what is the relationship between language and culture essay

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Speaking, writing and reading are integral to everyday life, where language is the primary tool for expression and communication. Studying how people use language – what words and phrases they unconsciously choose and combine – can help us better understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do.

Linguistics scholars seek to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is acquired and the ways it changes over time. They consider language as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon.

“Understanding why and how languages differ tells about the range of what is human,” said Dan Jurafsky , the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities and chair of the Department of Linguistics in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford . “Discovering what’s universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity.”

The stories below represent some of the ways linguists have investigated many aspects of language, including its semantics and syntax, phonetics and phonology, and its social, psychological and computational aspects.

Understanding stereotypes

Stanford linguists and psychologists study how language is interpreted by people. Even the slightest differences in language use can correspond with biased beliefs of the speakers, according to research.

One study showed that a relatively harmless sentence, such as “girls are as good as boys at math,” can subtly perpetuate sexist stereotypes. Because of the statement’s grammatical structure, it implies that being good at math is more common or natural for boys than girls, the researchers said.

Language can play a big role in how we and others perceive the world, and linguists work to discover what words and phrases can influence us, unknowingly.

How well-meaning statements can spread stereotypes unintentionally

New Stanford research shows that sentences that frame one gender as the standard for the other can unintentionally perpetuate biases.

Algorithms reveal changes in stereotypes

New Stanford research shows that, over the past century, linguistic changes in gender and ethnic stereotypes correlated with major social movements and demographic changes in the U.S. Census data.

Exploring what an interruption is in conversation

Stanford doctoral candidate Katherine Hilton found that people perceive interruptions in conversation differently, and those perceptions differ depending on the listener’s own conversational style as well as gender.

Cops speak less respectfully to black community members

Professors Jennifer Eberhardt and Dan Jurafsky, along with other Stanford researchers, detected racial disparities in police officers’ speech after analyzing more than 100 hours of body camera footage from Oakland Police.

How other languages inform our own

People speak roughly 7,000 languages worldwide. Although there is a lot in common among languages, each one is unique, both in its structure and in the way it reflects the culture of the people who speak it.

Jurafsky said it’s important to study languages other than our own and how they develop over time because it can help scholars understand what lies at the foundation of humans’ unique way of communicating with one another.

“All this research can help us discover what it means to be human,” Jurafsky said.

Stanford PhD student documents indigenous language of Papua New Guinea

Fifth-year PhD student Kate Lindsey recently returned to the United States after a year of documenting an obscure language indigenous to the South Pacific nation.

Students explore Esperanto across Europe

In a research project spanning eight countries, two Stanford students search for Esperanto, a constructed language, against the backdrop of European populism.

Chris Manning: How computers are learning to understand language​

A computer scientist discusses the evolution of computational linguistics and where it’s headed next.

Stanford research explores novel perspectives on the evolution of Spanish

Using digital tools and literature to explore the evolution of the Spanish language, Stanford researcher Cuauhtémoc García-García reveals a new historical perspective on linguistic changes in Latin America and Spain.

Language as a lens into behavior

Linguists analyze how certain speech patterns correspond to particular behaviors, including how language can impact people’s buying decisions or influence their social media use.

For example, in one research paper, a group of Stanford researchers examined the differences in how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online to better understand how a polarization of beliefs can occur on social media.

“We live in a very polarized time,” Jurafsky said. “Understanding what different groups of people say and why is the first step in determining how we can help bring people together.”

Analyzing the tweets of Republicans and Democrats

New research by Dora Demszky and colleagues examined how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online in an attempt to understand how polarization of beliefs occurs on social media.

Examining bilingual behavior of children at Texas preschool

A Stanford senior studied a group of bilingual children at a Spanish immersion preschool in Texas to understand how they distinguished between their two languages.

Predicting sales of online products from advertising language

Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky and colleagues have found that products in Japan sell better if their advertising includes polite language and words that invoke cultural traditions or authority.

Language can help the elderly cope with the challenges of aging, says Stanford professor

By examining conversations of elderly Japanese women, linguist Yoshiko Matsumoto uncovers language techniques that help people move past traumatic events and regain a sense of normalcy.

