Title: ENG.

101: LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Module from: Bacolod City College

I. AN OVERVIEW:
Language is arbitrary. It definitely changes as the time goes by. However, there are
many factors to consider as to why language has been modified, if not changed.
The geographical location of a certain place, the culture, and even the circles are
some of the main factors of this.
In the contemporary world, people are saying that language and discourse are
now more important than ever before, and across the Humanities and Social Sciences,
there has been a major ‘discursive/linguistic turn’. Instead of trying to identify the
central, stable features that characterize different individuals, groups or ‘cultures’,
researchers are now much more interested in trying to establish the ways in which
language and discourse are used to construct cultural difference and social identity,
both in face-to-face interaction and in public representations.
So this module looks at the debates about the role that language places in
power, ideology, resistance and social change, and considers several major 20th
century cultural theorists, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and Erving
Goffman (King’s College, 2019).

II. DISCUSSION:

Language, a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written

symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and
participants in its culture, express themselves. The functions of language include
communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and
emotional release.

Many definitions of language have been proposed. Henry Sweet, an English phonetician
and language scholar, stated: “Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds
combined into words. Words are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of
ideas into thoughts.” The American linguists Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager formulated the
following definition: “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a
social group cooperates.” Any of language makes a number of succinct definition presuppositions
and begs a number of questions. The first, for example, puts excessive weight on “thought,” and
the second uses “arbitrary” in a specialized, though , way. legitimate

A number of considerations (marked in italics below) enter into a proper understanding of

language as a subject:
Every physiologically and mentally typical person acquires in childhood the ability to make
use, as both sender and receiver, of a system of communication that comprises a circumscribed set
of symbols (e.g., sounds, gestures, or written or typed characters). In spoken language symbol set ,
this consists of noises resulting from movements of certain organs within the throat and mouth. In ,
these symbols may be hand or body movements, signed languages gestures, or facial expressions.
By means of these symbols, people are able to impart information, to express feelings and
emotions, to influence the activities of others, and to comport themselves with varying degrees of
friendliness or hostility toward persons who make use of substantially the same set of symbols.

Different systems of communication constitute different languages; the degree of

difference needed to establish a different language cannot be stated exactly. No two people speak
exactly alike; hence, one is able to recognize the voices of friends over the telephone and to keep
distinct a number of unseen speakers in a radio broadcast. Yet, clearly, no one would say that they
speak different languages. Generally, systems of communication are recognized as different
languages if they cannot be understood without specific learning by both parties, though the
precise limits of mutual intelligibility are hard to draw and belong on a scale rather than on either
side of a definite dividing line. Substantially different systems of communication that may impede
but do not prevent mutual comprehension are called dialects of a language. In order to describe in
detail the actual different language patterns of individuals, the term , meaning the habits of
expression of a single person, has been coined. idiolect

Typically, people acquire a single language initially—their first language, or native

tongue, the language used by those with whom, or by whom, they are brought up from infancy.
Subsequent “second” languages are learned to different degrees of competence under various
conditions. Complete mastery of two languages is designated as ; in many bilingualism cases—
such as upbringing by parents using different languages at home or being raised within a
multilingual community—children grow up as bilinguals. In traditionally monolingual , cultures
the learning, to any extent, of a second or other language is an activity superimposed on the prior
mastery of one’s first language and is a different process intellectually.

Language, as described above, is species-specific to human beings. Other members of the

animal kingdom have the ability to communicate, through vocal noises or by other means, but the
most important single feature characterizing human language (that is, every individual language),
against every known mode of animal communication, is its infinite productivity and creativity.
Human beings are unrestricted in what they can communicate; no area of experience is accepted as
necessarily incommunicable, though it may be necessary to adapt one’s language in order to cope
with new discoveries or new modes of thought. Animal communication systems are by contrast
very tightly circumscribed in what may be communicated. Indeed, displaced reference, the ability
to communicate about things outside immediate temporal and spatial contiguity, which is
fundamental to speech, is found elsewhere only in the so-called language of bees. Bees are able, by
carrying out various conventionalized movements (referred to as bee dances) in or near the hive, to
indicate to others the locations and strengths of food sources.

