Dit is een verder ongerelateerde maar wel mooie foto die ik in Namibië nam. Er was een verzameling provisorische hutjes, waar deze, geheel uit frisdrankblikjes opgetrokken, er één van was. Dit stond in de buurt van een verkoppunt voor al dan niet zelfgemaakte kettingen en armbandjes. Ik denk dat de hutjes daar stonden om de verkopers tegen de zon te beschermen zolang als er geen kopers in de buurt waren (vaak, want het was midden in de woestijn). Het kan natuurlijk ook dat de hutjes zelf de attractie waren.
I had a lot of fun reading the first chapter of Language and culture by Claire Kramsch, especially because I didn't fully agree with what she was saying, although I found it interesting. Apparently creativity breeds from disagreement, because after reading and avidly typed the following, which I would now like to share with you.
In the chapter “The relationship of Language and Culture”, Kramsch makes a differentiation between language and culture, however closely related they are to her.
As Kramsch suggests, culture helps to structure the chaos of nature, and invests specific objects, places and actions with meaning. It allows people to share common understandings, assumptions and expectations. Language does the exact same, but instead of associating e.g. white flowers or the graveyard with the idea of death, it associates the sound sequence /dεθ/ with the idea of death.
The sound sequence may be a more accessible and quick way of expressing the idea than the flowers or the graveyard, and the flowers or the graveyard give a more total experience: you can see, smell and touch them. They are also things of themselves, whereas /dεθ/ is nothing other than the sound sequence. Thus the relation between the sound sequence and the concept is more direct than that between the flowers and the concept.
Kramsch, C. J. (1998). Language and culture (Vol. 3). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
In the chapter “The relationship of Language and Culture”, Kramsch makes a differentiation between language and culture, however closely related they are to her.
“Culture is the product of socially and historically situated discourse communities, that are to a large extent imagined communities, created and shaped by language.” (p 10)Yet I feel the following passages prove otherwise, namely that language and culture are not separate, but the same. Culture is “language by other means”, or language is “spoken culture”.
“Language is a system of signs that is seen as having itself a cultural value. Speakers identify themselves and others through their use of language; they view their language as a symbol of their social identity. The prohibition of its use is often perceived by its speakers as a rejection of their social group and their culture. Thus we can say that language symbolizes cultural reality. (p3, original emphasis)
“Culture both liberates and constrains. It liberates by investing the randomness of nature with meaning, order and rationality and by providing safeguards against chaos; it constrains by imposing a structure on nature and by limiting the range of possible meanings created by the individual.” (p 10)It surprises me that even in an introductory work to the relation between language and culture, the idea that the two are the same thing through different means is not expressed. It is not such a far stretch of concepts, but it makes a lot more sense than to separate them.
“Common attitudes, beliefs and values are reflected in the way members of the group use language – for example, what they choose to say or not to say and how they say it. Thus, in addition to the notion of speech community composed of people who use the same linguistic code, we can speak of discourse communities to refer to the common ways in which members of a social group use language to meet their social needs. Not only the grammatical, lexical, and phonological features of their language (for example, teenage talk, professional jargon, political rhetoric) differentiate them from others, but also the topics they choose to talk about, the way they present information, the style with which they interact, in other words their discourse accent.” (p6-7, original emphasis)
“The way in which people use the spoken, written, or visual medium itself creates meanings that are understandable to the group they belong to, for example, through a speaker's tone of voice, accent, conversational style, gestures and facial expressions. Through all its verbal and non-verbal aspects, language embodies cultural reality.” (p3, original emphasis.)
As Kramsch suggests, culture helps to structure the chaos of nature, and invests specific objects, places and actions with meaning. It allows people to share common understandings, assumptions and expectations. Language does the exact same, but instead of associating e.g. white flowers or the graveyard with the idea of death, it associates the sound sequence /dεθ/ with the idea of death.
The sound sequence may be a more accessible and quick way of expressing the idea than the flowers or the graveyard, and the flowers or the graveyard give a more total experience: you can see, smell and touch them. They are also things of themselves, whereas /dεθ/ is nothing other than the sound sequence. Thus the relation between the sound sequence and the concept is more direct than that between the flowers and the concept.
Kramsch, C. J. (1998). Language and culture (Vol. 3). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