The Relationship Between Language & Culture and the Implications for Language Teaching

The relationship between language and culture is deeply rooted. Language is used to maintain and convey culture and cultural ties. Different ideas stem from differing language use within one’s culture and the whole intertwining of these relationships start at one’s birth.

When an infant is born, it is not unlike any other infant born, in fact, quite similar. It is not until the child is exposed to their surroundings that they become individuals in and of their cultural group. This idea, which describes all people as similar at birth, has been around for thousands of years and was discussed by Confucius as recorded in the book by his followers, Analects (Xu, 1997). From birth, the child’s life, opinions, and language are shaped by what it comes in contact with. Brooks (1968) argues that physically and mentally everyone is the same, while the interactions between persons or groups vary widely from place to place. Patterns which emerge from these group behaviours and interactions will be approved of, or disapproved of. Behaviours which are acceptable will vary from location to location (Brooks, 1968) thus forming the basis of different cultures. It is from these differences that one’s view of the world is formed. Hantrais (1989) puts forth the idea that culture is the beliefs and practices governing the life of a society for which a particular language is the vehicle of expression. Therefore, everyone’s views are dependent on the culture which has influenced them, as well as being described using the language which has been shaped by that culture. The understanding of a culture and its people can be enhanced by the knowledge of their language. This brings us to an interesting point brought up by Emmitt and Pollock (1997), who argue that even though people are brought up under similar behavioural backgrounds or cultural situations but however speak different languages, their world view may be very different. As Sapir-Whorf argues, different thoughts are brought about by the use of different forms of language. One is limited by the language used to express one’s ideas. Different languages will create different limitations, therefore a people who share a culture but speak different languages, will have different world views. Still, language is rooted in culture and culture is reflected and passed on by language from one generation to the next (Emmitt & Pollock 1997). From this, one can see that learning a new language involves the learning of a new culture (Allwright & Bailey 1991). Consequently, teachers of a language are also teachers of culture (Byram 1989).

The implications of language being completely entwined in culture, in regards for language teaching and language policy are far reaching. Language teachers must instruct their students on the cultural background of language usage, choose culturally appropriate teaching styles, and explore culturally based linguistic differences to promote understanding instead of misconceptions or prejudices. Language policy must be used to create awareness and understandings of cultural differences, and written to incorporate the cultural values of those being taught.

Implications for language teaching Teachers must instruct their students on the cultural background of language usage. If one teaches language without teaching about the culture in which it operates, the students are learning empty or meaningless symbols or they may attach the incorrect meaning to what is being taught. The students, when using the learnt language, may use the language inappropriately or within the wrong cultural context, thus defeating the purpose of learning a language.

Conflict in teaching styles also stem from the relationship between language and culture. During the past decade, I have taught English in Taiwan and have observed a major difficulty in English instruction brought about by teachers and suffered by students. Western English teachers who teach in Taiwan bring along with them any or all of their teaching and learning experiences. To gain employment in Taiwan as an English teacher (legally), one must have received a Bachelor’s degree (Information for foreigners), thus, all instructors of English in Taiwan have, to some degree, an experience of learning in a higher educational setting. From this, they bring with them what they imagine to be appropriate teaching methodology. What is not generally understood, even seldom noticed is that while Taiwanese classes are conducted in a Chinese way, that is in a teacher centered learning environment, the native English teacher’s instruction is focused on student centered learning (Pennycook 1994). Pennycook (1994) continues by pointing out that student centered learning is unsuitable for Chinese students. The students may not know how to react to this different style of learning. A case in point, when at the beginning of my teaching career in Taiwan, I found it very easy to teach English, but very difficult to get the students to interact with me while I was teaching. Teaching was very easy because the students were well behaved and very attentive. The difficulties surfaced when trying to get the students to interact with me, their teacher. At the time, I did not realize that in Taiwan, it was culturally unacceptable for students to interact with their teacher. The Taiwanese students were trained to listen to what the teacher said, memorize it, and later regurgitate it during an exam. I was forced to change my method of teaching so that I was recognised as a “friend” rather than a teacher. The classroom setting had to be changed to a much less formal setting to coax out student interaction. As Murray (1982) pointed out, Chinese students will refuse to accept this “informal discussion” style of teaching. However, once the students were comfortable in their surroundings and didn’t associate it to a typical “Chinese” style class, they became uninhibited and freely conversed in English. The language classes taught using this style proved to be most beneficial to the students with an overall increase in the grade point average.