But food sources are the only known theme of this communication system. Surprisingly,
however, this system, nearest to human language in function, belongs to a species remote from
humanity in the animal kingdom. On the other hand, the animal performance superficially most
like human speech, the mimicry of parrots and of some other birds that have been kept in the
company of humans, is wholly derivative and serves no independent communicative function.
Humankind’s nearest relatives among the primates, though possessing a vocal physiology similar
to that of humans, have not developed anything like a spoken language. Attempts to teach sign
language to chimpanzees and other apes through imitation have achieved limited success, though
the interpretation of the significance of ape signing ability remains controversial.

In most accounts, the primary purpose of language is to facilitate communication, in the

sense of transmission of information from one person to
another. However, sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic studies have drawn attention to a range of
other functions for language. Among these is the use of language to express a national or local
identity (a common source of conflict in situations of multiethnicity around the world, such as in
Belgium, India, and Quebec). Also important are the “ludic” (playful) function of language—
encountered in such phenomena as puns, riddles, and crossword puzzles—and the range of
functions seen in imaginative or symbolic contexts, such as poetry, drama, and religious
expression.

Language interacts with every aspect of human life in society, and it can be understood only if it
is considered in relation to society. This article attempts to survey language in this light and to
consider its various functions and the purposes it can and has been made to serve. Because each
language is both a working system of communication in the period and in the community
wherein it is used and also the product of its history and the source of its future development, any
account of language must consider it from both these points of view.
The science of language is known as linguistics. It includes what are generally
distinguished as descriptive linguistics and historical linguistics. Linguistics is now a highly
technical subject; it embraces, both descriptively and historically, such major divisions as
phonetics, grammar (including syntax and morphology), semantics, and pragmatics, dealing in
detail with these various aspects of language.

Historical Attitudes toward Language

As is evident from the discussion above, life in its present form would be human impossible and
inconceivable without the use of language. People have long recognized the force and significance
of language. —applying a word to pick out and refer to a fellow human Naming
being, an animal, an object, or a of such beings or objects—is only one part of the use of class
language, but it is an essential and prominent part. In many cultures people have seen in the
ability to name a means to control or to possess; this explains the reluctance, in some
communities, with which names are revealed to strangers and the restricti taboo ons found in
several parts of the world on using the names of persons recently dead. Such restrictions echo
widespread and perhaps universal taboos on naming directly things considered obscene,
blasphemous, or very fearful.

Perhaps not surprisingly, several independent traditions ascribe a divine or at least a supernatural
origin to language or to the language of a particular community. The biblical account,
representing ancient beliefs, of ’s naming the creatures of the earth under God’s Jewish Adam
guidance is one such example:
So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and
brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every
living creature, that was its name. (Genesis 2:19)

Norse mythology preserves a similar story of divine participation in the creation of language, and
in the god is said to have invented articulate . In the debate on the nature and India Indra speech
origin of language given in ’s Socratic dialogue , is made to speak of the Plato Cratylus Socrates
gods as those responsible for first fixing the names of things in the proper way. A similar divine
aura pervades early accounts of the origin of . The Norse god was writing Odin held responsible
for the invention of the . The inspired stroke of genius whereby runic alphabet the ancient adapted
a variety of the consonantal script so as to represent the Greeks Phoenician distinctive and sounds
of Greek, thus producing the first such as is consonant vowel alphabet known today, was linked
with the mythological figure , who, coming from Phoenicia, Cadmus was said to have founded
Thebes and introduced writing into Greece ( ). see Phoenician language By a traditional account,
the , together with , was given to Arabic alphabet the language itself Adam by God.

The later biblical tradition of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) exemplifies three
aspects of early thought about language: (1) divine interest in and control over its use and
development, (2) a recognition of the power it gives to humans in relation to their environment,
and (3) an explanation of linguistic diversity, of the fact that people in adjacent communities
speak different and mutually unintelligible languages, together with a survey of the various
speech communities of the world known at the time to the Hebrew people.
The origin of language has never failed to provide a subject for speculation, and its
inaccessibility adds to its fascination. Informed investigations of the probable conditions under
which language might have originated and developed are seen in the late 18th-century essay of the
German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, “Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache”
(“Essay on the Origin of Language”), and in numerous other treatments. But people have tried to
go farther, to discover or to reconstruct something like the actual forms and structure of the first
language. This lies forever beyond the reach of science, in that spoken language in some form is
almost certainly coeval with . The ear Homo sapiens liest records of written language, the only
linguistic fossils humanity can hope to have, go back no more than 4,000 to 5,000 years. Some
people have tried to claim that the cries of animals and birds, or nonlexical expressions of
excitement or anger, evolved into human speech, as if onomatopoeia were the essence of language;
these claims have been ridiculed for their inadequacy (by, for example, the Oxford philologist Max
Müller in the 19th century) and have been given nicknames such as “bowwow” and “pooh-pooh”
theories.

