1. ECUADORIAN AND ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES LANGUAGES
AND CULTURE
Eduardo Heredia, M. Ed.
2020
2. Culture, language & thought
Kramsch (1998) Language & culture are bound together in three ways:
1. Language expresses cultural reality
2. Language embodies cultural reality
3. Language symbolizes cultural reality
Moran (2001) Language & culture are two sides of the same coin, each
mirroring the other.
3. What is culture?
Culture is the learned set of traditions and lifestyles, socially
acquired, members of a society, including its modes and
patterned repetitive thinking, feeling and acting, that is, their
behavior.
culture is not patiently waiting to be discovered, but to be
inferred from the words and actions of the group being studied,
to be later literally assigned to that group by anthropologist.
culture is a explicit statement about how they members of a
particular social group on how they should act
4. What is language?
the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the
use of words in a structured and conventional way.
a system of communication used by a particular country or community.
a system of communication consisting of sounds, words, and grammar, or the
system of communication used by people in a particular country or type of work:
the system of communication in speech and writing that is used by people of a
particular country or area
5. Concept of Sociolinguistic
• Study the relationship between language and society, and how
language is used in multilingual speech communities.
• Social factors and social dimensions:
• A social distance (solidarity): High or Low
• A status scale: relationships
• A formality scale: setting or type of interaction
Janet Holmes, 1992.
6. Identify different speech communities
• Each person belongs to different social groups formed by family ties,
work, or by common interests or hobbies.
• Each community develops a certain way of speaking that its member use
to identify with that community.
• The students should distinguish between these communities so that they
can use the appropriate language for each community.
14. Theonomous culture. Theos meaning God and nomos meaning law. The idea in a
theonomous culture is that God’s law is so self-evident within the human heart that
there are some imperatives within you that find a consensus in society.
Heteronomous culture can be found in the Middle East. Heteros meaning different
and nomos meaning law, a different law, where there are two distinct sets in
operation. There is the controlling few and the masses down here. In secular
terminology Marxism is a heteronomous culture where the handful at the top dictate
everything for the masses below.
Autonomous culture can be found in the Western world; autos meaning self, nomos
meaning law, you’re a self-law. You’re a law unto yourself. You follow your individual
autonomy.
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23. Greek Politics Greek Politics
• The fundamental locus of Greek politics was the
polis (city-state)
• In the polis “civic space” lay at the center of the
community
• All citizens were expected to engage in politics
24. On Democracy
• Democracy is often associated with Ancient Greece (where it
originated)
• However, democracy was only confined to a few poleis, most notably
Athens
• Greek democracies did not function as democracies today do
25. What is a State?
• States come about because individuals have needs they
cannot satisfy alone
•Individuals with different talents have complementary
needs
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27. Analysis
• Plato’s ideas in the Republic are clearly undemocratic on the whole
–He highlights democracy’s weakness as a populist machine
• His ideas are rooted in his view of man as possessing specific talents
• Plato emphasizes unity as the supreme value of the state –concept of
organic unity
• He recognizes that the state exists to ensure the happiness of everyone,
not just a particular class
• In Plato’s view, the basis of political rule is knowledge –In this regard, the
“best” should rule
• He also points out that for rulers to be effective, they must put the public
interest before private concerns
31. • How to combat the tyranny of power?
• How to find a social balance between the passions of the
majority and the virtues of the minority?
• How to ensure freedom as the absence of domination?
• How to design a system that promotes structural equality,
not material equality?
32. Leader controlled by a congress divided into 2
chambers; senate and the commons:
1.Philosophers
2.Working class
1 and 2 dialogue to establish limits to the leader
