There are three major ways in which language is related to culture: language itself is a part of culture; every language provides an index of the culture with which it is most intimately associated; every language becomes symbolic of the culture with which it is most intimately associated.
Language as a part of culture
Most human behaviours are language-embedded, thus language is an inevitable part of culture. Ceremonies, rituals, songs, stories, spells, curses, prayers and laws (not to mention conversations, requests and instructions) are all speech acts or speech events. But such complex cultural arenas as socialization, education, barter and negotiation are also entirely awash in language. Language is, therefore, not only part of culture but also a major and crucial part. All those who seek fully to enter into and understand a given culture must, accordingly, master its language, for only through that language can they possibly participate in and experience the culture. Language shift, or loss of a culture’s intimately associated language, is indicative of extensive culture change, at the very least, and possibly of cultural dislocation and destruction, although a sense of cultural identity may, nevertheless, persist, as a conscious or unconscious attitudinal level.
Language as an Index of culture
The role of language as an index of culture is a byproduct (at a more abstract level) of its role as part of culture. Languages reveal the ways of thinking or of organizing experience that are common in the associated cultures. Of course, languages provide lexical terms for the bulk of the artefacts, concerns, values and behaviours recognized by their associated cultures. Above and beyond such obvious indexing, languages also reveal the native clusters or typologies into which the above referents are commonly categorized or grouped. Colours, illnesses, kinship relationships, foods, plants, body parts and animal species are all culture-bound typologies and their culturally recognized systematic qualities are revealed by their associated culture-bound languages. This is not to say that speakers of particular languages are inescapably forced to recognize only the categories encoded in their mother tongues. Such restrictions can be counteracted, at least in part, via cross-cultural and cross-linguistic experience, including exposure to mathematical and scientific languages which provide different categories from those encountered in ethnocultures and their associated mother tongues.
Language as symbolic of culture
Language is the most elaborate symbol system of humankind: it is no wonder that particular languages become symbolic of the particular ethnocultures in which they are embedded and which they index. This is not only a case of a part standing for the whole (as when Yiddish stereotypically stands for or evokes eastern European derived ultra-Orthodox Jewish culture when we hear it spoken or even mentioned), but also a case of the part becoming a rallying symbol for (or against) the whole and, in some cases, becoming a cause (or a target) in and of itself. Language movements and language conflicts utilize languages as symbols to mobilize populations to defend (or attack) and to foster (or reject) the cultures associated with them.
Joshua A.Fishman
Yeshiva University
Further reading
Cooper, R.L. and Spolsky, B. (eds) (1991) The Influence of Language on Culture and Thought, Berlin.
Button, T. (1992) Culture Change, Languate Change, Canberra.
Hanks, W.F. (1990) Referential Practice: Language and Lived Space Among the Maya, Chicago.
Muhlhausler, P., Harre, R. et al. (1990) Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Personal Identify, Oxford.
Urban, G. (1991) A Discourse-Centered Approach to Culture, Austin, TX.