On several occasions attempts have been made to identify one particular existing language as
representing the original or oldest tongue of humankind, but, in fact, the universal process of
linguistic change rules out any such hopes from the start. The Greek historian Herodotus told a
(possibly satirical) story in which King Psamtik I of Egypt (reigned 664–610 BCE) caused a child
to be brought up without ever hearing a word spoken in his presence. On one occasion it ran up to
its guardian as he brought it some bread, calling out “bekos, bekos”; this, being said to be the
Phrygian word for bread, proved that Phrygian was the oldest language. The naiveté and absurdity
of such an account have not prevented the repetition of this experiment elsewhere at other times.

In Christian Europe the position of Hebrew as the language of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)
gave valid grounds through many centuries for regarding Hebrew, the language in which God was
assumed to have addressed Adam, as the parent language of all humankind. Such a view continued
to be expressed even well into the 19th century. Only since the mid-1800s has linguistic science
made sufficient progress finally to clarify the impracticability of speculation along these lines.

When people have begun to reflect on language, its relation to thinking becomes a central concern.
Several cultures have independently viewed the main function of language as the expression of
thought. Ancient Indian grammarians speak of the soul apprehending things with the intellect and
inspiring the mind with a desire to speak, and in the Greek intellectual tradition Aristotle declared,
“Speech is the representation of the experiences of the mind” (On Interpretation). Such an attitude
passed into Latin theory and thence into medieval doctrine. Medieval grammarians envisaged three
stages in the speaking process: things in the world exhibit properties; these properties are
understood by the minds of humans; and, in the manner in which they have been understood, so
they are communicated to others by the resources of language. Rationalist writers on language in
the 17th century gave essentially a similar account: speaking is expressing thoughts by signs
invented for the purpose, and words of different classes (the different parts of speech) came into
being to correspond to the different aspects of thinking.

Such a view of language continued to be accepted as generally adequate and gave rise to the sort
of definition proposed by Henry Sweet and quoted above. The main objection to it is that it either
gives so wide an interpretation to thought as virtually to empty the word of any specific content or
gives such a narrow interpretation of language as to exclude a great deal of normal usage. A
recognition of the part played by speaking and writing in social cooperation in everyday life has
highlighted the many and varied functions of language in all cultures, apart from the functions
strictly involved in the communication of thought, which had been the main focus of attention for
those who approached language from the standpoint of the philosopher. To allow for the full range
of language used by speakers, more-comprehensive definitions of language have been proposed on
the lines of the second one quoted at the beginning of this article—namely, “A language is a
system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.” Despite the
breadth of this definition, however, its use of the word excludes all languages vocal that are not
vocalized, particularly manual (signed) languages.

A rather different criticism of accepted views on language began to be made in the 18th century,
most notably by the French philosopher Étienne Bonnot de Condillac in “Essai sur l’origine des
connaissances humaines” (1746; “Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge”) and by Johann
Gottfried von Herder. These thinkers were concerned with the origin and development of language
in relation to thought in a way that earlier students had not been. The medieval and rationalist
views implied that humans, as rational, thinking creatures, invented language to express their
thoughts, fitting words to an already developed structure of intellectual competence. With the
examination of the actual and the probable historical relations between thinking and
communicating, it became more plausible to say that language emerged not as the means of
expressing already formulated judgments, questions, and the like but as the means of thought itself,
and that humans’ rationality developed together with the development of their capacity for
communicating.

The relations between thought and communication are certainly not fully explained today, and it is
clear that it is a great oversimplification to define thought as subvocal speech, in the manner of
some behaviourists. But it is no less clear that propositions and other alleged logical structures
cannot be wholly separated from the language structures said to express them. Even the
symbolizations of modern formal logic are ultimately derived from statements made in some
natural language and are interpreted in that light.

