跨文化交际language and culture

1、language and intercultural communication,language and culture,whats language?,culture and word meaning,language and thought,language and society,outline,whats language?,language is an organized system using signs that carry intentional meaning from one person to another. p.63,when we talk about lang

2、uages, we are usually talking about organized systems rather than common knowledge. and we often follow the rules. i(s) like (v) you (o). is body language a language? -not a formal language.,human mind is unable to communicate directly with others so that we use signs to represent everything we hope

3、 to communicate: spoken signs, written signs, signs by themselves are meaningless until they represent a specific object, action or idea.,language are intentional communication systems rather than unintentional ones. without intention ,communication is not language. eg: body smells (not a language),

4、there are two factors: sender and audience. the sender is usually referred to as the person producing the message while audience usually receive the message. html (hypertext markup language ) would not be considered a language.,characteristics of language,language is symbolic recount experience/ rep

5、resent abstract idea language is rule-governed language is subjective language is dynamic and has its own life cycle 同志/ 小姐,characteristics of language,language is arbitrary. kangaroo language is conventional. please choose the correct meaning of 终身大事 a. 工作 b. 事业 c. 婚姻 d. 生死,structure of human langu

6、age,verbal intercultural communication relationship between language and culture,verbal intercultural communication happens when people from different cultural backgrounds communicate with each other by using language.,mastering all those rules of language，such as phonology（语音体系）, morphology（词态学）, s

7、yntax（句法学） and semantics（语义学）, is still not enough for effective communication, for language and culture cannot be separated. they are intertwined缠结, shaping each other.,verbal intercultural communication,language and culture,relationship between language and culture,language is flesh, and culture i

8、s blood. without culture, language would be dead; without language, culture would have no shape. communication is the swimming motion, language is the swimming skill, and culture is water. without language, communication would remain to a very limited degree (in very shallow water); without culture,

9、 there would be no communication at all.,relationship between language and culture,language is part of culture. language is the carrier and container of culture. language is influenced and shaped by culture. language also exerts its influence on culture. language and culture are closely related.,lan

10、guage and thought,our language helps mould our way of thinking and different languages may probably express our unique ways of understanding the world. two points in his theory: 1) language may determine our thinking patterns; 2) similarity between languages is relative, the greater their structural

11、 differentiation is, the more diverse their conceptualization of the world will be.,the sapir-whorf hypothesis (萨丕尔沃尔夫假说),linguistic determinism(语言决定论):语言决定思维 linguistic relativity (语言相对论)：思维相对于语言，思维模式随着语言的不同而不同。,example 1,1. if my language has only one term-brother-in-law- that is applied to my sis

12、ters husband, my husbands brother, and my husbands sisters husbands, i am led by my language to perceive all of these relatives in a similar way. vocabulary, through what it groups together under one label and what it differentiates with different labels, is one way in which language shapes our perc

13、eption of the world.,example 2,have you read the chinese classic the red chamber dream? how did lin daiyun and jia baoyu relate to grandma jia? did the old lady love both of them? did she treat them as if they were equally important to her? if differently, why? can you find the equivalents for 孙 and

14、 外孙？,印欧语言：严式语言-严式思维轨迹-构造分析-逻辑演绎-智性精神 汉语：宽式语言-宽式思维轨迹-整体领悟-类比联想-悟性精神,more about the sapir-whorf hypothesis the strong version(强式说): emphasizes the decisive role of language as the shaper of our thinking patterns the weak version (弱式说): suggest that there is a correlation between language, culture, and

15、 thought, the cross-cultural differences produced in our ways of thinking are relative, rather than categorical.,culture and word meaning,culture and word meaning,word differences are obvious in various languages. the relation between word and its meaning is arbitrary任意的. for example, we live in a h

16、ouse in english, we also live in a casa in spanish and we still live in a ban in thai. 2. corresponding chinese words cannot always explain the english words.,a. words with different associated meanings,language reflects the environment we live in, history, custom, values and so on, which are divers

17、e in different cultures. so words that refer to the same object may have different associated（联想的） meanings. the culturally-loaded words and expressions are good examples showing the cultural influence on the meanings of words.,verbal intercultural communication,english phoenix(凤凰),chinese phoenix(凤

18、凰),verbal intercultural communication,chinese dragon(龙),english dragon(龙),verbal intercultural communication,b. words without counterpart in another language,language reflects culture, and cultural diversity leads to the lack of vocabulary equivalence, concept equivalence and experience equivalence.

