Language, Culture and their effects on Education

Language and culture are two different terms. However, the purpose of this essay is to explain that they are related one another in the sense that both of them are ways through which people from all over the world express themselves by showing their ideas and thoughts. This essay will also refer to how language and culture are also related to education and how it affects in this. Nevertheless, before starting with details and all the explanations, a definition of language and culture must be given.

Language is a type of communication that is learned in the process of our life. And is not something we get naturally. It has symbols such as codes, sounds or gestures which have meanings created by the people. All these symbols have form but the meaning can not be discovered as simply as their forms because most of them are abstract. Moreover some of the words have important and powerful meanings which can be offensive for some people if they are not used correctly. Language is also exposed to a continuous change, many new words are appearing day by day and the meaning of words used in the past can get a new meaning over the time. We can find different languages from one country to another or maybe it changes depending on social classes, the place where we live, the people we share with, etc. It is expressed through different ways, for example it can be spoken, written and even gestures that mean something.

On the other hand, what we know as culture is all kind of expressions or customs that identify certain ethnic groups, in other words, the people’s behavior. For instance, "knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by people from a specific society" ( Primitive Culture. Edward B.Tylor. 1871). As well as Language, culture keeps changing. Culture is also symbolic, for example when we say the word “home” we immediately associate it with a structure where a family lives, however it may have a totally different meaning for other cultures. "Culture is grown and groomed and it’s what enables us to be, it means that thanks to culture we can interact and understand one another. But it can also impede communication and understanding with others because of the differences from one culture to another" (Kramsch, C., 1998. Language and Culture. Oxford University Press)

Now, from these definitions we can start talking about the relationship between them both.

Through language people express facts, ideas, knowledge about the world. It expresses each cultural reality, the way people see the world and all this is symbolized by language, giving a representation of the social groups. Social identity, which is values, attitudes and beliefs are also demonstrated by language. With this we can see that Language shows the people’s culture, permitting to know what group we belong to and it is not showed by just one way but there are different sorts of language expressions. For example, first, there is written language which means knowing how to write an appropriated document, second we have discourse community which is the use of certain topics we can have similar with the other person,finally, speech community which involves values and attitude. Of course all this depends on the context. Therefore Language and Culture are a complement, because Language is produced by Culture and language is one of the ways through which culture expresses itself. As it’s said in the text “Language and Culture” by Claire Kramsch, “Culture is the product of socially and historically situated discourse communities, that are to a large extent imagined communities, created and shaped by language”. We need language because if we don’t have it, we can not spread history over the time and if we don’t have history, then we would not have the knowledge of the amounts of cultures and the understanding of them.

Both language and culture have a big importance inside a classroom or in schools. Nowadays we can find a huge amount of cultures or subcultures that are present in the school. Therefore, teachers must have close relationships with the students so that they can have knowledge of the cultures they belong to. Once the teacher knows the students culture, he or she will be able to understand them better because each student is part of a culture. As a result of that, not all the students will express in the same way, either it is the way they speak or the way they use the language because it varies and there is a specific vocabulary in each culture.





Bibliography:


- “Language and Culture” by Claire Kramsch.

- http://anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_2.htm

- Deacon, Terrence William (1998). The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain.

- wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn