GROUP 1 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND SOCIETY FEBRUARY 27, 2024

BSED ENGLISH 1A TUESDAY 11 AM- 2 PM

I. INTRODUCTION

Language is arbitrary. It definitely changes as the time goes by. However, there are many factors to
consider as to why language has been modified, if not changed. The geographical location of a certain
place, the culture, and even the circles are some of the main factors of this.

In the contemporary world, people are saying that language and discourse are now more important than
ever before, and across the Humanities and Social Sciences, there has been a major discursive/linguistic
turn’. Instead of trying to identify the central, stable features that characterize different individuals,
groups or ‘cultures”, researchers are now much more interested in trying to establish the ways in which
language and discourse are used to construct cultural difference and social identity, both in face-to-face
interaction and in public representations.

So this module looks at the debates about the role that language places in power, ideology, resistance
and social change, and considers several major 20th century cultural theorists, such as Pierre Bourdieu,
Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman (King’s College, 2019)

II. WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

Language, a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which
human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. The
functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression,
and emotional release.

Many definitions of language have been proposed.

1. Henry Sweet- an English phonetician and language scholar, stated: “Language is the expression
of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words. Words are combined into sentences,
this combination answering to that of ideas into thoughts.”
2. Bernard Bloch and George L.. Trager- The American linguists formulated the following definition:
“A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.”
Any succinct definition of language makes a number of presuppositions and begs a number of
questions. The first, for example, puts excessive weight on “thought,” and the second uses
“arbitrary” in a specialized, though legitimate, way.

A number of considerations (marked in italics below) enter into a proper understanding of language as a
subject:

Every physiologically and mentally typical person acquires in childhood the ability to make use, as both
sender and receiver, of a system of communication that comprises a circumscribed set of symbols (e.g.,
sounds, gestures, or written or typed characters). In spoken language, this symbol set consists of noises
resulting from movements of certain organs within the throat and mouth. In signed languages, these
symbols may be hand or body movements, gestures, or facial expressions. By means of these symbols,
people are able to impart information, to express feelings and emotions, to influence the activities of
others, and to comport themselves with varying degrees of friendliness or hostility toward persons who
make use of substantially the same set of symbols.

Different systems of communication constitute different languages; the degree of difference needed to
establish a different language cannot be stated exactly. No two people speak exactly alike; hence, one is
able to recognize the voices of friends over the telephone and to keep a distinct number of unseen
speakers in a radio broadcast. Yet, clearly, no one would say that they speak different languages,
Generally, systems of communication are recognized as different languages if they cannot be understood
without specific learning by both parties, though the precise limits of mutual intelligibility are hard to
draw and belong on a scale rather than on either side of a definite dividing line. Substantially different
systems of communication that may impede but do not prevent mutual comprehension are called
dialects of a language. In order to describe in detail the actual different language patterns of individuals,
the term idiolect, meaning the habits of expression of a single person, has been coined.

Typically, people acquire a single language initially their first language, or native tongue, the language
used by those with whom, or by whom, they are brought up from infancy. Subsequent “second”
languages are learned to different degrees of competence under various conditions. Complete mastery
of two languages is designated as bilingualism: in many cases such as upbringing by parents using
different languages at home or being raised within a multilingual community children grow up as
bilinguals. In traditionally monolingual cultures. The learning, to any extent, of a second or other
language is an activity superimposed on the prior mastery of one’s first language and is a different
process intellectually.

Language, as described above, is species-specific to human beings. Other members of the animal
kingdom have the ability to communicate, through vocal noises or by other means, but the most
important single feature characterizing human language (that is, every individual language), against
every known mode of animal communication, is its infinite productivity and creativity. Human beings are
unrestricted in what they can communicate; no area of experience is accepted as necessarily
incommunicable, though it may be necessary to adapt one’s language in order to cope with new
discoveries or new modes of thought. Animal communication systems are by contrast very tightly
circumscribed in what may be communicated. Indeed, displaced reference, the ability to communicate
about things outside. Immediate temporal and spatial contiguity, which is fundamental to speech, is
found elsewhere. Only in the so-called language of bees. Bees are able, by carrying out various
conventionalized movements (referred to as bee dances) in or near the hive, to indicate to others the
locations and. Strengths of food sources.