Because language is so closely entwined with culture, language teachers entering a different culture must respect their cultural values. As Englebert (2004) describes: “…to teach a foreign language is also to teach a foreign culture, and it is important to be sensitive to the fact that our students, our colleges, our administrators, and, if we live abroad, our neighbours, do not share all of our cultural paradigms.”

I have found teaching in Taiwan, the Chinese culture is not the one of individualism, as is mine, but focused on the family and its ties. The backwash from teaching using western culturally acceptable methods must be examined before proceeding as they may be inappropriate teaching methods, intentional or not, may cause the student embarrassment, or worse, to the entire students’ family. As Spence (1985) argues, success and failure in a Chinese cultural framework influences not just oneself but the whole family or group. Therefore, teachers must remember to respect the culture in which they are located.

Language teachers must realize that their understanding of something is prone to interpretation. The meaning is bound in cultural context. One must not only explain the meaning of the language used, but the cultural context in which it is placed as well. Often meanings are lost because of cultural boundaries which do not allow such ideas to persist. As Porter (1987) argues, misunderstandings between language educators often evolve because of such differing cultural roots, ideologies, and cultural boundaries which limit expression.

Language teachers must remember that people from different cultures learn things in different ways. For example, in China memorization is the most pronounced way to study a language which is very unlike western ideologies where the onus is placed on free speech as a tool for utilizing and remembering vocabulary and grammar sequences (Hui 2005). Prodromou (1988) argues that the way we teach reflects our attitudes to society in general and the individual`s place in society. When a teacher introduces language teaching materials, such as books or handouts, they must understand that these will be viewed differently by students depending on their cultural views (Maley 1986). For instance, westerners see books as only pages which contain facts that are open to interpretation. This view is very dissimilar to Chinese students who think that books are the personification of all wisdom, knowledge and truth (Maley 1986).

One should not only compare, but contrast the cultural differences in language usage. Visualizing and understanding the differences between the two will enable the student to correctly judge the appropriate uses and causation of language idiosyncrasies. For instance, I have found, during my teaching in Taiwan, that it is necessary to contrast the different language usages, especially grammatical and idiom use in their cultural contexts for the students to fully understand why certain things in English are said. Most Taiwanese students learning English are first taught to say “Hello. How are you?” and “I am fine. Thank you, and you?” This is believed to be what one must say on the first and every occasion of meeting a westerner. If I asked a student “What’s new?” or “How is everything?” they would still answer “I am fine, thank you and you?” Students often asked me why westerners greet each other using different forms of speech which, when translated to Mandarin, didn’t make sense. This question was very difficult to answer, until I used an example based in Chinese culture to explain it to them. One example of this usage: In Chinese, one popular way to greet a person is to say (…phonetically using pinyin) “chr bao^ le ma?” This, loosely translated to English, would have an outcome similar to “Have you eaten?” or “Are you full?” This greeting was developed in ancient Chinese culture as there was a long history of famine. It was culturally (and possibly morally) significant to ask someone if they had eaten upon meeting. This showed care and consideration for those around you. Even now, people are more affluent but this piece of language remains constant and people still ask on meeting someone, if they have eaten. If someone in a western society was greeted with this, they would think you are crazy or that it is none of your business. The usage of cultural explanations for teaching languages has proved invaluable for my students’ understanding of the target language. It has enabled them to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate circumstances of which to use English phrases and idioms that they have learnt. Valdes (1986) argues that not only similarities and contrasts in the native and target languages have been useful as teaching tools, but when the teacher understands cultural similarities and contrasts, and applies that knowledge to teaching practices, they too become advantageous learning tools.

