Language is what we use every day, a way to communicate. It’s composed of characters and pronunciations. And, characters include words from all over the world, all the countries, like English letters, Chinese characters, Arabian numbers, etc. However, what makes all the languages so different is another thing called “pronunciation”, which makes English sound like English, and Chinese sound like Chinese. On hearing the pronunciation, you can immediately take a reaction that it is English or Chinese or any other specific language in the world. Therefore, in fact, it is character and pronunciation that make languages understood and featured. So, I suppose they are the two facts consisting of a language. As for culture, it’s something more abstract that can’t be specifically figured out and has been deeply rooted in people’s minds and affects their behaviors.
And culture, similarly, I consider can be divided into the material and spiritual culture. It’s abstract but exists everywhere in our daily life. For instance, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, and the name you are given are material culture, and naturally, the team-work spirit you have, and the wearing style you own are spiritual culture. So, we can know that culture has automatically integrated into people’s lives, or to say, people have automatically obeyed the culture's “rules”. Thus, you cannot totally understand it unless you step into it and then take deep research into it, explore it in natives’ daily life, to grasp it in the true situation. And then developed the “iceberg theory”. On the surface, we can just use our body functions to feel the culture, to see, to hear, to touch. But what is on the surface is not its true appearance of it. Besides the superficial things, we have something that is equally important that has been silently buried under the surface, which can also be mysterious, including tradition, myth, beliefs, etc. But in order to know the things below, we can only look at the tip of the iceberg to understand the inside beliefs and values.
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Therefore, this article will use examples to show how language and culture are tightly related, and some of my favorite topics studied in class as well as the influence the class has made on me.
To truly understand a culture, we should first understand its language. Language and culture are two things that can’t be separated alone. Personally, language is a part of the culture. Let’s set in this situation-an American is showing gratitude to someone else. Naturally, he will say, thank you for your help. And the other man will answer, you’re welcome or don’t mention it. But in my point of view, it’s no need to answer like this every time when you turn to someone for help because I believe that they know the gratitude they want to express to each other. While in American culture, not saying this is like a kind of disrespect to others, showing that you are ignoring others. There is another case in praising. Usually, from what I know, Americans tend to show good things to others. They’d like to say how good their husbands or wives are, how well their children do in the sports meeting, and even, praise other nice things they see, like how beautiful your dress is, how nice your personality is. So, when people come across each other, they will say those good things. And naturally, in return, they get others’ praise too. Then they will talk about their own topics. These two examples show that language has integrated into the culture, and has automatically been shaped by culture, controlled by culture. Culture can decide what words are suitable to say on special occasions. It decides how people can communicate in a proper way.
Besides, I suppose, language and culture, just affect each other. For instance, the idioms and old sayings, just show what history, geography, and society were like in the past. Take English for example, the famous saying, where there is a will, there is a way, it means that people should be working hard, and persevering in their own business, then they can get successful, showing that in ancient times, people’s value of work or future is to stick to their own dreams and do things step by step, with patience. Let’s go into another example, knowledge makes humility, and ignorance makes pride. Obviously, it means that knowledge is very important and shows that from ancient times, people had seen knowledge as a valuable thing to own. These are two exact examples of how words reflect culture, to be more accurate, how culture has created words. While, how words influenced culture? In online chatting, we usually have some abbreviation of words like, btw for, by the way, an Arabian number double eight for bye-bye, thx for thanks, lol for laugh out loud, and so on. I believe that people don’t usually use these abbreviations in the past times. They just became popular and widely used in the late, recent years, making more abbreviations of words in communication. For instance, Arabian number two for to, four for, and u for you, thus making expressions easier to type, tonight becoming 2nite, for you changing into 4u. We can conclude that these abbreviations of words have created a new culture in communication, that is simple word communication which saves people’s time. Therefore, we can see a people’s culture in its words and expressions, and learn words and expressions in culture as well.
