in daily life. Language and cultere just like couple that always together. People sometimes not so care of both of it, while we have to realize that both of  it are really important to know and to understand. Just remember that we are as the speaker of the language, the creator of the culture, then  combine both of it into a  language that we speak every day, means that we are the medium of  the language existence.

LANGUAGE DEFINITION  

Language is:

a.         A part of culture and it’s a meant for communication;

It’s the principal means by whereby we conduct our social lives. Where it use in context of communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways

b.        Symbolizes cultural identity

As we know that there is a natural connection between the language spoken by members of social group and that group’s identity. By their accent, their vocabulary, their discourse patterns, speakers identify themselves and are identified as members of this or that speech and discourse community. From this membership, they draw personal strength and pride, as well as a sense of social importance and historical continuity from using the same language as the group they belong to (Kramsch, 1998; 65-66)

c.         Cultural interaction from they all perspectives 

Language seems like a guide that guide us to the social interaction. It  is the most sensitive indicator of the relationship between an individual and a given social group even thought there is no one to one relationship between anyone’s language and his or her cultural identity.

CULTURE DEFINITION 

Culture is an integral pattern of human behavior. It is  includes:

1.      thought;                                             

2.      Believes

3.      Languages

4.       Values

5.      Customs

6.      Face to face interaction

7.      Ritual

8.      Manner of interactive

9.      Relationship among social people

10.  Religion

Culture can be defined as membership in a discourse community that shares a common social space and history, and common imaginings. Even when they have left  that community, its members may retain, wherever they are, a common system of standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating, and acting. These standards are what  is generally called ‘culture’ (Kramsch,1998 ; 10)

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

           The realtion between language and culture is much more complex than the coordinate title language and culture work suggest. Language is, of course, an integral part of culture, defined simplistically as the totality beliefs and practices of a society. furthermore, the semantic content of a language is always related to the entities, events, states, processes, characteristics and relations within culture, and culture depends in large measure on language in order to function and perpetuate (continue) itself. t is not strange, therefore, that most of serious mistakes in translation are the result of not recognizing the intimates between language and culture (Nida, simplified by Abdul Hamid, 2010;1)

Language is the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives. When it is used in social communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways. To began with, the words people utter refer to common experience. They express facts, ideas or events that are communicable because they refer to a stock of knowledge about the world that other people share. Words also reflect their author’s attitudes and beliefs, their point of view, that are also those for others. In both cases, languages express cultural identity, language also embodies cultural reality, and symbolizes cultural reality. (Kramsch,1998;3).

Culture has three sets of interpersonal relations in which language plays a principal and crucial role:

1.       Integration; more than one culture, combination, and intercultural. The integration of a baby into a family is especially crucial because young children are amazingly sensitive to bring accepted or rejected by parents and siblings. At this stage of interpersonal communication the combination of pleasant voice quality and loving facial expression plays a particularly critical role.

2.       Acculturation; the process of internalizing culture and society. The acculturation stage of culture usually involves some type of formal education, in which children learn the skills that the race has found indispensable (absolutely essential). The Najo culture of the Southwest United States focuses on understanding performance of individuals, while the nearby “Hopi’s society” places greater value on fitting into the social group. And in the Western World this adolescent period can be especially sterssful because for many young people, the future depands so much on success in learning largerly unrelated masses of information, for example, trigonometry, ancient history, and Shelly’s Ode to the West Wind

3.      Collaboration; to produce universe. The process of acculturation also leads almost  inevitable to the stage of collaboration, in which people work together with others to provide food, clothing, shelter, and protection againts hostile persons.

The most successful cultures are precisely those in which language is used effectively by four calsses os speaker-hearers:

1.      Sensors; those hwo place limits on the behaviour of others in view of their power and aouthority

2.      Creators; those who urge and cause change

3.      Transmitters; those who pass information to others

4.      Receivers; those who primary receive information 

The position of peole within such communication roles is constantly changing in a dinamic society.

MY COMMENT

            I almostt agree with both the opinion of Kramsch and Nida. That anguage is, of course, an integral part of culture and it is the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives. When it is used in social communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways.

CULTURE STEREOTYPE

            Stereotype is conventionalized ways of talking and thinking. It usually describe the typical  members of culture. 

            e.g :

Ø  In America Psychomotor is more  important than knowledge

Ø  In Prances knowledge is one of the most important thing

Ø  Commonly, the most important thing n Asia is attitude, conduct, or way of acting.

            Stereotype is very correlate with attitude, It just like a way of thinking or behaving to work somebody or something. Usually it’s also correlate with the type of culture.

Attitude is dividing into positive and negative.

Example of negative:

e.g: Rejecting the western culture.

The causes of negative attitude:

1.      Conservatism; the follower of this ism are hate the innovation or something new, and they maintain their own believes

2.      Feeling superior to the other cultural groups

3.      Insufficient knowledge  of stereotyping. Stereotyping is different type of culture.

4.      Misinform of stereotyping, example is; some Orientals learn Islam only in some scoop and that’s bring into misunderstanding of Islamic thought.

5.      Extreme ethnocentric thinking

And here are the way to solve or to overcome the negative attitude

1.      Managing our culture

2.      To be multiculturalism

3.      Exposing the truth; inviting the people from stereotyping country to give some speech about their culture.

4.       Giving enough information about the related culture

5.      Encounter the native culture

6.      Replacing the negative mysticism with an accurate understanding of the other culture

7.      Respecting and value wing the other culture through their awareness

8.      Appreciation of the foreign culture.

            The problem lies in equating the racial, ethnic, national identity imposed on an individual by the state’s bureaucratic system, and that individual’s self-ascription. Group identity is not a natural fact, but a cultural perception.  Our perception of someone’s social identity is very much naturally determined. What we perceive about a person’s culture and language is what we have been conditioned by our own culture to see, and the stereotypical models already built around our own. Group identity is a question on focusing and diffusion of ethnic, racial, national concepts or stereotypes (Kramsch,1998; 67-68 ) 

CONCLUTION

          Language and culture are two unseparate things. All that we need is how to acquare the lannguage with the dynemic value of culture inside.

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