Implications for language policy Creators of second language teaching policies must be sensitive to the local or indigenous languages not to make them seem inferior to the target language. English language teaching has become a phenomenon in Southeast Asia, especially in Taiwan. Most Taiwanese universities require an English placement test as an entry requirement (Information for Foreigners Retrieved May 24, 2007). Foreigners (non-native Taiwanese) which are native English speaking students however, do not need to take a similar Chinese proficiency test, thus forwarding the ideology that the knowledge of English is superior to the Chinese counterpart and that to succeed in a globalized economy; one must be able to speak English (Hu 2005). Such a reality shows that our world has entered the age of globalisation of the English language, in which most observers see a tendency toward homogeneity of values and norms; others see an opportunity to rescue local identities (Stromquist & Monkman 2000, p 7). The implications for language policy makers are that policies must be formed which not only include but celebrate local languages. Policies must not degrade other languages by placing them on a level of lower importance. Policies should incorporate the learner’s first language, the usage, and complexities as a means to create better linguistic comprehension as well as cultural understanding.

Policies for language teaching must encompass and include cultural values from the societies from which the languages are derived as well as being taught. In other words, when making policies regarding language teaching, one must consider the cultural ideologies of all and every student, the teacher, as well as the culture in which the target language is being taught. Language teaching policies formed with the cultural characteristics of both teacher and student in mind will not be prone to make assumptions about the appropriateness of students’ behaviour based on the policy maker’s own cultural values (Englebert 2004) but will increase cultural awareness. The American Council on The Teaching of Foreign Languages has expounded on the importance of combining the teaching of culture into the language curriculum to enhance understanding and acceptance of differences between people, cultures and ideologies (Standards 1996). One example where as policy makers did not recognize the importance of culture is outlined by Kim (2004), in which the Korean government had consulted American ESL instructional guidelines which stated that for students to become competent in English they must speak English outside of the classroom. The government on reviewing this policy requested that all Korean English language students use English outside of the classrooms to further enhance their language competency. What they failed to consider is that while in America, English is taught as a second language and speaking English was quite acceptable in all locations, that in Korea, English is taught as a foreign language and the vast majority of the Korean population do not converse with each other in English. Korean students speaking English outside of the classroom context were seen as show-offs. In a collectivistic culture, as is Korea, such displays of uniqueness are seen as a vice to be suppressed, not as a virtue (Kim 2004). Thus policy makers must not rely on the cultural views and policies of others, but incorporate the cultural views of the students as well as considering the culture where the teaching is taking place. Language teachers need to be informed about various teaching interaction-based methodologies, manipulate them and develop their own teaching methods compatible with the educational context to foster interaction between students (Kim 2004).

When creating policies, one must consider the cultural meanings of teaching materials used. The materials may have a far broader meaning or encompass far more (or less) than what one has considered. An example of this is when the school I worked for decided that I introduce a discussion topic on holidays with one of my classes. The school did not enlighten me as to the cultural significance of holidays or what the Chinese equivalent of the word entails. This problem, as described by Yule (1996), is that people have pre-existing schemata or knowledge structure in their memory of what constitutes certain ideas; e.g. an apartment, a holiday, what are breakfast items. The culturally based schemata that the students had for holidays were considerably different than that of my own. Their ideology of a holiday was any day that was special, possibly where one did not have to go to school, a weekend, a birthday, or any other major happening. When I asked the students what their favourite holiday was, I received many replies, all of which were not what I was looking for. I proceeded to tell them that Christmas was a holiday. This however, was a bad example as Christmas is not a holiday in Taiwan. In addition, I did not consider that a Chinese definition of the English word ‘holiday’ has a very broad meaning, thus the students were correctly answering my question however in their own cultural context.

Finally, as this paper has shown, language and culture are intertwined to such an extent whereas one cannot survive without the other. It is impossible for one to teach language without teaching culture. The implications for language teaching and policy making are therefore vast and far reaching. As a teacher of language, one must be culturally aware, considerate of the students` culture, and inform students of cultural differences thus promoting understanding. Language policy must reflect both the target language culture as well as the students`, teacher`s, and administrative persons` culture thus avoiding any cultural misinterpretations.

Works Cited

Allwright D & Bailey KM (1991) Focus on the language classroom: an introduction to classroom research for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brooks N (1986) Culture in the classroom. In JM Valdes (ed) Culture bound: bridging the cultural gap in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 123–128.

