The Relationship between language, Communication and Culture

RUNNING HEAD: LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

The Relationship between language, Communication and Culture

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The Relationship between Language, Communication and Culture

Introduction

All living things: both plants and animals communicate in one way or the other. The basic aspect of this communication is the language. This may vary in form and nature from one species to the other. For example human language is completely different as it is learnt and not inherited like in the other forms. However this can also be different depending on the social position and the changes made on it creating a number of variants.

The connection involving language and culture is an essential part in every person’s day to day life. This is because language is basically the means through which social life is conducted. When therefore it is used for communication it integrates with culture in various complex and numerous ways. First and foremost, the words uttered by people relate to a particular shared experience since they express facts, views or events knowledgeable among the p[people who use it. Besides, the attitude, beliefs and the point of view of an author can easily be deciphered from the words they choose to use.

According to Kramsch despite the people of a community using language to show their experience, they also use it to create other experiences. For instance, every language has the ability to describe innovative situations and also objects (O’Neil, 2009). To effect  this various mediums are chosen such as use of phones or face to face communication, letter writing or sending of e-mail messages, newspaper reading or interpretation of charts or graphs. Depending on the means chosen whether visual, written or spoken meanings understandable to the group of people using it is created. This is through tonal variation, accent, and style of conversation, gestures or facial expressions (2008).

Additionally, language carries a sense of cultural value whereby different speakers are able to distinguish themselves from others trough the language they speak. In this case it hence serves as a toll for social identity. In general therefore language plays an important role as it expresses, embodies as well as symbolizes the reality of culture as illustrated in the above cases. Culture as defined by Kramsch can be defined as that which has already been grown and groomed hence the membership in a community sharing a common social place, history and imaginations (2008).

It can basically be said that language forms the basis of communication despite the different ways in which different cultures use it and also the way it expresses different cultures and their views.

According to Otto, language has a strong power to reflect culture as well as influence how people think. This hypothesis called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was formed by Edw.............