19、 therefore, there are a lot of words that we fail to find the counterparts in another language. for example, the english word “hippies”, “motel”, we cannot find exact counterpart in chinese.,american hippies in the 1960s,american motel,word meanings,dialect in different culture,different town has di

20、fferent dialect. if 2 persons coming from different places do not learn putonghua , they will confused by separate dialect.,dialects,regional dialects dialect diversity develops when people are separated geographically chinese dialects/ british dialects social dialects social boundaries and class di

21、fferences black english vernacular - corrupted english? genderlects standard and non-standard dialect stereotype and language attitude,he workin. he be workin he be steady workin. se of aint as a general negative indicator. i didnt go nowhere, word-final devoicing of/b/,/d/, and/ word-initially,/isd

22、,social dialects,william labov (拉波夫): a famous sociolinguist he conducted a survey in the city of new york in the middle of 1960s. the objective of his survey was to examine the relationship between speakers social status and their phonological variations. the social stratification of english in new

23、 york city (1966) 纽约英语的社会阶层性 labov explicitly delineated the patterns of stratification by class and style and successfully introduced class as an indispensable sociolinguistic variable. 调查纽约市内不同阶层的人说英语时使用元音后的r音的情况（保留还是脱落）。元音后r音的保留被认为是社会中上层人士说话的标志,genderlect,decide which of the following is possibly

24、 spoken by a female: 1. i was so naive. 2. my goodness, theres the vice-chancelor! 3. shut up. 4. you have done it, havent you? 5. wont you please get me that glass? 6. ill be damned, theres a friend of mine. 7. oh, dear, the cup is broken.,*features for woman language: 1. women use more “fancy” col

25、or terms such as mauve (pale purple) and beige (pale brown); 2. women use less powerful curse words; 3. women use more tag questions; 4. women prefer using hedge (e.g. sort of, i guess) and intensifiers (e.g. so, very, really, absolutely); 5. womens linguistic behavior is more indirect and, hence, m

26、ore polite than mens.,standard and non-standard dialect,standard and non-standard dialect: a standardized dialect : supported by institutions, like government, schools, published grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks true or false “one more prestigious, accepted language dialect” - “any language tha

27、t are different from the standard dialect is corrupted / broken variety”,language attitude in english,the brummie accent -least intelligent accent. it even scored lower than being silent, an example of the stereotype attached to the brummie accent,(social snobbery, negative media stereotyping, the p

28、oor public image of the city of birmingham, and the north/south geographical and linguistic divide),language contact,situation in which groups of speakers of different languages come into contact with one another, e.g., geography conquest trade,language contact,language contact occurs when two or mo

29、re languages or varieties interact in the same speech community language contact is the use of more than one language in the same place at the same time,language contact-outcomes,what happens when cultures with different languages come into contact? a. widespread bilingualism (usually with code-swit

30、ching) b. selection of a lingua franca: any language used to enable communication between groups of people differing with native languages. (natural or constructed languages) two possible strategies: (1) employ an already existing language a. natural (e.g., swahili, english) b. artificial (e.g., esp

31、eranto) (2) form new language (pidgin),lingua franca,often capitalized:alingua francais a language or way of communicating which is used between people who do not speak one anothers native language. eg. english is rapidly becoming thelingua francaof asia latin for european scholars in the 18th centu

32、ry; arabic for mid-asians; french for diplomacy; putonghua for the minor ethnics in china; english for all the people in the world.,pidgin,a reduced language that results from extended contact between groups of people with no language in common; it evolves when they need some means of verbal communi

33、cation, perhaps for trade, but no group learns the native language of any other group for social reasons that may include lack of trust or of close contact.,pidgin,features limited functions of use adjunct language (no one speaks only a pidgin) linguistically simplified develop their own rules and n

34、orms of usage,examples west african pidgin english chinook jargon, native american, british, & french traders in the pacific northwest, 19th c. solomon island pidgin, solomon islands,no strict word order single set of pronouns x no complex sentences x no determiners x no grammatical gender x no infl

35、ectional morphology plurals: noun + 3rd person pronoun,examples of pidgin vocabulary,talk - talk talktalk (chatter) looklook (stare) crycry - cry continually san - sun sansan - sand,examples of pidgin vocabulary,in cameroon pidgin f -to, at, in, for and from gif di buk f. dem dei f chs. du dis wan f

36、 me, a beg.,give the book to me,they are in the church,do this for me , please,superstrate: english substrate: oceanic languages what does -im mean? minoluk-impikipikibulongiu i notsee-him?pigbelongyou (“i didnt see your pig.”) *mino luk pikipiki bulong iu.,example: solomon islands pidgin,solomons p

37、idginintransitive transitive luklook luk-imsee something sutshoot sut-imshoot something kwaio (oceanic language) agalook aga-sisee something fanashoot fana-sishoot something,example, continued,pidgin,hab gat lening kum daun. (have got raining come down) “there is rain coming down” tumolo mai no kan

38、kum. (tomorrow my no can come) “tomorrow i cant come” mai no hab kachi basket (my no have catch basket) “i didnt bring a basket.”,外国主人回家，看见玻璃窗打碎了，便问仆人缘故，仆人很流利地用“洋泾浜”回答：“inside（里面）吱吱吱，outside（外面）喵喵喵，glass（玻璃）克郎当！”洋主人一听就乐了，原来是猫抓老鼠闯的祸。洋行老板让中国司机到大光明电影院买电影票，司机空手而归，指手划脚地告诉老板：“man mountain man sea，today no see，tomorrow see，tomorrow see，same see！”老板也听懂了：人山人海，今天看不成了，明天看吧，明天看，还是那个影片！,44,上海话中的洋泾浜