Outline:
In the process of cultural development and progress, the language will be different development at the same time. Language and culture are interdependent, mutual influence and common development. This article describes the relationship between culture and language from several aspects.
Tylor,E. B. (1871) Primitive culture. London: Cambridge University Press.
In this book, anthropologist Edward Taylor regards culture as the object of study. He gives a definition to culture, and gives the law of culture development. He claims that culture was a whole and complex, mainly including knowledge, faith, art, law, morality, customs, and any other abilities and habits acquired as individual members of society. Taylor divides the language into “emotional language and analogy language” (Tylor, 1871). He argues that people from different countries have a variety of differences in language structure. Language is a kind of original product of low-level culture. After many years of gradual revision, development and selection, language is more or less able to meet the needs of modern civilization. From the definition of Taylor’s culture, the connotation of culture is very broad. Taylor’s thought emphasizes the spiritual aspects of culture. At the same time, a variety of cultural phenomena in human societies, as long as it can be studied via the universal principles, are all suitable for the study of human thought and activity rules. The book is full of artistic information and profound insights. Taylor makes a conclusion through the collection of large amounts of information, analysis of hundreds of different social circles around the world. His conclusion has a historical understanding on the academic community, therefore and is a very important reference for my research topic.
Humboldt, W. (1999) On language: On the diversity of human language construction and its influence on the mental development of the human species. London: Cambridge University Press. PP.11-22
Humboldt is one of the first to study language and culture and to think that language has a great influence on culture. He points out that it is wrong to attribute all the advantages and development of language to civilization and culture. From a historical point of view, we cannot prove that civilization and culture have such a strong control of language. He also believes that to truly understand the nature of language, we must transform from the personality elements to the national height. If we do not understand the national character of a language, we cannot understand the true characteristics of various individual language elements and the relationship between these individual elements. The author tells us that the problem should not be studied in isolation, it should be combined with the study of history, culture and customs. The language of a nation is the spirit of the nation, and the relationship between them is inseparable. The author puts the language in the cultural background of the specific nation and further examines the role of language in people’s understanding of the world. Many of his creative ideas have had a profound impact on my study of the relationship between language and culture.
Sapir, E. (1921) Language: An Introduction to Study of Speech. New York: Harhcount, Brace and Company.
Early in the 1920s. The American linguist, Sapir, points out that there is something behind the language, and the language cannot exist without culture. language is a very important part of culture, language has cultural characteristics. language is created by human beings as a spiritual wealth and it is a part of culture. Same as culture, language is not a biological inheritance, but acquired and learned later. Culture is the common wealth of the whole nation and language is the same, it is shared by the whole society. Language is like a mirror, it reflects a nation’s culture, revealing the contents of the national culture. Through a national language, people can understand the national customs, lifestyles, thinking characteristics and other cultural characteristics.
The book clearly points out the Relationship between Language and Culture. The author told us language and culture have a very close relationship. It is related to my research topic, so the author’s idea is particularly important in my research.
Whorf, B. L. (1956) Language, thought and reality. London: MI T. Press.
Anthropologists and linguists Sapir and Whorf put forward the famous Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. Since this view has not been confirmed so far, it is called a hypothesis. The hypothesis combines two principles. The first one is the linguistic determination. This principle holds that Language determines people’s way of thinking and all the high-level thinking depends on the language. The second one is linguistic relativism. This principle holds that people who use different languages have different feelings and experiences about the world. That is to say people’s feelings and experiences depend on their language background. Their assumptions were criticized by scholars in the field of linguistics and anthropology. The hypothesis explained that the language structure determines the behaviour and thinking habits of members of a cultural group, our way of thinking and looking at the world is shaped by the grammatical structure of the language we use. This strong hypothesis can be concluded that there is no real translation and that the learner cannot learn the language of another culture unless he abandons his own mode of mind. This book is chosen because the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis over- emphasizes the influence of language on human’s way of thinking and culture. They even think that humans are prisoners of language, while ignoring the social and cultural factors.
Goodenough, W. H. (1957). Cultural anthropology and linguistics. New York: Bobbs- Merrill.
In this book, Goodenough clearly points out the relationship between language and culture. He argues that the language of a society is one aspect of the culture of society, the relationship between language and culture is part and whole. Culture includes language and is one of the most important attributes of language. Language as a part of the culture can be partly expressed in: it is the main tool for learning culture. People get the whole knowledge of a culture in the process of learning and using and the accumulation of a language. Language embodies people’s perception and attitude towards the objective world, and records the process of national and social history development. Descendants must learn through the study of language to accumulate the whole culture accumulated. Language is an integral part of culture. I chose this book because the author’s point of view supports mine. culture involves all aspects of human life, any human society cannot be separated from culture, and language is one of the most important elements of a cultural system. Therefore, it has played a vital role in my research.
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