LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Culture:
- Defined as: "all the ideas and assumptions about the nature of things and people that we learn when we become members of social groups." (Yule 2010: 267)
- Considered as socially acquired knowledge.
Language Acquisition + Culture Acquisition → leads to:
- Politeness
- Registers: differentiation based on formal vs informal contexts.
- Social Varieties
- Conceptual Categories: reflected in vocabulary.

Linguistic Relativity:
- Weak Version: Language impacts perception.
- Strong Version (Linguistic Determinism):
  - Thought process is constrained by first language.
  - Associated with Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Linguistic Universalism:
- All languages share an underlying universal structure.
- Translatability across languages.

Linguistic Universal:
- A property common to all languages (Crystal 2008).
- Examples:
  - All languages have verbs, nouns, consonants, and vowels.
Universals Archive: Hosted by the University of Konstanz.
Semantic Primes: Part of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory by Anna Wierzbicka.
- Universal concepts found in all languages’ lexicons.
- Examples include:
  - Pronouns: I, you, someone.
  - Descriptors: good, bad, big, small.
  - Mental predicates: think, know, want, feel, see, hear.

Key Quote: "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages." (Whorf)
Example: Whorf’s analysis of clouds and stones.
Time Unit Terms: No precise terms for time (week, hour) in some languages.
Studies of Native American languages show grammatical distinctions between animate and inanimate.
Whorf argued the Hopi’s perception of time and experience is unique due to their language.

Example of lexical distinction: Different terms for snow in Eskimo languages:
- aput: snow on the ground.
- qana: falling snow.
- piqsirpoq: drifting snow.
- qimuqsuq: a snowdrift.
Comparison of English terms (fog, mist, haze) with Polish (mgła).

Categories: Organize reality into groups based on shared features.
Languages may organize reality differently; important categories are more specifically delineated in relevant cultures.
Some categories are expressed lexically in one language but are non-lexicalized in another.

Case Study: Kuuk Thaayorre language uses absolute reference frames (north, south, etc.) rather than relative terms (right, left).
Example phrases:
- "There's an ant on your southeast leg."
- "Move the cup to the north northwest."
Reference: L. Boroditsky's TED talk on language shaping thought.

Debate: Relativity vs Universalism in color categories.
Berlin and Kay's hierarchy of color-term expansion detailed; sequential acquisition of color terms in languages.

Grammatical classifiers categorize nouns:
- Countable vs uncountable.
- Animate vs inanimate.
Different tense systems serve to address temporal structure in language.
- Example: English (past, present) vs Polish (past, present).

Variance in gender specificity across languages.
Examples of gendered pronouns and forms:
- Japanese: boku (male) vs watashi (female).
- Portuguese: obrigado (male) vs obrigada (female).
Linguistic structure influencing perceived gender roles.

Morphological differences indicate prototypes:
- Examples: hero/heroine, actor/actress.
- Attempts to neutralize gendered language.
Legal and linguistic policy changes for gender neutrality.

Characteristics of women's speech include:
- Rising intonation at statement ends.
- Frequent use of hedges (e.g., "sort of", "kind of").
- Use of tag questions for validation (e.g., "It’s awful, isn’t it?").

Yule, G. (2010). The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 20.