Byram M (1989) Cultural studies in foreign language education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Emmitt M & Pollock J (1997) Language and learning: an introduction for teaching (2nded). Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Englebert (2004) Character or Culture? An EFL Journal, 24(2), 37-41. Hantrais L (1989) The undergraduate’s guide to studying languages. London: Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research.

Hui Du (2005) False alarm or real warning? Implications for China of teaching English. Journal of Educational Enquiry, Vol. 6, (1), 90- 109. Information for foreigners (n.d.) Retrieved June 17, 2007 from http://iff.immigration.gov.tw/front/residence.php

Kim J. (2004) Coping with Cultural Obstacles to Speaking English in the Korean Secondary School Context. Asian EFL Journal, Vol 6 Issue 3 Retrieved May 12, 2007 from http://www.asian-efl- journal.com/september_04_ksj.php

Maley A (1986) XANADU – ‘A miracle of rare device’: the teaching of English in China. In JM Valdes (ed) Culture bound: bridging the cultural gap in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 102–111.

Murray DM (1982) The great walls of China. Today’s Education, vol 71, pp Porter E (1987) Foreign involvement in China’s colleges and universities: a historical perspective. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol 11, no 4, pp 369–385.

Prodromou L (1988) English as cultural action. EFT Journal, vol 42, no 2, pp 73–83.

Murray DM (1982) The great walls of China. Today’s Education, vol 71, pp 55–58.

Spence JT (1985) Achievement American style: the rewards and cost of individualism. American Psychologist, vol 40, no 12, pp 1285–1295.

Stromquist NP & Monkman K (2000) Defining globalization and assessing its implications on knowledge and education. In NP Stromquist & K Monkman (eds) Globalization and education: integration and contestation across cultures. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, pp 3–2

Valdes JM (1986) Culture bound: bridging the cultural gap in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Xu ZG (1997) Interpretation of Analects. Beijing: People’s Literature Press.

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65 Comments

As the other commenters have said, language and culture are closely linked.

Its sad to think that some nations had the intention to remove the language and culture of others by forcing them to speak their preferred language and punishing those for speaking their native tongue.

Such as the Aboriginal children who were kidnapped from their families and forced to live with white families.

or the Catholic schools in Canada who took in children who were punished, tortured and even killed for speaking their own language. Even the pope had to apologize last year for this.

good paper about language

Yes, that is correct. Language is part of culture and even language is culture.

Its really good

This article is very helpful. Thank you

thanks it was helpful

Learners will not learn language separated from its cultural context.

Teachers should have an idea about the culture of the language that he /she taught to avoid misunderstanding as the language and culture are tightly connected.

Most people separate language from culture, but in fact we can not do this because we use language to express our culture and when we learn a language it is not enough to know the structure or the lexis, we need also as learners to be exposed to the culture by using the language, so we would know more about it.

It is clearly shown the mutual importance of language and culture , a good teacher bears in mind that teaching a language is not only transfering its lexical, phonological or structure systems but also, being aware of the impact of the culture on producing or reciving a language.

Any person can communicate easily by using the target language if he or she knows the specific features of the new culture.

It is obvious that the language and culture are strongly related to eachother. They are even noticed in our daily life , when ever we meet new people, they will notice our language and they will immediately ask whare are you from?. This article was very benificial. The teacher should take into consideration , the different students culture in one classroom. And even plan a lesson upon these different cultures within.

This article was really helpful

I noticed that language is affected by culture. because cultures intetrfere each other which leads to producing new concepts of language.

I noticed that language is affected by culture. Especially because cultures interfered with each other which eventually led having new language.

Thank you for the useful tips. Language is interconnected with culture. We adapt our language to the culture we are exposed to. As teachers, we need to teach our students that each culture has its own characteristics. Students should be aware that they won’t find equivalents for each and everything they want.

knowing the distinctive relationship between language and culture helps teachers to be more creative,more skillful and able to solve many problems they may encounter.language teachers should understand and respect students’culture,it’s too necessary to attract their attention toward learning.

Thanks for the great article learning a new language means to learn anew culture too,and these tow are compined together introducing anew language within the culture make it much easy.

Culture is something influenced and impacted by the language whereas, language is formed by the culture of a society. Similarly, language is not only an expression or a means of communication, but a component of a culture that makes it unique and specific.