But food sources are the only known theme of this communication system. Surprisingly. However, this
system, nearest to human language in function, belongs to a species remote from humanity in the
animal kingdom. On the other hand, the animal performance superficially most like human speech, the
mimicry of parrots and of some other birds that have been kept in the company of humans, is wholly
derivative and serves no independent communicative function. Humankind’s nearest relatives among
the primates, though possessing a vocal physiology similar to that of humans, have not developed
anything like a spoken language. Attempts to teach sign language to chimpanzees and other apes
through imitation have achieved limited success, though the interpretation of the significance of ape
signing ability remains controversial.

In most accounts, the primary purpose of language is to facilitate communication, in the sense of
transmission of information from one person to another. However, sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic
studies have drawn attention to a range of other functions for language. Among these is the use of
language to express a national or local identity (a common source of conflict in situations of multi-
ethnicity around the world, such as in Belgium, India, and Quebec). Also important are the “ludic”
(playful) function of language- encountered in such phenomena as puns. Riddles, and crossword puzzles
and the range of functions seen in imaginative or symbolic contexts, such as poetry, drama, and religious
expression.

Language interacts with every aspect of human life in society, and it can be understood only if it is
considered in relation to society. This article attempts to survey language in this light and to consider its
various functions and the purposes it can and has been made to serve. Because each language is both a
working system of communication in the period and in the community wherein it is used and also the
product of its history and the source of its future development, any account of language must consider it
from both these points of view. The science of language is known as linguistics. It includes what are
generally distinguished as descriptive linguistics and historical linguistics. Linguistics is now a highly
technical subject; it embraces, both descriptively and historically, such major divisions as phonetics,
grammar (including syntax and morphology), semantics, and pragmatics, dealing in detail with these
various aspects of language.

III. Historical Attitudes toward Language

As is evident from the discussion above, human life in its present form would be impossible and
inconceivable without the use of language. People have long recognized the force and significance of
language. Naming applying a word to pick out and refer to a fellow human being, an animal, an object,
or a class of such beings or objects is only one part of the use of language, but it is an essential and
prominent part. In many cultures people have seen in the ability to name a means to control or to
possess; this explains the reluctance, in some communities, with which names are revealed to strangers
and the taboo restrictions found in several parts of the world on using the names of persons recently
dead. Such restrictions echo widespread and perhaps universal taboos on naming directly things
considered obscene. Blasphemous, or very fearful.

Perhaps not surprisingly, several independent traditions ascribe a divine or at least a supernatural origin
to language or to the language of a particular community.

 The biblical account, representing ancient Jewish beliefs, of Adam’s naming the creatures of the
earth under God’s guidance is one such example: So out of the ground the Lord God formed
every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he
would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. (Genesis
2:19)
 Norse mythology preserves a similar story of divine participation in the creation of language, and
in India the god Indra is said to have invented articulate speech. In the debate on the nature and
origin of language given in Plato’s Socratic dialogue Cratylus, Socrates is made to speak of the
gods as those responsible for first fixing the names of things in the proper way. A similar divine
aura pervades early accounts of the origin of writing. The Norse god Odin was held responsible
for the invention of the runic alphabet. The inspired stroke of genius whereby the ancient Greeks
adapted a variety of the Phoenician consonantal script so as to represent the distinctive
consonant and vowel sounds of Greek, thus producing the first alphabet such as is known today,
was linked with the mythological figure Cadmus, who, coming from Phoenicia, was said to have
founded Thebes and introduced writing into Greece (see Phoenician language). By a traditional
account, the Arabic alphabet, together with the language itself, was given to Adam by God.

 The later biblical tradition of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) exemplifies three aspects of
early thought about language: (1) divine interest in and control over its use and development, (2)
a recognition of the power it gives to humans in relation to their environment. And (3) an
explanation of linguistic diversity, of the fact that people in adjacent communities speak different
and mutually unintelligible languages, together with a survey of the various. Speech
communities of the world known at the time to the Hebrew people.

