Thought 12/11/2017 S OCIOLINGUISTICS By Z UBAIR A. B AJWA - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Language, Culture and Thought

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SOCIOLINGUISTICS

• ZUBAIR A. BAJWA

12/11/2017

Department of English, University of Gujrat, Gujrat, Pakistan

• M. Phil English Linguistics

(scholar) zbr141@gmail.com

By

Zubair.A.Bjawa

WHO CAME FIRST?

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GOALS

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• To look at various ways in which language and culture have

been said to be related

• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
• Kinship terms
• Taxonomies
• colour
• Prototypes
• Taboo and Euphemism

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LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

Does our perception shape the structure of language? Does structure of our language shape our thinking? Is thought possible without language?

• Languages and cultures are superficial.
• Language and cognition run deep

REVIEWING LANGUAGE & CULTURE

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• whatever a person must know in order to function in a particular

society

• socially acquired
• necessary behaviors are learned and do not come from any kind of

genetic endowment

• Culture

Culture, therefore, is the ‘know-how’ that a person must possess to get through the task of daily living

• The identity
• The vehicle to transfer culture from generation to generation
• Preserves culture
• Expresses culture
• Language

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• Language is particular way of conceptualizing the world and has

close ties to culture

RELATIONSHIPS

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7 Whorf Linguistic Determinism Strong version

• not determine the world-

view but is still extremely influential in predisposing speakers

• f a language toward

adopting a particular world-view

• Different languages

represent different ways of thinking about the world around us.

Weaker version

• structure of a

language determines the way in which speakers of that language view the world

Linguistic Relativity

• two basic principles
• 1930s
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

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• Opposite claim: culture of a people finds reflection in the language they employ:

because they value certain things and do them in a certain way. Their use of language reflects what they value and what they do

• cultural requirements do not determine the structure of a language
• A third, ‘neutral,’ claim would be that there is little or no relationship between

language and culture Linguistic relativity hypothesis, Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, the Whorfian hypothesis

 Chinese ,there is only a single term luotuo, in English there is a

• camel. But in Arabic, there are more than 400 words for the

animal .

 In Eskimo language there are number of words involving snow.

For example ,apun=“snow on the ground”, qanikca=“hard snow

• n the ground”, utak= “block of snow”.
• Certain cultural concepts

للبح ،تریغ

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• Sapir acknowledged the close relationship between language and

culture that both cannot be understood without separately

• Whorf extended these ideas
• in Whorf’s view, the relationship between language and culture

was a deterministic one Linguistic Determinism

 Hopi language vs Western Languages

 Days in Hopi are cyclical

 “They stayed four days” cannot be said in Hopi  Must be “They left after four days”

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• Do you think you cannot talk about something for which

your language lacks vocabulary?

• What is the exact middle of America?
• If there are three apples, you took two away, how many do

you have?

• How can you lift an elephant with one hand?
• When do you stop at green and go at red?
• This reflects: if language is hardwired in our brains, then our

thought works according to the language. But

• Paying great attention can override hardwiring to innovative

thinking

• A truck driver is going down a one way street the wrong

way, and passes at least ten cops. Why is he not caught?

• The letter ‘r’
• 2
• There is no

elephant with

• ne finger
• Eating

watermelon

• Because he is

not driving; he is walking

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• if speakers of one language have certain words to describe things and

speakers of another language lack similar words, then speakers of the first language will find it easier to talk about those things

• The strongest claim of all is that the grammatical categories

available in a particular language not only help the users of that language to perceive the world in a certain way but also at the same time limit such perception.

• They act as blinkers:
• you perceive only what your language allows you to

perceive.

• Your language controls your ‘world-view.’ Speakers of

different languages will, therefore, have different world- views

• In the Whorfian view, language provides a screen or filter to reality
• Gender construction in Urdu, Punjabi

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Linguistic Relativity

• Future and past
• Aymara language
• Mother’s tongue vs Father’s tongue
• Balti language
• Reverse order of gender
• Pashto
• Different languages represent different ways of thinking

about the world around us.

For example

huṇḍeeṛáa

• óra

phareeṛáa índa aǰeṛáa táa phaareeṛáa bhuneeṛáa ”here” ”there” eeṛáa

COMPLEX SPATIAL DIFFERENTIATION (PALULA, CHITRAL, INDO-ARYAN)

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• Days of Week in Chitrali/Khowar
• There are only two basic terms for days.
• Means Chitrali does not focus the names of days like Urdu. in Urdu we have

separate term for each day. In other words Urdu has 7 basic terms

• SUPPORTERS’ VIEW

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• language a person speaks affects that person’s relationship to the external

world in one or more ways

• Pronouns

inclusive exclusive

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• Certain cultural concepts

للبح ،تریغ

• Encoding of Pluralization in Urdu Vs Arabic
• Syntactic evidence can also mislead investigators
• literal translation
• Over-literal translation is very dangerous, particularly of metaphoric
• language. English is full of metaphors:

‘I see what you mean,’ ‘He grasped the idea,’ ‘You’re behind the times,’ and so on

• Article

 Structural coding  English: singular cow-Ø, plural cow-s  No infl for sg, infl for pl  Some lgs express both sg and pl  Other lgs make no sg-pl distinction  But lgs don’t express singular inflectionally but not

plural

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• NON-SUPPORTERS’ VIEW - CRITICISM
• Pinker (1994)

has no patience at all for any of Whorf’s ideas

 Linguistic Determinism is far too strong a claim and thus false.

