LANGUAGE, CULTURE, & SOCIETY

What is Language? Mean of communication Use of signs, sounds and symbols Many animal and even plant species communicate with each other Is that language too???????

The difference between animal communication and human language is recursion ( the ability to take discrete elements, like words or numbers, and recombine them in a way that creates an infinite variety of expression).

Human system of communication makes an extensive and varied use of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols Human language is unique in being a symbolic communication system that is learned instead of biologically inherited. 

Hund Chien Canis Perro

What is culture? Appreciation of good literature, music, art, and food.  For a biologist, it is likely to be a colony of bacteria or other microorganisms growing in a nutrient medium in a laboratory Petri dish.  For anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns. 

Our written languages, governments, buildings, and other man-made things are merely the products of culture.  They are not culture in themselves.  Culture is the way we learn to look at the world and how we function in it. The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought typical of a population or community at a given time.

Non-human culture?  This orangutan mother is using a specially prepared stick to "fish out" food from a crevice.  She learned this skill and is now teaching it to her child who is hanging on her shoulder and intently watching.

What is society? Societies are groups of people who directly or indirectly interact with each other.  People in human societies also generally perceive that their society is distinct from other societies in terms of shared traditions and expectations.

Culture and Society Culture and society are not the same thing While cultures are complexes of learned behavior patterns and perceptions, societies are groups of interacting organisms They are inextricably connected because culture is created and transmitted to others in a society

Relationship Between Language, Culture and Society In the normal transfer of information through language, we use language to send vital social messages about who we are where we come from and who we associate with We may judge a person’s background, character, and intentions based simply upon the person's language

Relationship Between Language, Culture and Society Sociology of language Focuses on the manner in which social and political forces influence language use. Sociolinguistics Focuses on how language and language use reflect the larger society

Sociolinguistics The relationship between language and society affects a wide range of encounters--from broadly based international relations to narrowly defined interpersonal relationships. The study of relationship between language and society. Sociolinguistics has become an increasingly important and popular field of study with globalization.

Orientation of sociolinguistics Micro-sociolinguistics Investigates how social structure influences the way people talk & how language varieties and patterns of use correlate with social attributes such as age, gender, class. Macro-sociolinguistics Studies what societies do with their language, i.e. attitudes and attachments that account for functional distribution of speech forms in society.

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