a presentation on the relationship between language, thought, and culture and applied linguistics

1. Language, Thought, and Culture and Applied
Linguistics

2. Introduction
 Culture affects language
 Language affects thought
 Cognition constrains
language
 Applied linguistics must delve
into them

3. Conte
nts
The Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis
Language, Thought and Applied
Linguistics
3. Culture and Applied Linguistics
Culture and Applied
Linguistics
Research Problems in Applied
Linguistics

4. The term “language” has been used to denote a broad
range of meanings in the language and thought debate.
Any feature of language, such as phonetic, lexical, and
grammatical characteristics, can be a topic of
investigation pertaining to the relation between language
and thought.
Researchers often use the term “thought” to refer to
conceptual representation, but they also use the term
to mean a wide range of functions, such as
perception, reasoning, and learning.
Language cannot be separated from
thought.

5. 01
02
03
04
05
Language is the core of
Applied linguistics.
“language” could
be treated as a
collection of
narratives that
reflect
culture-specific
value systems and
epistemologies,
and it is often
Culture, is
defined as
membership in a
discourse
community

6. Holliday classifies culture into:
A
B
A small
“c”
A big
‘C’
how people live
their lives
collage of the highest
achievements in
artistic and social

7. This interrelation between culture and
language
communitie
s and
institutions
which
house and
frame
language
learning
and
language
highly
dependent
of each
other
invariably
impact,
change and
construct
one
another.
Whenever
there is a
language,
there
exists a
certain
culture
with it.
Language
teaching
and
learning
involve
two
languages
with
differing
cultural

8. To Risager there are four ways of
teaching culture:
comparison of
the target and
the learners’
own culture
every given
culture
consists of
some sub-
cultures.
foreign
language=
International;
no specific
culture to the
emphasizes
the target
culture ; does
not care about
source

9. the expectation that
the findings of
researchers will lead to
immediate
prescriptions for the
practice. Businessmen
expect from applied
linguists prescriptions
on how to behave when
negotiating deals with
Description vs
prescription
01
the role of culture in
language tests. While
language tests are
supposed to predict
future verbal behavior,
their cultural content
predict cultural
assimilation, not
linguistic ability.
language tests used to
02
Applied linguistic research
problems in the study of
language and culture
Description vs prediction

10. Linguistic vs
educational
Why should we
specifically teach
understanding and
tolerance of other
cultures when
communicative
language teaching
already entails
expressing,
interpreting and
negotiating
meanings that might
be very different
from one culture to
the other?
Structuralist vs post-
structuralist
Post-structuralist
thinkers see culture as
constructed in and
through discourse and
emerging
locally from verbal
interactions in
historically contingent
contexts. Rather than
focus on the multiple,
changing and even
conflictual nature of
structures in the social
world.

11. THANK YOU