Our values and speech shapes our identity and personality. It not only does represent the individual identity, but represents the identity of where he/she belongs to.

Humans are born in the same way and experience the same stages of life. However, the difference is the environment in which each individual grows up and the accent which he/she becomes familiar to. This creates a specific identity of a certain values and speech that differs from person to person.

thanks for this useful article. Language is the official spokesman of culture, through it we learn about other countries cultures language and culture are very connected to each other.

Thank you for this interesting article which is smooth and easy to understand ,this let us think about the importance of knowing the culture of the country before learning it’s language to use it in appropriate way.

Culture and language both of them related to each other, we can’t separate them.If we know culture we could easily learn it’s language all babies when they born they are the same but language and culture give him or her the ID

Thank you for this sharing. I think language is a reflection of cultures. Everyone’s thoughts are shaped by his own culture and the the understanding of related culture helps in enhancing the knowledge of their language. So, teachers of a certain language should refer to the culture to understand some concepts than cannot be transmitted in a new culture.

Language and culture may consider one unit. Both of them are interconnected. This article was amazing and useful.

When you learn a new language, it not only involves learning its alphabet, the word arrangement and the rules of grammar, but also learning about the specific society’s customs and behavior. When learning or teaching a language, it is important that the culture where the language belongs be referenced, because language is very much ingrained in the culture.

Different language with one culture and the whole inter wining of these relationship start at one birth day.The understanding of a culture and its people can be enhanced by the knowledge of their language

In order to teach language ,you have to teach the related cultural things and makes a useful link between them

language and culture are two issues inextricably linked and tied to each other. so their impact on each other is nessary inevitable.

It’s very important to entwin language to culture since they’re deeply connected & affect each other. You , as a teacher, cannot teach a language apart from it’s language coz it’ll be meaningless and Ss won’t benefit the wanted outcomes. Introducing the language with relating it to the culture makes the vocabs and phrases more comprehensive.

You can’t teach language without teaching culture. You have to link the second language with the culture to stimulate students.

Since thoughts differ because the use of different languages, when one want to learn a new language it is a must to learn about its culture to better understand the way how meanings are comprehended.

language and culture are very connected to each other, so language teacher should teach students culture of the source language to make sure that students will use the language in the right culture context. teacher should also pay attention to the way his students look at teaching process. He should also be aware to the culture of his students.

The phrase language is culture ad culture is language,so the relationship between them is very strong.In addition,when we learn language we learn culture and different cultures allow people learn in different ways.

Language and culture are both related to each other every child comes to life and learn the language by interacting with people around him. Language shaped by the culture because we see that in the same country people use the same language but in differant ways and accents and they use some of the words differantly according to the place they live in. If we want to learn any language we need to know or understand the culture and the way of thinking for these people who speak this language.

The implications of language being completely entwined in culture and Language policy must be used to create awareness and understandings of cultural differences, and written to incorporate the cultural values of those being taught.so, Teachers must instruct their students on the cultural background of language usage and conflict in learning styles.

“Language is the culture and culture is the language” both developed together .

The more you know about culture the easier it is to get involved and learn new words.

Great article. I completely agree with the author, that our language shaped by our culture and teaching language means teaching culture. we can’t separate learning languages from their cultures because the relation between them is deeply rooted.

Thank you for this great content. I agree with with you that language and culture they are associated together and if you are not that familiar to its culture you won’t be able to learn their language it helps us to onow more about it and gain more knowledge

language is usedto transmit values,laws, rituals and even the taboos. it affects the identy of people who live in the same place and create specific behaviours. also language the way we thinking, living and our style life.

This content is really helpful to enhance my skills of writing and understanding of text in this new study environment. Thanks alot to provide this readings

I have learnt many things when i switched from culture to English learning. Culturally the learning of my language has helped very much in the learning of English language

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Perfect article

thanks for the great information…now I know a lot about the bond between language and culture.

Yes a wonderful and interesting article. I am a Dutch second language teacher and anthroplogist. And it would be excellent idea to integrate cultural awereness more into language training.

