4 of 7

Write now Article Tools

Language influence culture at the very start by defining it. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, says "culture" is a:

"noun 1 the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. 2 a refined understanding or appreciation of this. 3 the customs, institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or group... "while Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions by American anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Klukhohn, enumerated no less than 164 definitions!

It is, in fact, in 20th century anthropology that the meaning popularly associated with the word "culture" today was first used: the distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively. Another meaning easily associated with this was the capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols (that is, writing).

If, as Matthew Arnold asserted, culture is the "best that has been thought and said in the world.", then language difficulties arise primarily in the vexed question of transferring these "manifestations of human intellectual achievement " across a global social partition composed of diverse, disparate and particularly chauvinistic mix of "customs, institutions and intellectual achievement" and often, of course, language. This is a screening membrane that can, at best, be a semi-permeable one.

The paragons of different cultures tend to be able to cross nationalistic barriers by using their gift of language use to the world-wide audience the influence of writers such as Shakespeare and Marx on the East is undoubted. Rabindranath Tagore, Mohandas Gandhi, Confucius and others have all likwise had an astonishing effect on the West. However, the fact is they are representing the dominant culture of the region It is a viewpoint from one paradigm, what sociologists term the "common culture', in the language used to picture that paradigm.

"Romeo & Juliet, so often praised with words like "the world's best love story", is a story based solely on Western chivalric, social and political notions, as are all Shakespeare's plays and poems- he knew no other. Would it be as internationally-famous were it not for the effects of imperialism? Similar questions might be posed of others such as Marx, Lenin and Rousseau. The growth of the United States is little more than a further expansion of Western culture which, aided and abetted by modern mass communication systems, has, again, spanned the globe.

There are a few truly international authors, such as Sun Tzu but, generally, their 'theories' can be be applied anywhere - Sun Tzu, specialising in warfare, clearly and too sadly transcends space, time and culture. Members of the human species are, otherwise, trained in the family and in their education, formal and informal, to behave in ways that are conventional and fixed by tradition

Learn more about this author, Tamaal Ghosh.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about How language influences culture?
We want to hear your view. Write now!