1 of 26

Language

Write now Article Tools

Language and culture are closely linked to each other, and throughout history, they have grown in tandem; in the first instance, however, the rudiments of language were necessary for the establishment of culture. If culture can be likened to a living cell, then language is its DNA, encoding cultural information and making possible its transmission.

The first principle is that culture is an adaptive pattern that is learned. If a behavior is purely instinctive, it is not a part of culture. In human societies, it is probably safe to say that no instinct exists that is not at least partially modified by culture, and that includes the urge to procreate, but the point is useful in establishing that humans have cultures, while lesser animals do not. The second principle is that cultures are transmitted through communication between individuals, and not simply by the observation of one individual by another. The more advanced animals are capable of building upon instinct by learning: birds show their hatchlings how to move their wings to fly, and young carnivores learn how to hunt by watching a parent or other elder, but at no point is there the transmission of an abstract concept. Language alone is capable of such transmission, and therefore, language is vitally necessary to any culture.

Language is a very sophisticated construct that is capable of embedding a great deal of cultural information into a compact form, and of transmitting that information on a subconscious level. Vocabulary does not merely give us the tools to describe things, it also governs how we perceive them, creating categories that assist us in judgments and even defining the data that we perceive and the data that will pass unnoticed. Grammar and syntax influence our senses of causality. Phonemes, the building blocks of words, forge conceptual connections among things and ideas that otherwise might seem very different from each other.

Vocabulary teaches people how to conceptualize the world around them, and even closely related cultures have marked differences here. As anyone who speaks more than one language has noticed, not everything can be translated in a satisfactory manner, usually because the words involved have shades of meaning that are not conveyed in the corresponding words in another language. Consider the use of the word "friend" in English, German and Russian.

In English, we use the term fairly loosely, falling back on adjectives like "close" if emphasis is needed. One can meet someone

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Which came first: Language or culture??
We want to hear your view. Write now!