Culture Case

ESTEBAN, SHARMAINE T. EFR2-3

PROF. JUNNIE SALUD JULY 25, 2013

ASSIGNMENT IN ENG4LE (INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS)

1. Do you agree that language is inseparable from culture? Why or why not?

- Yes, I firmly agree that language is inseparable from culture because language forms the basis for creation and maintenance of human cultures. Culture influences language acquisition from the very early stage through the entire developmental process. It is through use of language that an individual is transformed into agent of culture. Culture affects not only language lexicons, but also the function and/or pragmatics. When a person decides to learn Arabic, for example, he or she is not merely absorbing the linguistics of the language, but everything to do with Arabic and the Arab World. What he or she is taking in includes all the preconceptions about the Arabic language that it is beautiful, that it is romantic, that it is spoken along the Nile. By speaking the language, therefore, one automatically aligns oneself with the culture of the language. To speak a language well, one has to be able to think in that language, and thought is extremely powerful. A person's mind is in a sense the centre of his identity, so if a person thinks in Arabic, in order to speak Arabic, one might say that he has, in a way, almost taken on an Arab identity because language is the soul of the country and people who speak it.

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2. Explain the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

In linguistics, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis states that there are certain thoughts of an individual in one language that cannot be understood by those who live in another language. This hypothesis states that the way people think is strongly affected by their native languages.

Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf.

- According to Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, all higher levels of thinking are dependent on language. Language determines thought. This strong notion is also called linguistic determinism.

- According to the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, there is no real translation and it is impossible to learn the language of a different culture unless the learner abandons his or her own mode of thinking and acquires the thought patterns of the native speakers of the target language. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is also challenged by observations of second language acquisition (SLA). If the differences in languages were the differences of conceptual systems, then second language acquisition would be impossible. That fact that a person can master two, even more than two radically different languages shows that language differences can not represent different