Blog du Culture and Language
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Eng 126
The personal and social interests and the environment of a group of people living together ( a culture) create a working language. This working language is malleable and quickly reflects new words, pronunciation, accenting and phrases to adequately describe (or not) new experiences, attitudes and experiences as suggested by Kirk Johnson?s short essay ?Today?s Kids Are, Like, Killing the English language,. Yeah, right.?(p 689). Ironically, the language may also keep out-dated words and their connotation, which is brought to light in ?The Quare Gene? by Tony Early (p 684). Language is a direct response to shared beliefs, customs, behavior, attitudes and survival techniques, and as such is a function of the culture. The culture shapes language -- it has to, because culture comes first.
Many academic professionals believe that the relationship between language and culture is the other way around. They feel that the language itself defines the culture. This is demonstrated by the archeological approach. In ?Reconstructing the Lost Tribe? (p 42) WLTC textbook, the author/editors ask us to describe an unknown, historic culture merely from a sampling of some findings about their language and the words themselves. With this approach it is easy to assume that language created the culture but this is not really the case as the culture itself created and used the language to verbally define and express what they knew and cared about.
The process is continual, much to the delight of humans who love to create new words and connotations to describe new information and new histories. For those of us who feel we cannot keep up with the constant changes and updates, there are plenty of books written by great authors like Honore de Balzac and of course William Shakespeare to keep us happy with the old and familiar. . . or is it?