Many thanks for the inspiring insights in this article. I am currently doing my Phd research study at the Tech.Uni.Dresden-Germany, about the theme : “Enhancing Literacy and Cooperatives in the Informal Education Settings in Uganda”. There we have to learn English at school; amidst a myriad of local languages, the two most widely used are Luganda and Swahili in my study area.I would like to receive and use this and other similar examples from Asia as research, teaching and training materials, in order to bring awareness for the need for appropriate language policy implications in Africa, beginning with Uganda.

Therefore, I kindly request for more information in this regard. Secondly, I would like to be in contact with researchers and actors/activists within the African cultural context

With kind regards

Thanks a lot…

Enlightening and at its best . Thanks for your compilation & direction

I find the article is easy to be understood. Thank you.

From a teachers standpoint, I might agree with some of the previous methods comments, but from a researchers standpoint doing a doctorate study on 2nd language in Korea, I like what you wrote. It will help me. Thank you.

I blog quite often and I seriously thank you for your content.

Your article has really peaked my interest. I’m going to take a note of your site and keep checking for new information about once per week. I opted in for your RSS feed as well.

Thanks for your knowledge despite the fact that it was not properly punctuated and some errors in writing.

thanks for educative article.this article somehow touches my life..

I born and grown up in a society which is not my families type in culture and language. I learn their language and culture but not my families original culture as they were displaced from their original birth place.

2 years ago (after I am 25 yrs old),they relocate me with the whole family to their original birth place. this communities are my relatives in blood but not in culture and language. I cannot speak their language but my father and mother do.I couldn’t adapt their culture yet but my families do.

my parents wants me to marry one the lady from this communities to rebuild my culture and to bring my up coming children on their culture track.

how I can date someone whom we speak different language,culture etc…

If its not for my family,I would have been returned to the place I have grown up.

Pease I need your advice!!!!

sorry for poor english,,..

Thanks a lot. It really helped a lot.

A telling example of cultural differences is your use of the word learnt, a normal usage in the UK, but far less frequently in the US and Canada. It was the one clue which left me with the impression you were not a native born American, our colloquialisms can be very illustrative.

Thanks a lot. My other question is what is the relationship between language, culture and society?

Your article is a good one. As a masters student of language arts education in Nigeria, I found it so helpful. There is content and the message is clear. Thanks a lot.

thanks for your contribution my is how language affects culture

Thaks alot .it really helpfull piece of writing..very concise and to the point..I -as a second of English -found easy to digest..

language and culture are two issues inextricably interwoven and tied to each other. so their impact on each other is inevitable.

thanks.this will help me alot in my assignment.its really great.

thanks, it will help me a lots in my forth coming exam, my medium of exam is Hindi and i will translate it into Hindi.

Thanks for your guidance through this work of your’s. It is helpful for me asI am doing research on language and culture at JNU. Regards, Manisha Pal

your work was of great important.i’m a student teacher writting a project on the topic’METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND IT’S IMPLICATION’.i’ll welcome suggestions help tools from you.

It certainly could do with some editing, but it is provided free both by the author and the site after all. More importantly, I think comments on its content are far more constructive than the comments you have made

This is a poorly written, error-filled thesis: incomplete sentences, sloppy punctuation, occasional gibberish. It doesn’t speak well for the author or for TEFL.net. Examples: “When an infant is born, it is not unlike any other infant born, in fact, quite similar.” “The implications of language being completely entwined in culture, in regards for language teaching and language policy are far reaching.” “”… one must consider the cultural ideologies of all and every student, the teacher, as well as the culture in which the target language is being taught.” I’m astonished to find that the author is a native English-speaker.

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The New York Times

The learning network | do you speak my language considering the relationship between language and culture.

Do You Speak My Language? Considering the Relationship Between Language and Culture

Language Arts

Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.

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Overview | What does culture mean in an increasingly globalized, connected world? What is the relationship between language and culture? In this lesson, students consider the connection between French and other cultures and languages by discussing key quotations from relevant Times articles and sharing their insights on the questions they raise.

Materials | Student journals, computer with Internet access and a projector (optional), copies of the handout.

Note to Teacher | This lesson can be used in and adapted for a range of humanities courses, including English and comparative literature, foreign and world languages, English as second/foreign language and social studies. It might make for a good course introduction and/or wrap-up, or it might be paired with related content, like the teaching of works by Vladimir Nabokov or Joseph Conrad.

