Language and culture have a close relationship. Language allows culture to be transmitted between generations and helps establish communities through shared identities. While culture can influence the structure and vocabulary of a language, language also shapes thought and perceptions of reality according to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Different languages categorize concepts like time, kinship, colors and animals in distinct ways according to their cultures. The document provides examples of how vocabulary and meanings of words vary between cultures and languages.

1. TOPIC
Culture and Language and its Relationship

2. WHAT IS CULTURE?
• Culture is defined as the set of learned behaviors,
beliefs, attitude, values, and ideas that are
characteristics of a particular society or population

3. WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
• • Language is a system of symbols with standard
meaning.
• • Form or style of verbal expression.
• • Language allows a person communicating with others
in meeting their needs.

4. FUNCTIONS OF A LANGUAGE
• • Language has three main functions:
• 1. From a cultural perspective, it is the primary means of
preserving culture and is the medium of transmitting
culture to new generations.
• 2. It helps establish and preserve community by “linking
individuals into communities of shared identity.”
• 3. At the societal level, it is Important to all aspects of
human interaction because it “often relates to political
goals”.

5. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE
AND CULTURE:
• • Language is an integral part of culture and human culture
cannot exist without it. Through the use of language, wide
vistas of reality have been opened. What we have
experienced, as well as our norms, values and ideas exist
because we have learned to identify or experience these
things through language.
• • If culture can affect the structure and content of its language,
then it follows that linguistic diversity derived in part from
cultural diversity.
• • The linguistic relativity hypothesis asserts that language
determines thought and therefore culture. In reality language
and culture influence each other. (Edward Sapir)

6. CONTI…
• • The most significant invention made by culture.
• • Language is used to learn Culture.
• • Human culture cannot exist without language

7. CULTURE EFFECT LANGUAGES IN
DIFFERENT WAYS
• • The relationship between language and culture is as
old as mankind.
• • Physical environment
• • Social environment
• • Kinship relations • Media culture
• • Change of vocabulary
• • Change in pronunciation
• • Same words having different meaning in different
cultures

8. CHANGE IN VOCABULARY
• • 1: What it means in the U.S.:
The floor at ground level.
• What it means in the U.K.:
The floor above the ground level floor.
• Potentially confusing sentence: “That super-important meeting is
taking place on the first floor — don’t be late!
• 2: What it means in the U.S.: A storage container. What it means in
the U.K.: A trash can.
• Potentially confusing sentence: “I put all my grandmother’s
valuables in a bin.”
• • 3: In British the word used anti clock wise while in U.S it is called
counter clock wise.

9. EFFECT OF CULTURE ON LANGUAGE
• • As every culture is different so need different languages
to speak.
• • Physical environment - reflected in language, normally
in the lexicon i.e Eskimo (people lives in northern
Canada and green land). There are so many words
used to refer snow. ( many of which describes the
varying stages of the melting process)

10. KINSHIP
• • In English we use the word uncle for this other type of
individual. We have lexicalized the distinction between the two
concepts. Yet we use this same world for the female parent
brother. That distinction is not lexicalized in English but is in
other language it would see that distinction in age among
uncles is important in Mopan Mayan culture.
• Other distinction among relatives can also be lexicalized in
the world language. For example, in Norwegian the distinction
between male parent mother (farmor) and female parent
mother (mormor) is lexicalized, but in English word
grandmother generally used for both

11. • Link to the detailed hand-out on addressing system and
kinship

12. TIME
• • The differing of cultural attitudes towards time are well
articulated by their vocabularies.
• • Kinship relations have also effect on language.
• • There are some special words which belongs to few
languages or a single language. • For example: it is in
punjabi that they have the word "PARSON" Meaning
either the day after tomorrow or the day before
yesterday.

13. Sapir Whorf hypothesis

14. INTRODUCTION
• The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis revolves around the idea
that language has power and can control how you see
the world. Language is a guide to your reality, structuring
your thoughts. It provides the framework through which
you make sense of the world.

15. WHO WAS SAPIR?
• EDWARD SAPIR He was an American anthropologist-linguist, who is
considered one of the most important figures in the early development
of the discipline of linguistics. He was a student of Boas and he worked
upon his teacher’s theories, but he also developed his own theories.
• SAPIR’S QUOTES: • “Humans are at the “mercy "of the language they
speak”
• • “No two languages are exactly the same in the way they provide
speakers with unconscious categories”.
• • “Language is a guide to social reality.”

