Cultural Values and Language

1. Cultural Values and Language Understanding beliefs in context

2. Why is Language Important to the Study of Cultural Values and Beliefs? • Language, its grammatical structures can influence our worldviews: • the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: the grammatical structure of a language influences the way we perceive the world. E.g. lack of past and future tenses in Hopi. • however, language may influence perception, but not determine it, e.g. gender distinctions in French, Italian and Spanish.

3. Example of Gender Symbols in Medical Textbooks • What is a symbol? Something that represents something else. All language is symbolic. • In the medical textbooks of the 1980s, conception was viewed through the conventional ways that scientists interpreted existing gender relations. • 1950s-1980s: models of conception relied on a perception that the sperm was active and the egg was passive. • Late 1980s: models gradually changed to show that both egg and sperm contributed to conception. • But sometimes, conventional gender stereotypes still prevailed: egg is represented as a ‘temptress’ that entraps the sperm. • National geographic concept of the active sperm.

4. What are the Characteristics of Language? • 1. It is universal. All human cultures possess language. • 2. It is symbolic: i.e. in language, an abstract symbol stands for something else. Consider the example of the word dog. How is it expressed in different languages? • Do these abstract symbols look like a dog, smell like a dog, act like a dog? NO. • In language, signs represent something completely different than themselves. • 3. It is conventional: There is no necessary or inherent relation between the symbol and what it represents. The fact that the symbol d-o-g represents a four-legged furry animal is a product of culture and history. • 4. It is productive: humans can combine words and sounds into new utterances that have never been used before. • It can express displacement. This means that through language, you can express things that happened in the past, in geographically distant places, and what might happen in the future. This is possible due to the abstract and symbolic character of language.

5. Self and Other in the Structure of Language • Universe of young infants seen as a continuum. • Distinguishing self and other in the ‘mirror’ phase: involves a recognition that the infant and its caregivers are separate. • Recognition of the self as separate from others forms a basic dyad of language. • Self=Subject of Action, Other=Object of Action • Language and naming breaks up the world into separate objects. • Binary Oppositions: Bringing Order out of Chaos. The fact that language is based on binary distinctions means that gender becomes an important metaphor for social differences. Other important binary distinctions are: nature/culture, night/day, up/down; inside/outside. • Key Symbols: Often the human body is used as a symbol to express differences between Self and Others, Self and the Outside World. Parts of the body that leave us are often treated with ‘taboos’: e.g. urine, blood, feces, hair, fingernails, sweat, mucous. They bridge the boundary between self/other and hence have the potential to ‘break’ up the ‘natural’ order of things.