1. The most essential feature to differentiate human language from the
means or modes of animal communication is the productivity and
creativity of language.
Language in Cultural Perspective
2. Productivity
- the limitless ability to use language, to say new
things, and the degree to which speakers use a
particular grammatical process for the
formation of novel structures (open class)
Example: spammed, e-mailed, fathered,
nursed,
- recursive
3. There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – Perhaps she’ll
die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – Perhaps she’ll
die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;
How absurd to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – Perhaps she’ll
die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a cat;
Fancy that! She swallowed a cat!
4. Creativity
- the aspect of language that enables a user to
use the language in new ways or enables
him to create new linguistic forms.
- Example: Colorless green ideas sleep
furiously.
- Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre
and gimble in the wabe.
5. Design Features of Language
(Charles Hockett)
1. Vocal-auditory channel
2. Broadcast transmission and directional reception
3. Rapid fading
4. Interchangeability
5. Total Feedback
6. Specialization
7. Semanticity
8. Arbitrariness
9. Discreteness
10. Displacement
11. Productivity
12. Traditional Transmission
6. Culture
- constructed in the patterned ways to think, feel and
react; it is mainly acquired and transmitted through
symbols; it constitutes the distinctive achievements of
groups of people; and it includes their embodiments in
artifacts; and also its essential core consists of
traditional ideas and their cultural values (Kluckhohn,
1951).
7. Three Parts of Human Cultures
• Perspectives
• Practices
• Products
8. Cultural Perspectives
- the beliefs, ideas, meanings, values, and attitudes that
control and influence the society’s cultural practices and
products. They represent the world’s cultural view. They
also refer to what is thought, felt, and valued by
the members of a given culture.
9. Cultural practices
- patterns of social interactions, and behaviors. Cultural
practices will involve the use of cultural products. The
cultural practices will represent the knowledge of “what is
done, when it is done, and where it is done” and how
people conduct an interaction within a given culture.
10. Cultural products
-the human creations of a certain culture.
- They reflect cultural perspectives.
- There are two types of cultural products:
(1) tangible cultural products covering: literature,
painting, cathedral, and a pair of chopsticks; whereas
(2) intangible cultural products include: dance, oral tales,
sacred ceremonies, tales, educational systems, and law.
11. Two types of culture:
Formal culture
covers humans’ manifestation and contribution, namely: arts, music,
literary work, architecture, technology, and politics.
Deep culture
refers to humans’ behavioral patterns or living styles. It covers eating time
and food, humans’ attitudes and behaviors towards friends, colleagues,
and family members, ways to communicate (e.g. to accept or to ignore
the others’ ideas).
12. Culture is said to be something learned in a
human community, then transmitted, and
inherited by one to the next generation, via
human activities, frequently in the direct
interaction and all of those are conducted using a
language as a means of communication (Duranti,
1997).
13. • Social structure (an aspect of culture) may both influence and
determine linguistic structure (an aspect of language).
• Culture covers knowledge, belief, arts, morality, laws, customs, habits,
language, technology, and the other competence-performance
acquired or learned by human beings as members of a given society,
inherited from one to the next generation through human actions or
activities and interpersonal communication by using a language as a
medium.
14. Relationship between
Language and Culture
• (1) Language is part of the culture.
• (2) Language reflects culture.
• (3) Cultural features vary not only synchronically from the speech
community to the speech community but they also change
diachronically within the same speech community, and this change
also reflects the change of language, which will cope with the change
in society actively.
