Culture and Language
What We Say Influences What
We Think, What We Feel and
What We Believe
Unique Human Ability
• Ability to create and use language is the
most distinctive feature of humans
• Humans learn their culture through
language
• Culture is transmitted through language
THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE
• Considerable variation in the number of
languages in the world
• 95% of the world’s people speak fewer
that 100 of the approximate 6,000 different
languages
• Linguists concerned about the last 5% of
the world’s languages which are in danger
of disappearing
Language Moribund
• Moribund—spoken only by a few older
people and unknown to children
• Perhaps as many as 90% of all world
languages will be extinct or moribund
within the next 100 years
• An entire way of thinking is lost each time
a language becomes extinct
Seven functions of Language
• Instrumental
Language
• Regulatory Language
• Interactional
Language
• Personal Language
• Imaginative Language
• Heuristic Language
• Informative Language
Instrumental Language
• What we use to get what we want, to
satisfy needs or desires
• Early stages it may be to satisfy simple
needs and wants
• Later sophisticated; may take the form of
polite requests
• Still later becomes more complex, takes
form of persuasion and argument