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Part I Review

Term Definition Define the following 4 terms: 1. Pidgin 2. Creole 3. Bilingualism 4. diglossia

Part II New Content

Chapter 9 Language and Culture

9.1 Introduction

General Idea 1. Language and culture are intrinsically dependent, and have evolved together through the history. 2. Language is related to cognition, and cognition is related to the cultural setting.

9.2 What Is Culture?

1. Definition I In a broad sense, culture means the total way of life of a people including the patterns of belief, customs, objects, institutions, techniques, and language that characterizes the life of the human community.

2. Definition II In a narrow sense, culture may refer to local or specific practice, beliefs of customs, which can be mostly found in folk culture, enterprise culture or food culture etc.

3. Classification of culture 1. Material cultural: concrete, substantial and observable 2. Spiritual culture: theproducts of mind (ideologies, beliefs, values and concepts of time and space, for example), abstract, ambiguous, and hidden

4. Culture Vs. Nature Nature refers to what is born and grows, while culture refers to what has been grown and brought up with, in other words, what can be nurtured.

9.3 The relationship between language and culture

1. Language and culture: A dialectical relationship 1. Every language is part of a culture. As such, it cannot but serve and reflect cultural needs. 2. Yet, in another sense, language is not a passive reflector or culture. It reinforces and preserves beliefs and customs and conditions their future course. ( 胡壮麟等 1988 ： 250)

2. Language and culture: A relationship of “ part to whole ” Culture is a wider system that completely includes language as a subsystem.

3. Summary 1. Language both expresses and embodies cultural reality. 2. As a product of culture, language helps perpetuate the culture, and the changes in language uses reflect the cultural changes in return. 3. Cultural determinism Vs. linguistic determinism

9.4 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

1. Definiton It is a hypothesis concerning the relationship between language and thought, proposed by Whorf, under the influence of Sapir, his teacher. According to this hypothesis, the structure of the language people habitually use influences the ways they think and behave. That is to say, different languages offer people different ways of express the world around, they thin and speak differently.

2. Evidence All observers are not led by the same physical environment to same picture of universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated. (Whorf 1940)

3. The strong and the weak version Strong: the language patterns determine people ’ s thinking and behavior. Weak: the language patterns influence people ’ s thinking and behavior. L C LT

Homework 1. Review 2. Pp. 141 Ex. 1- 2(oral) 3. Prepare Chapter 9 (5-8)