Language and culture

The essentials

Language is a system of arbitrary symbols (sounds, signs, written marks) used by members of a society to communicate. It is the main vehicle through which culture is learned and passed on. Children acquire the language of the group they grow up in, not the language of their biological parents, which shows language is cultural, not genetic.

Key points

• Features of human language: arbitrariness (no natural link between a word and its meaning), productivity (endless new sentences), displacement (talking about things not present, past or future) and cultural transmission.
• Branches of linguistics: phonology (sound system), morphology (word structure), syntax (sentence structure), semantics (meaning).
• Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf): the language we speak shapes how we perceive and think about the world (linguistic relativity). A strong version is widely rejected; a weaker version, that language influences thought, has some support.
• Vocabulary reflects cultural emphasis: societies develop many words for things important to them, e.g. detailed kin terms in Indian languages (chacha, mama, phupha, mausa) compared with the single English "uncle".
• Sociolinguistics studies how language varies with region, class, caste, gender and context. A dialect is a regional or social variety of a language. Code-switching means moving between languages or varieties in conversation.
• Bilingualism and multilingualism are common in India.
• Language marks identity; language loss can mean loss of oral traditions and knowledge.

Exam tips

• Use the kinship-term example to show how language reflects social organisation.
• Remember the two names in the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.

Common mistakes

• Assuming one language is more "primitive" than another; all languages are complex systems.