These slides are the relationship between language, culture and thought as Ronald Wardhaugh has discussed in "An Introduction to Sociolinguistics". The examples have been provided from the Pakistani context and culture.

1. Language, Culture and
Thought
1
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
 ZUBAIR A. BAJWA
12/11/2017
Department of English, University of Gujrat, Gujrat, Pakistan
M. Phil English Linguistics(scholar)
zbr141@gmail.com
By
Zubair.A.Bjawa

2. WHO CAME FIRST?
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3. GOALS
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 To look at various ways in which language and culture have
been said to be related
 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
 Kinship terms
 Taxonomies
 colour
 Prototypes
 Taboo and Euphemism

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LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT
Does our perception
shape the structure of
language?
Does structure of our language
shape our thinking?
Is thought possible without
language?
• Languages and cultures are superficial.
• Language and cognition run deep

5. REVIEWING LANGUAGE & CULTURE
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• whatever a person must know in order to function in a particular
society
• socially acquired
• necessary behaviors are learned and do not come from any kind of
genetic endowment
 Culture
Culture, therefore, is the ‘know-how’ that a person must possess
to get through the task of daily living
• The identity
• The vehicle to transfer culture from generation to generation
• Preserves culture
• Expresses culture
 Language

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• Language is particular way of conceptualizing the world and has
close ties to culture

7. RELATIONSHIPS
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Whorf
Linguistic Determinism
Strong version
o not determine the world-
view but is still extremely
influential in
predisposing speakers
of a language toward
adopting a particular
world-view
o Different languages
represent different
ways of thinking about
the world around us.
Weaker version
o structure of a
language determines
the way in which
speakers of that
language view the
world
Linguistic Relativity• two basic principles
• 1930s
 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

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• Opposite claim: culture of a people finds reflection in the language they employ:
because they value certain things and do them in a certain way. Their use of
language reflects what they value and what they do
• cultural requirements do not determine the structure of a language
• A third, ‘neutral,’ claim would be that there is little or no relationship between
language and culture
Linguistic relativity hypothesis, Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, the Whorfian
hypothesis
 Chinese ,there is only a single term luotuo, in English there is a
camel. But in Arabic, there are more than 400 words for the
animal .
 In Eskimo language there are number of words involving snow.
For example ,apun=“snow on the ground”, qanikca=“hard snow
on the ground”, utak= “block of snow”.
• Certain cultural concepts
‫حالل‬ ،‫غیرت‬

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• Sapir acknowledged the close relationship between language and
culture that both cannot be understood without separately
• Whorf extended these ideas
• in Whorf’s view, the relationship between language and culture
was a deterministic one
Linguistic Determinism
 Hopi language vs Western Languages
 Days in Hopi are cyclical
 “They stayed four days” cannot be said in Hopi
 Must be “They left after four days”

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• Do you think you cannot talk about something for which
your language lacks vocabulary?
• What is the exact middle of America?
• If there are three apples, you took two away, how many do
you have?
• How can you lift an elephant with one hand?
• When do you stop at green and go at red?
• This reflects: if language is hardwired in our brains, then our
thought works according to the language.
But
• Paying great attention can override hardwiring to innovative
thinking
• A truck driver is going down a one way street the wrong
way, and passes at least ten cops. Why is he not caught?
• The letter ‘r’
• 2
• There is no
elephant with
one finger
• Eating
watermelon
• Because he is
not driving; he
is walking

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• if speakers of one language have certain words to describe things and
speakers of another language lack similar words, then speakers of the
first language will find it easier to talk about those things
• The strongest claim of all is that the grammatical categories
available in a particular language not only help the users of that
language to perceive the world in a certain way but also at the
same time limit such perception.
• They act as blinkers:
• you perceive only what your language allows you to
perceive.
• Your language controls your ‘world-view.’ Speakers of
different languages will, therefore, have different world-
views
 In the Whorfian view, language provides a screen or filter to reality
• Gender construction in Urdu, Punjabi

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Linguistic Relativity
 Future and past
 Aymara language
 Mother’s tongue vs Father’s tongue
 Balti language
 Reverse order of gender
 Pashto
o Different languages represent different ways of thinking
about the world around us.
For example

13. huṇḍeeṛáa
oóra phareeṛáa
índa
aǰeṛáa
táa
phaareeṛáa
bhuneeṛáa
”here”
”there”
eeṛáa
COMPLEX SPATIAL DIFFERENTIATION
(PALULA, CHITRAL, INDO-ARYAN)

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Note: These example may be useful but cannot be fully authentic as they have been taken
from an unpublished term paper.