 The origin of language has never failed to provide a subject for speculation, and its inaccessibility
adds to its fascination. Informed investigations of the probable conditions under which language
might have originated and developed are seen in the late 18th-century essay of the German
philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder. “Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache” (“Essay
on the Origin of Language”), and in numerous other treatments. But people. Have tried to go
farther, to discover or to reconstruct something like the actual forms and structure of the first
language. This lies forever beyond the reach of science, in that spoken language in some form is
almost certainly coeval with Homo sapiens. The earliest records of written language, the only
linguistic fossils humanity can hope to have, go back no more than 4,000 to 5,000 years. Some
people have tried to claim that the cries of animals and birds, or nonlexical expressions of
excitement or anger, evolved into human speech, as if onomatopoeia were the essence of
language: these claims have been ridiculed for their inadequacy (by, for example, the Oxford
philologist Max Müller in the 19th century) and have. Been given nicknames such as “bowwow”
and “poolt-pooh” theories.

 On several occasions attempts have been made to identify one particular existing language as
representing the original or oldest tongue of humankind, but, in fact, the universal process of
linguistic change rules out any such hopes from the start. The Greek historian Herodotus told a
(possibly satirical) story in which King Psamtik I of Egypt (reigned 664-610 BCE) caused a child to
be brought up without ever hearing a word spoken in his presence. On one occasion it ran up to
its guardian as he brought it some bread, calling out “bekos, bekos”; this, being said to be the
Phrygian word for bread, proved that Phrygian was the oldest language. The naiveté and
 absurdity of such an account have not prevented the repetition of this experiment elsewhere at
other times.

 In Christian Europe the position of Hebrew as the language of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)
gave valid grounds through many centuries for regarding Hebrew, the language in which God
was assumed to have addressed Adam, as the parent language of all humankind. Such a view
continued to be expressed even well into the 19th century. Only since the mid-1800s has
linguistic science made sufficient progress finally to clarify the impracticability of speculation
along these lines.

 When people have begun to reflect on language, its relation to thinking becomes a central
concern. Several cultures have independently viewed the main function of language as the
expression of thought. Ancient Indian grammarians speak of the soul apprehending things with
the intellect and inspiring the mind with a desire to speak, and in the Greek intellectual tradition
Aristotle declared, “Speech is the representation of the experiences of the mind (On
Interpretation). Such an attitude passed into Latin theory and thence into medieval doctrine.
Medieval grammarians envisaged three stages in the speaking process: things in the world
exhibit properties; these properties are understood by the minds of humans: and, in the manner
in which they have been understood, so they are communicated to others by the resources of
language. Rationalist writers on language in the 17th century gave essentially a similar account:
speaking is expressing thoughts by signs invented for the purpose, and words of different classes
(the different parts of speech) came into being to correspond to the different aspects of thinking.

Such a view of language continued to be accepted as generally adequate and gave rise to the sort. Of
definition proposed by Henry Sweet and quoted above. The main objection to it is that it either gives so
wide an interpretation to thought as virtually to empty the word of any specific content. Or gives such a
narrow interpretation of language as to exclude a great deal of normal usage. A recognition of the part
played by speaking and writing in social cooperation in everyday life has highlighted the many and varied
functions of language in all cultures, apart from the functions strictly involved in the communication of
thought, which had been the main focus of attention. For those who approached language from the
standpoint of the philosopher. To allow for the full range of language used by speakers, more-
comprehensive definitions of language have been proposed on the lines of the second one quoted at the
beginning of this article-namely, “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a
social group cooperates.” Despite the breadth of this definition, however, its use of the word vocal
excludes all languages. That are not vocalized, particularly manual (signed) languages.

A rather different criticism of accepted views on language began to be made in the 18th century, most
notably by the French philosopher Etienne Bonnot de Condillac in “Essai sur l’origine des connaissances
humaines” (1746; “Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge”) and by Johann Gottfried von Herder.
These thinkers were concerned with the origin and development of language in relation to thought in a
way that earlier students had not been. The medieval and rationalist views implied that humans, as
rational, thinking creatures, invented language to express their thoughts, fitting words to an already
developed structure of intellectual competence. With the examination of the actual and the probable
historical relations between thinking and communicating, it became more plausible to say that language
emerged not as the means of expressing already formulated judgments, questions, and the like but as
the means of thought itself, and that humans rationality developed together with the development of
their capacity for communicating.

The relations between thought and ”communication are certainly not fully explained today, and it is clear
that it is a great oversimplification to define thought as sub vocal speech, in the manner of some
behaviorists. But it is no less clear that propositions and other alleged logical structures cannot be wholly
separated from the language structures said to express them. Even the symbolizations of modern formal
logic are ultimately derived from statements made in some natural language and are interpreted in that
light.

