语言与文化 论文(英文)

The Relation between Language and Culture

Abstract: Different countries have different cultures, and also different language.

Language and culture are interdependent and interactional. Language is one of the

most important carriers of culture. On the other hand, culture have a great impact on

language, that is culture conditioning. Knowing the language and cultural

backgrounds can help our communication. Instead, it will cause many communicative

barriers. In this paper, we summarize the relationship between language and culture.

And example to explain it’s impact on cross-culture communication.

摘要：不同的国家有不同的语言和文化，语言和文化是相互依赖、相互影响的，

语言是文化的重要载体，另一方面，文化对语言也有制约作用。了解语言文化知

识有助于我们的交际。相反地，缺乏语言文化背景知识必然会导致交际障碍。本

文列举了语言与文化的关系，并举例说明了这种关系对跨文化交际的影响。

key words: language, cultures, relationship, communication

关键词：语言，文化，关系，交际

1. Introduction

As we all know that different countries have different cultures, and also different

language. Language and culture are interdependent and interactional. Language is one

of the most important carriers of culture. On the other hand, culture have a great

impact on language, that is culture conditioning.

Language plays a very important role in all human activity. It’s one of the

indispensable part of the social life of human. You can not imagine the world would

be without language. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of human language is so mystical

that people do not acquaint it entirely so far.

Culture is the product of social life and national spirit. In other words, culture is the

genetic code of difference among the various nation, country and region. Every

country has its own culture formation and individuality. This special culture is one of

the most important source of affinity and cohesion of a country. For this reason, we

must protect and develop the culture of the various nation, country and region, keep

variety of our global culture.

2. Relationship between language and culture

Relationship between language and culture can be summarized as the following:

(1). Language is part of culture. Like other cultural phenomenon, language is also a

social phenomenon, it occurred with the production of society, and develops with the

development of society. The language is with nationality, different nationalities often

have different languages; Language is also human creation. It is the most important

spiritual wealth of human society .We can say that language has all the attributes of

culture, so language is also a kind of culture, one of the many cultural phenomenons.

The human language is not only an integral part of culture, and also the most

important part.

(2).Language is the main carrier of culture. Although language is part of culture, other

cultural phenomenon generally can't exist being independent from language. Only

through language, culture can be preserved, extended and spread.

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(3).Language is the foundation of the development of culture. When we said the

cultural development, it's pointing to the development on the original basis which is

preserved and spread by language. The development of culture cannot do without

thinking, and thinking activity cannot do without the language: the development of

culture must rely on the collective of creation of social members. Only by using

language which is a good communication tool, can social members communicate and

achieve mutual understanding. Different culture should learn from each other through

language. Above all, culture must use language as tools to develop. So, the language

is the foundation of the development of culture.

Above all, we can conclude that language and culture not only in close relationship,

but also the special relationship.

3. Culture and language in the language communication

Because language is part of culture, also the carrier of culture and foundation of

cultural development, it can reflect the characteristics of national culture and the

cultural differences between different nationalities to a maximum extent. From

different nationalities' languages, we can find the evidences of different nationality's

values, is or not standard, customs, and religious beliefs, social system, and so on.

These cultural factors have restriction on language and language communication. But

his own people are not always easy to detect that. Only through the comparison of the

different nationality's language and language communication, it can be revealed. The

so-called "language communication culture", is a special cultural factor implied in the

language system which reflects a nation's mental state, values, life style, moral

standards, non standard, aesthetic taste, and the customs and habits etc .This cultural

factors mainly reflects in the words system , grammar system and pragmatic system of

language.

We will illustrate some examples of culture in the language communication through

comparison between China and Western Countries.

3.1 greeting

Due to the differences between Chinese and western culture tradition and customs, the

way of greeting is, of course, not the same. Because China is a long period of farming

community, there’s lot of ‘food’ in the daily expression. When people meet with each

other, they will say ‘have you eaten? ’ for greeting. This way of greeting is just the

same as ‘hi’ or ‘hello’ in western country. In China, it is a common way to say ‘hello’,

but the western people don’t think so. They may think this greeting seems to be

saying: ‘I have nothing to eat. Come on. Let’s go to eat something.’ Or ‘ I was going

to ask you to go to my house for a dinner.’ All in all, this means that say ‘hello’

invitation to dinner sometimes. Another way of greeting in china is ‘where are you

going?’ or ‘where have you been?’. In china, this greeting is just polite formula. But if

you use these sentences to greet to western people, they will feel unhappy. Their

reaction is likely to be: it’s none of your business! Western people always talk about

the weather when they meet. Such as’ the weather is fine. They respect the privacy of

others, and will not ask others privacy issues.

In short, when people make a greeting, they should pay attention on different cultures.

They should consider the time, place, object, cultural background, social customs and

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other factors. The use of appropriate greetings can make communication more smooth

and natural.

3.2 farewells

Between the social and cultural customs between china and western country are

different, the farewells are different, too. For instance, Chinese people go to other

people’s homes. When it is the time to say goodbye, they often say: I’d better be

going now. You must be very tired or you will have to go to work tomorrow, I should

go now. But the American people, by contrast, most of them will find out their reasons

to say good-bye. For example, I must say good-bye, my wife is waiting for me or I

think I’d better to leave now. Chinese people are always more politely, while

westerners are always somewhat straightforward.

3.3 taboos

In cross-cultural communication, taboo is the most sensitive topic. Cultural taboos

research therefore becomes an important content of cross-cultural communication.

The so-called taboos are the words that people can’t say in daily life or their work.

Taboo is almost everywhere, from daily life to the political and economic aspects. We

here just talk some about common taboos. In the conversation, western people are

unwilling to say their age, income, marriage, love, property, fat, and so on. But in

china, it is very normal to talk about marriage, income, love, age and so on. In

addition, western people should not talk loud in public places, they always speak in

quiet. But Chinese people always talk loud in public places. There are lot of this kind

of taboos, taboos language reflects different countries’ culture.

4. Conclusion

In short, language is one of the most important carriers of culture and culture has a

great impact on language in conditioning. They both cannot survive with each other.

On the other hand, the difference of language and culture may arouse inconvenience

and misunderstanding. Therefore, learning the difference of cultures between different

countries is very important. Realizing the difference of cultures between different

nations is good for us to communicate with different languages.（1312words）

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[3]贾玉新著.跨文化交际学.上海：上海外语教育出版社，1997

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