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 Days of Week in Chitrali/Khowar
 There are only two basic terms for days.
 Means Chitrali does not focus the names of days like Urdu. in Urdu we have
separate term for each day. In other words Urdu has 7 basic terms

16.  SUPPORTERS’ VIEW
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• language a person speaks affects that person’s relationship to the external
world in one or more ways
• Pronouns
inclusive exclusive

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• Certain cultural concepts
‫حالل‬ ،‫غیرت‬
• Encoding of Pluralization in Urdu Vs Arabic
 Syntactic evidence can also mislead investigators
• literal translation
o Over-literal translation is very dangerous, particularly of metaphoric
language. English is full of metaphors:
‘I see what you mean,’
‘He grasped the idea,’
‘You’re behind the times,’ and so on
• Article
 Structural coding
 English: singular cow-Ø, plural cow-s
 No infl for sg, infl for pl
 Some lgs express both sg and pl
 Other lgs make no sg-pl distinction
 But lgs don’t express singular inflectionally but not
plural

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 NON-SUPPORTERS’ VIEW - CRITICISM
• Pinker (1994) has no patience at all for any of Whorf’s ideas
 Linguistic Determinism is far too strong a claim and thus false.
“Peoples’ thoughts and perceptions are not determined by the words
and structures of their language.
 We are not prisoners of our linguistic system” (Fromkin et al. 2007)
 We may not have the exact word but are able to express their
ideas and thoughts using others words combinations
 The Dani tribe, who have only a two colour system , black/dark and white/ light
, were successfully trained to identify and name different shades of red .

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• Broader attempts to relate types of language structure to patterns
of social organization have also met with failure
• Finally, the claim that it would be impossible to describe certain
things in a particular language because that language lacks the
necessary resources is only partially valid at best.

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• The most valid conclusion concerning the Whorfian
hypothesis is that it is still unproved
CONCLUSION
• There is relationship between language and thought
• But, stronger version of Sapri-Whorf Hypothesis seems to
reject creativity
• Has been rejected

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Hollywood
movie based
on Sapir-
Whorf
Hypothesis

22. KINSHIP TERMS
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• Kinship terms describes how people in the various parts
of the world refer to relatives by blood and marriage.
• Kinship systems are universal features of language,
because kinship is so important in social organization.
• Some systems are much richer than others, but all
make use of such factors as gender, age , generation ,
blood ,and marriage in their organization.

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Parents’
Brothers
Father’s/Mother’s
Brother
English
Urdu
Punjabi
Mother’s
Brother ‫ماموں‬
Habitual
KINSHIP TERMS
Father’s
Brother ‫چچا‬
Uncle
Mother’s
Brother
Father’s
Brother
Mother’s
Brother
‫ماموں‬
Father’s
Brother
‫تایا‬Elder brother
Younger
brother ‫چاچا‬

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CONCLUSION
 It is the kinship system which determines who is
called what; it is not the behaviour of individuals
which leads them to be called this or that.

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TAXONOMIES
• People also use language to classify and categorize various
aspects of the world in which they live, but they do not always
classify things the way scientists do

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COLOUR
color is all around but it is not everywhere treated in the same way
The terms people use to describe color give us another means of
exploring the relationships between different languages and cultures
sometimes cannot directly translate color words from one language to another without
introducing subtle changes in meaning
o black and white (or dark and light).
o Black, white, red.
o Black, white, red, yellow
o Black, white, red, yellow, green, (but the order may be
reversed).
o The sixth and seventh terms are blue and brown.
o Finally, English, gray, pink, orange, and purple, (but not
in any particular order).
only eleven basic
color terms

27. CONCEPTUAL SPACE FOR BASIC COLOUR TERMS
BRIGHTNE
SS
COOL WARM
ACHROMAT
IC
CHROMATI
C

28. Summary of color terms
Language type
1 2 3 4 5 6
White,
Black<
Red,
Green<
Brown/
Yellow<
Brown/
Yellow/
Blue<
Blue/Br
own/Yel
low/Silv
er/Gold
en/Ora
nge/Pur
ple<
Brown,
Blue,
Yellow,
Silver,
Golden,
orange,
Pink,
Purple,
Grey
No of color terms 2 4 5 6 & 7 8 13
Language Wangri
Hindko,
Pahari,
Saraiki,
Punjabi
Pothwar
i
Shina,
Sindhi,
Urdu,
Balti,
Pushto,
Wakhi
Khawar,
Brahvi
Brushu
ski
Note: This example may be useful but cannot be fully authentic as it has been taken from
an unpublished term paper.

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PROTOTYPES
Rosch (1976) has proposed an alternative to the view that concepts
are composed from sets of features which necessarily and
sufficiently define instances of a concept

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TABOO AND EUPHEMISM
• language is used to avoid saying certain things as well as to
express them
• linguistic taboo
o Taboo is an expression that causes anxiety, embarrassment, or shame
to members of a society
deliberate circumlocutions
Tabooed subjects can vary widely: sex; death; excretion; bodily functions;
religious matters; and politics
o‫ساال‬o sex

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o euphemisms
• Euphemistic expressions allow us to talk about unpleasant things and
disguise or neutralize the unpleasantness, e.g., the subjects of sickness,
death and dying, unemployment, and criminality.

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REFERENCES
• Trudgill, P. (2000). Sociolinguistics: An introduction to
language and society. London: Penguin.
• Holmes, J. (2012). An introduction to sociolinguistics.
Harlow: Pearson.
• Wardhaugh, R. (2006). An introduction to Sociolinguistics.
Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.