16. WHO WAS WHORF ?
• BENJAMIN LEE WHORF Whorf was born in the United
States. He was a student of Edward Sapir and he
developed the insight of his two predecessors: Boas and
Sapir

17. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis can be divided into two basic
components
• a)Linguistic determinism:
Language may determine our thinking patterns, the way we view
and think about the world. Linguistic Determinism is also called
«strong determinism
b)Linguistic relativity:
the less similar the languages more diverse their
conceptualization of the world; different languages view the
world differently.

18. • One well-known example Whorf used to support his theory
was the number of words the Eskimo Language has for ‘snow
for example ‘apun’ snow on the ground ‘qanikca’ hard snow
on the qround ‘ etc.
• Arabic has many words for different kinds of camels, in
Chinese there is only one term luotuo and in English there is
camel

19. • Linguistic relativity is valid and has influence on thought and
perception.
• Language does exert great influence on patterns of thinking
and therefore on culture

20. TO UNDERSTAND THE S-W HYPOTHESIS, IT HELPS
TO BE AWARE THAT THERE ARE TWO OPPOSING
IDEAS ABOUT LANGUAGE AND CULTURE. THE S-W
HYPOTHESIS IS IN LINE WITH THE SECOND IDEA
LISTED HERE:
1. Language mirrors reality: People have thoughts
first, then put them into words. Words record
what is already there. All humans think the
same way, but we use different words to label
what we sense.

21. TO UNDERSTAND THE S-W HYPOTHESIS, IT HELPS
TO BE AWARE THAT THERE ARE TWO OPPOSING
IDEAS ABOUT LANGUAGE AND CULTURE. THE S-W
HYPOTHESIS IS IN LINE WITH THE SECOND IDEA
LISTED HERE:
This is an example of the mold theory: that
language is a mold in terms of which thought
categories are cast.
2. Language dictates how we think. The
vocabulary and grammar (structure) of a
language determines the way we view the
world (“worlds shaped by words”).
*This IS the S-W Hypothesis

22. •Example 1: Gasoline barrels
•Example 2: Inuit words for snow &
Apache place-names (Basso reading)
•Example 3: Hopi conceptions of time
•Example 4: Color words
•Example 5: Piraha lack of recursion and
lack of number words

23. • Those who find this hypothesis attractive argue that the language a person speaks affects that
person’s relationship to the external world in one or more ways. If language A has a word for
a particular concept, then that word makes it easier for speakers of language A to refer to that
concept than speakers of language B who lack such a word and are forced to use a
circumlocution. Moreover, it is actually easier for speakers of language A to perceive
instances of the concept. If a language requires certain distinctions to be made because of its
grammatical system, then the speakers of that language become conscious of the kinds of
distinctions that must be referred to: for example, gender, time, number, and animacy. These
kinds of distinctions may also have an effect on how speakers learn to deal with the world,
i.e., they can have consequences for both cognitive and cultural development. Data such as
the following are sometimes cited in support of such claims. The Garo of Assam, India, have
dozens of words for different types of baskets, rice, and ants. These are important items in
their culture. However, they have no single-word equivalent to the English word ant. Ants are
just too important to them to be referred to so casually. Both people and bulls have legs in
English, but Spanish requires people to have piernas and bulls to have patas. Both people and
horses eat in English but in German people essen and horses fressen. Bedouin Arabic has
many words for different kinds of camels, just as the Trobriand Islanders of the Pacific have
many words for different kinds of yams. The Navaho of the Southwest United States, the
Shona of Zimbabwe, and the Hanunóo of the Philippines divide the color spectrum differently
from each other in the distinctions they make, and English speakers divide it differently again.
English has a general cover term animal for various kinds of creatures, but it lacks a term to
cover both fruit and nuts; however, Chinese does have such a cover term. French conscience
is both English conscience and consciousness. Both German and French have two pronouns
corresponding to you, a singular and a plural.
• (page ,225)

25. CRITIC’S VIEW
• Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker have criticized him for not
being sufficiently clear in his formulation of how he meant
languages influences thought, and for not providing actual
proof of his assumptions.
• One of Whorf's central arguments on language determining
thought was that the Hopi terminology for time gave the Hopi
a different and unique understanding of how time worked,
distinct from the typical Western conception of time. Pinker
(1994) argues that Whorf had never actually met anyone from
the Hopi tribe and that, the Hopi conception of time was not so
different from the traditional Western understanding of it.

26. LINKS TO ONLINE VIDEOS THAT MAY
HELP YOU
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8SCy6lhK6U
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA_omU1yhPk

27. Questions“?