The intimate connection between language and thought, as opposed to the earlier assumed. unilateral
dependence of language on thought, opened the way to a recognition of the possibility that different
language structures might in part favor or even determine different ways of understanding and thinking
about the world. All people inhabit a broadly similar world, or they would be unable to translate from
one language to another, but they do not all inhabit a world exactly the same in all particulars, and
translation is not merely a matter of substituting different but equivalent labels for the contents of the
same inventory. From this stem the notorious difficulties in translation, especially when the
systematizations of science, law, morals, social structure, and so on are involved. The extent of the
interdependence of language and thought-linguistic relativity, as it has been termed is still a matter of
debate, but the fact of such interdependence can hardly fail to be acknowledged.

IV. Language and Social Forms and Function

Language is a means of communication and becomes a basic aspect of human social life
Interaction. People can only share ideas or feelings through language, either verbally or non
Verbally. As Agha notes, we cannot understand the variety of social relations enactable in social
Life without coming to grips with the range of reflexive relationships expressible through speech. We,
therefore, can say that language is significant in our lives, and people cannot
Maintain good relationship with others without language. May-be because of the vital role of a
Language in a society, has inspired Fromkin (2007, 3) to argue that whatever else people do when they
come together – whether they play, fight, make love, or make automobiles – they talk. We live in a world
of language. We talk to our friends, our associates, our wives and husbands, our lovers, our teachers, our
parents, our rivals, and even our enemies, and everyone responds with more talk.

What Is Social Relations?

Social relation is one of the main concerns in sociological perspectives.

Social interaction is the term used by most of sociologists under the umbrella of Microsociology. Social
interaction is equivalent with social relation which is frequently used in
Sociological textbooks. Social interaction is the process by which we act and react in relation to those
around us (Giddens, 2001,p.80). Agha mentioned it as highly systematic in each locale for persons who
recognize themselves as so related. Kendall (1998, p.121) says, on the one hand, that social interaction
within a given society has certain shared meanings across situations. On the other hand, people from
different cultures or countries have different ways of maintaining interaction. If so, the speakers of
different cultures should understand the way of communicating ideas, feeling, and thought to others.
Agha argues in the introductory chapter to Language and Social Relations that social relations vary across
human societies in ways that are limitlessly varied, endlessly susceptible to reanalysis, periodic
stabilization and change. Through making use of language and social relations, people from different
language or culture can understand and distinguish themselves from others. Language allows people to
distinguish themselves from outsiders and maintain group boundaries and solidarity (Farb in Kendall,
1998)
 V. Frameworks of Language

7 Frameworks of Language

 LEXIS
Vocabulary of a language. When analyzing text with this, notice words that shar a similar topic or
focus.

 SEMANTICS
The study of how meaning is created through words and phrases. Meanings may by explicit or
implicit (a word will have a literal meaning but it can also have associated meanings)

 SYNTAX/GRAMMAR
The system of rules that governs how words and sentences are constructed.
1. Grouping (verbs, nouns etc).
2. A system of rules of how these types of words function in relation to each other (syntax).
3. The individual units that make up a whole word.

 PHONOLOGY
The study of sounds in English. Non-Verbal Aspects of Speech (NVAS) or prosody- features of spoken
language such as pace, stress, rhythm, and intonation.

 PRAGMANTICS
Context (language in use)- Formality and social conventions.

 GRAPHOLOGY
The appearance of a text. Discuss typeface, positioning and the relationship between the text and
image.

 DISCOURSE
This is an extended piece of spoken or written language.
VI. Resources

Quiatchon L. ENG.101 LANGUAGE CULTURE AND SOCIETY. Studuco.

https://www.studocu.com/ph/document/university-of-st-la-salle/bachelor-of-secondary-education-
major-in-english/language-culture-society-module-1-introduction/21538429

Agha, A. 2006. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge. Org.

https://www.cambridge.org/ph/universitypress/subjects/languages-linguistics/grammar-and-
syntax/language-and-social-relations?format=PB

Framework for Language Analysis. Englicious. Org.

http://www.englicious.org/lesson/framework-language-analysis