“Peoples’ thoughts and perceptions are not determined by the words and structures of their language.

 We are not prisoners of our linguistic system” (Fromkin et al. 2007)  We may not have the exact word but are able to express their

ideas and thoughts using others words combinations



The Dani tribe, who have only a two colour system , black/dark and white/ light , were successfully trained to identify and name different shades of red .

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• Broader attempts to relate types of language structure to patterns
• f social organization have also met with failure
• Finally, the claim that it would be impossible to describe certain

things in a particular language because that language lacks the necessary resources is only partially valid at best.

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• The most valid conclusion concerning the Whorfian

hypothesis is that it is still unproved

CONCLUSION

• There is relationship between language and thought
• But, stronger version of Sapri-Whorf Hypothesis seems to

reject creativity

• Has been rejected

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Hollywood movie based

• n Sapir-

Whorf Hypothesis

KINSHIP TERMS

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• Kinship terms describes how people in the various parts
• f the world refer to relatives by blood and marriage.
• Kinship systems are universal features of language,

because kinship is so important in social organization.

• Some systems are much richer than others, but all

make use of such factors as gender, age , generation , blood ,and marriage in their organization.

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Parents’ Brothers

Father’s/Mother’s Brother

English Urdu Punjabi Mother’s Brotherںومام Habitual

KINSHIP TERMS

Father’s Brotherاچچ Uncle Mother’s Brother Father’s Brother Mother’s Brother

ںومام

Father’s Brother

ایات

Elder brother Younger brotherاچاچ

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CONCLUSION

 It is the kinship system which determines who is

called what; it is not the behaviour of individuals which leads them to be called this or that.

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TAXONOMIES

• People also use language to classify and categorize various

aspects of the world in which they live, but they do not always classify things the way scientists do

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COLOUR

color is all around but it is not everywhere treated in the same way The terms people use to describe color give us another means of exploring the relationships between different languages and cultures

sometimes cannot directly translate color words from one language to another without introducing subtle changes in meaning

• black and white (or dark and light).
• Black, white, red.
• Black, white, red, yellow
• Black, white, red, yellow, green, (but the order may be

reversed).

• The sixth and seventh terms are blue and brown.
• Finally, English, gray, pink, orange, and purple, (but not

in any particular order).

• nly eleven basic

color terms

CONCEPTUAL SPACE FOR BASIC COLOUR TERMS

BRIGHTNE SS COOL WARM ACHROMAT IC CHROMATI C

Summary of color terms Language type

1 2 3 4 5 6 White, Black< Red, Green< Brown/ Yellow< Brown/ Yellow/ Blue< Blue/Br

• wn/Yel

low/Silv er/Gold en/Ora nge/Pur ple< Brown, Blue, Yellow, Silver, Golden,

• range,

Pink, Purple, Grey No of color terms 2 4 5 6 & 7 8 13 Language Wangri Hindko, Pahari, Saraiki, Punjabi Pothwar i Shina, Sindhi, Urdu, Balti, Pushto, Wakhi Khawar, Brahvi Brushu ski

Note: This example may be useful but cannot be fully authentic as it has been taken from an unpublished term paper.

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PROTOTYPES

Rosch (1976) has proposed an alternative to the view that concepts are composed from sets of features which necessarily and sufficiently define instances of a concept

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TABOO AND EUPHEMISM

• language is used to avoid saying certain things as well as to

express them

• linguistic taboo
• Taboo is an expression that causes anxiety, embarrassment, or shame

to members of a society deliberate circumlocutions Tabooed subjects can vary widely: sex; death; excretion; bodily functions; religious matters; and politics

• لباس
• sex

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• euphemisms
• Euphemistic expressions allow us to talk about unpleasant things and

disguise or neutralize the unpleasantness, e.g., the subjects of sickness, death and dying, unemployment, and criminality.

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REFERENCES

• Trudgill, P. (2000). Sociolinguistics: An introduction to

language and society. London: Penguin.

• Holmes, J. (2012). An introduction to sociolinguistics.

Harlow: Pearson.

• Wardhaugh, R. (2006). An introduction to Sociolinguistics.

Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.