And the topics I remember the most may be the euphemisms and taboos. I have learned a lot in class and in the book. For euphemisms and taboos, I suppose they are totally opposite. Firstly, I want to talk about taboos in English. There are some words that are offensive when said on some occasions. For example, when someone dies, English speakers (I mean the people who speak English as an official language) usually don’t say the word “die”, they’ll say he’s gone or he passed away. But why do they do so? On the one hand, I consider maybe death to be something bad to say out, something that can make people feel blue. On the other hand, I suppose it is a result of culture. Because life is precious. When mothers give birth, they suffer a lot, and then babies are born. So maybe, people know that delivering a baby is not that easy at all, thus making them respect life. However, personally, it’s a reflection of respect for mothers, for mothers are the people who give things new life. Besides, I have heard that some words related to religion are also taboo. For instance, God, Jesus (If I’m being offensive, I’d like to say sorry to you), and so on. I’ve never read Bible before, but from what I know, it seems that it is a rule regulated by God-if you say out God’s name, then you are defiling God. So, people refuse to say that, and wisely, they use some words to replace them, like gosh for God, Old Nick for the devil, etc. In fact, I consider this is also the result of culture, for I believe most westerners believe in religions so religions have been part of their lives and some religious thoughts have been deeply rooted in their minds, becoming the so-called culture. So, the above taboos related to religion are the results of the conventional religious culture. While euphemisms, in my opinion, are the replacement for taboos. In English, it’s impolite or offensive to say directly others’ shortcomings, physical problems, appearance, and so on. For example, we use senior to describe the elderly, for no one wants to be old and more importantly, this is out of respect. Except for this, I know that in western countries, fat is what people wouldn’t like to say. So, when it comes to the medicine to lose weight, they usually use words like slim, and slender to tag on the pills (Like slim kick pills) instead of words like fat loss, and weight loss. Besides, there is a pretty funny phenomenon in describing people. When parents talk about their kids, if their kids are very naughty, or annoying, then others would say that he or she tends to be active. And in teaching, if someone gets a failing grade, teachers would just say you are below the average level instead of that you didn’t pass the exam, you are so stupid. Also, as a business and trade major student, I noticed that the word used to describe countries like China, Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, etc. has changed over time. People used to describe them as undeveloped countries but later changed into developing countries which has an active meaning that these countries are still developing themselves to be better in the future taking the place of undeveloped which may seem to have a negative meaning that these countries far behind other countries and don’t want to work harder to catch up with the developed countries. All the above are interesting examples of euphemisms. They all have something in common they don’t want to show the negative side of things. Why doing so? Because I suppose, in ancient culture, people think kindness is better than evil, and evil can never win over kindness. So, here I want to conclude that euphemisms and taboos are probably related to culture. Culture seems to be the teacher or the mother of them.
Apart from these two topics, racist and sexist language also make me impressed. I hate discrimination in the world. According to history, maybe black people suffered the most severe discrimination in the world. Even nowadays, I can still see it on the internet. When someone raises the topic of black people, many negative comments will appear one by one. I’ve seen comments such as “They are stupid.” “They are selfish and they don’t want to take care of the whole family when get married or have babies.”. I feel quite bad about this. For everyone is equal. Wise or not is what you can decide like your appearance given by your mother. It depends on many other facts such as the disability of the government to offer good education or the disability to afford a good enough education environment. As for family, different countries have different kinds of conventional thoughts. As far as I am concerned, it’s conventional behavior not behaving so-to take care of his family all the time. We should not take what is different in our own culture as taboo. Instead, we should take it as a normal thing. At least, be a neutral attitude if you don’t like it. And according to history, black people really suffered a lot. They were sold as goods to people in other regions as slaves, seen as the lowest level of the whole society, even lower than animals. They did not have freedom. To live or to die was what their master should and could decide. They have a black history of nearly 400 years. Therefore, to see from the other side, they did well in developing their countries for the people’s position has improved a lot nowadays and people who can get an education and enough food have amounted a lot. They are still fighting for their lives so they should be respected.
Regarding sexism, I still hold the view that men and women are equal. No men or women should be discriminated against. The situation seemed to be better these days. I have never heard words like sissy to describe a man who is very kind and mild now. And never will a man look upon a woman for their occupation in most cases now. (I suppose.) However, there is something weird happening now. Many so-called feminists strike when the feminist movement arises. They hold the view that women are better than men, which seems to be confusing for the aim of the feminist movement is to declare that women should have equal rights in the same things such as jobs, and social positions, not to make women better than men. Maybe rage has fulfilled these people’s eyes. But I believe most people are holding the correct view of feminism.
At last, I want to talk about the feeling of learning in this class. I love languages. So, I love cultures too. I used to think that Americans are indifferent because they think they are the best people in the world. But after learning this class, my stereotype of Americans has disappeared. I know they are doing like normal people. They are open-minded, modest, and good at communicating with others. The most precious thing may be that it breaks the mystery of religion in my heart. I have learned a lot from the class and the people coming from outside of the class about religion, Christianity, about Jesus. One of the most interesting things I learned from one of the students coming from outside our original class is that Jesus was born in Asia. I was surprised when she told me that. There are more than things like this, the use of color, discrimination and prejudice, and idioms. I like them all because they are part of the language and culture. It seems the more I learn, the more passion I can get for learning languages and cultures. Therefore, this class taught me how to correctly communicate with foreigners. (What can or cannot be mentioned when communicating.) Besides, it gives me more energy to learn English, to learn languages and their cultures.
In conclusion, language and culture are two things that can’t be separated alone. Anyone who studies only language can’t learn well. We can see one people’s culture in its language. And sometimes, popular languages can create new conventions and new cultures. And people should pay special attention to the sensitive topics in one culture for sometimes it will cause trouble. So here I hope everyone can study a little bit about other countries cultures to avoid unnecessary conflict or discrimination between people. I believe all the conflicts in the world originate from the misunderstanding of other people or countries. However, language and culture are indeed the reflections of people. So only when we take a good look at others, learning other cultures well, can we know what people are truly like. Then, we can make the world a better place.
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