The intimate connection between language and thought, as opposed to the earlier assumed
unilateral dependence of language on thought, opened the way to a recognition of the possibility
that different language structures might in part favour or even determine different ways of
understanding and thinking about the world. All people inhabit a broadly similar world, or they
would be unable to translate from one language to another, but they do not all inhabit a world
exactly the same in all particulars, and translation is not merely a matter of substituting different
but equivalent labels for the contents of the same inventory. From this stem the notorious
difficulties in translation, especially when the systematizations of science, law, morals, social
structure, and so on are involved. The extent of the interdependence of language and thought—
linguistic relativity, as it has been termed—is still a matter of debate, but the fact of such
interdependence can hardly fail to be acknowledged.
QUESTIONNAIRE: DIFINITION OF LANGUAGE

1. Language is the expression of ________.

2. Language, a system of ___________, ___________, or __________ by means of
which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its
culture, express themselves.
3. _________, an English phonetician and language scholar, stated: “Language is
the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words.
4. In , these symbols may be hand or body movements, gestures, or facial
expressions. _______
5. Different ____________ constitute different languages; the degree of difference
needed to establish a different language cannot be stated exactly.
6. Substantially different systems of communication that may impede but do not
prevent mutual comprehension are called _______of a language.
7. __________ Means, the habits of expression of a single person,
has been coined.
8. Complete mastery of two languages is designated as
____________.
9. ___________ systems are by contrast very tightly circumscribed in what may
be communicated.
10. The science of language is known as______________.

QUESTIONNAIRE: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF LANGUAGE

1. The biblical account, representing ancient beliefs, of naming ___________

_________ the creatures of the earth under God’s guidance is one such example.
2. Preserves a similar story of divine participation in the creation of language, and in
India the god Indra is said to have invented ___________.
3. A similar divine aura pervades early accounts of the origin of ________.
4. The later biblical tradition of the __________ (Genesis 11:1–9) exemplifies three
aspects of early thought about language: (1) divine interest in and control over its
use and development, (2) a recognition of the power it gives to humans in relation
to their _________, and (3) an explanation of linguistic __________, of the fact
that people in adjacent communities speak different and mutually unintelligible
languages, together with a survey of the various speech communities of the world
known at the time to the Hebrew people.
5. The German philosopher ____________________, “Abhandlung über den
Ursprung der Sprache” (“Essay on the Origin of Language”), and in numerous other
treatments.
6. _______________ in the 19th century and have been given nicknames such as
“bowwow” and “pooh-pooh” theories.
7. The Greek historian ____________ told a (possibly satirical) story in which King
___________ of Egypt (reigned 664–610 BCE) caused a child to be brought up
without ever hearing a word spoken in his presence.
8. Phrygian word for bread, proved that was the oldest ________ language.
9. _______________writers on language in the 17th century gave essentially a
similar account: speaking is expressing thoughts by signs invented for the purpose,
and words of different classes (the different parts of speech) came into being to
correspond to the different aspects of thinking.
10. A rather different _______________ of accepted views on language began to be
made in the 18th century, most notably by the French philosopher
____________________ in “Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines” (1746;
“Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge”) and by
__________________________.

Test III:

1. & 2 However, and ______ ________ studies have drawn attention to a range of other
functions for language.

3. Language is the expression of ________.

4. The _____connection between language and thought, as opposed to the earlier

assumed unilateral dependence of language on thought

5. “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a ______

cooperates.”

6. Complete mastery of two languages is designated as ________

7-9. The functions of language include communication, the expression of , ____, _____
imaginative expression, and _____ release. -

10: “A language is a system of ________by means of which a social group

cooperates.”

11. The science of language is known as______________.

12. Language, as described above, is ________to human beings.

13. In traditionally______, the learning, to any extent, of a second or other language

is an activity superimposed on the prior mastery of one’s first language and is a
different process intellectually

14. In _______ , this consists of noises resulting from movements of certain organs
symbol set within the throat and mouth.

15. . In ______, these symbols may be hand or body movements, gestures, or facial
expressions.

16. Substantially different systems of communication that may impede but do not
prevent mutual comprehension are called _____of a language.
17. ______ systems are by contrast very tightly circumscribed in what may be
communicated.

18. This lies forever beyond the reach of science, in that spoken language in some
form is almost certainly coeval with _____.

19. The later biblical tradition of the ______ (Genesis 11:1–9) exemplifies three
aspects of early thought about language.

20. The Greek historian ______ told a (possibly satirical) story in which King Psamtik I
of Egypt (reigned 664–610 BCE) caused a child to be brought up without ever
hearing a word spoken in his presence.
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