Language And Culture Definitions Asignacion 2 Szelaya
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MODULE 1 INTRODUCTION
Transcript of Language And Culture Definitions Asignacion 2 Szelaya
MODULE 1INTRODUCTION
The word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses: Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities,
also known as high culture
British poet and critic Matthew Arnold viewed "culture" as the cultivation of the humanist ideal.
An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning.
Johann Herder called attention to national cultures.
The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group
British anthropologist Edward Tylor was one of the first English-speaking scholars to use the term culture in an inclusive and universal sense
The term "culture" in American anthropology had two meanings: (1) the evolved human capacity to classify and
represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively.
Petroglyphs in Gobustan, Azerbaijan, dating back to 10,000 BC indicating a thriving culture.
(2) the distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively.
A language is a particular kind of system for encoding and decoding information. Since language and languages became an object of study (logos) by the ancient grammarians, the term has had many and different definitions.
Ancient Tamil inscription at the Brihadeeswara Temple in Thanjavur
Aristotle, for example, believed that language was part of the intrinsic nature of man, related to their natural propensities to be "political,"
Thomas Hobbes, followed by John Locke and others, said that language is an extension of the "speech" that humans have within themselves as part of reason, one of the most primary characteristics of human nature.
Merlin Donald sees language as a later development building upon what he refers to as mimetic culture, emphasizing that this co -evolution depended upon the interactions of many individuals.
He writes: A shared communicative culture, with sharing of
mental representations to some degree, must have come first, before language, creating a social environment in which language would have been useful and adaptive.
When an infant is born, it is not
unlike any other infant born, in
fact, quite similar. It is not unti l
the child is exposed to their
surroundings that they become
individuals in and of their cultural
group.