Warm-Up | Ask students to make a list in their journals of words they associate with a particular culture. As an example, tell them to think about words used at school that “outsiders” wouldn’t understand. They might also consider jargon used by people in a particular profession, contemporary slang used among friends and/or online and even words that are part of a corporate culture, like Starbucks .

Once students have had time to make their lists, ask them to share examples and then draw on these examples to discuss some or all of the following questions:

• Why do some groups create and use their own “languages” ?
• What are the effects of having shared a vocabulary and language?
• How does language reflect culture? How does language shape culture?
• What exactly is culture? Is it static or fixed?
• How do new technologies and the Internet affect culture?

At this point, you might also wish to show the video “ City of Endangered Languages ,” about “endangered languages” that are still spoken in New York City:

After the video, have students discuss what it means for languages to “die” and even how they might feel to learn years from now that their native tongue (or even their slang system) were facing extinction. How integral is language to their sense of individual and group identity and culture?

Related | In the article “Pardon My French,” Michael Kimmelman explores the relationship between language and culture in a rapidly changing, increasingly global world:

So what does French culture signify these days when there are some 200 million French speakers in the world but only 65 million are actually French? Culture in general — and not just French culture — has become increasingly unfixed, unstable, fragmentary and elective. Globalization has hastened the desire of more people, both groups and individuals, to differentiate themselves from one another to claim a distinct place in the world, and language has long been an obvious means to do so. In Canada the Quebecers tried outlawing signs and other public expressions in anything but French. Basque separatists have been murdering Spaniards in the name of political, linguistic and cultural independence, just as Franco imprisoned anyone who spoke Basque or Catalan. In Belgium the split between French and Dutch speakers has divided the country for ages.

Read the article with your class, using the questions below.

Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:

• Who is Éric Zemmour, and why is he a polarizing figure?
• Why is the rise of English in France “more acute” that the rise of the use of Spanish in the United States?
• Where and in what ways is French thriving?
• What is “l’exception culturelle”? What fear does it reflect?
• Why do some writers outside France write in French? How does their use of language reflect their identity and relationship to the French culture?

City of Endangered Languages

New York has long been a city of immigrants, but linguists now consider it a laboratory for studying and preserving languages in rapid decline elsewhere in the world.

Activity | Explain to students that they will read and respond to some statements about culture and language drawn from Times articles, in preparation for small group discussions on the issues.

Give each student a copy of the handout “At the Intersection of Language and Culture” (PDF) and tell them to read the 12 statements and jot down their thoughts on each one (or on selected/assigned ones), as the directions indicate. Encourage them to be prepared to justify their opinions, but also to remain open to having their minds changed in dialogue with their peers.

RELATED RESOURCES

From the learning network.

• Lesson: Having the Last Word
• Lesson: Speaking in Tongues
• Activity: Culture Shot

From NYTimes.com

• Freakonomics Blog: What Will Globalization Do to Languages?
• Ideas Blog: The Rise of ‘Globish’
• Room for Debate Blog: The Chinese Language, Ever Evolving

Around the Web

• Organisation internationale de la Francophonie
• The Cultural Services of the French Embassy
• Palomar College: Language and Culture Tutorial

After students have completed the handout, arrange them into four small groups, as outlined below; give each group a copy of the pertinent questions. Tell them to share their thoughts on the quotations and discuss questions that the statements raised about culture and language. Then they should consider the issues through their assigned question set. Tell them to take notes as they discuss so that they can report back to the larger group when they are finished. And remind them to support their ideas with concrete examples.

Group 1: What is culture? Where does culture come from? Where do we see evidence of it? What role does it play in our lives? In society? How does it reflect and/or shape our individual, group and national identities?

Group 2: What is the relationship between culture and language? How does the use of language represent the broader notion of national or cultural identity? Why is language vital to cultural and national identity? How does it unify people? How might it separate them?

Group 3: What does culture mean in a global world? Does globalization bring cultures together, force them further apart or both? Does it lead more to diversity or to homogeny? Does globalization mean Americanization?

Group 4: How do writers use language to reflect and shape culture? Why might writers choose to write in a language that is not “their own”? What issues are raised by writing in one’s nonnative tongue? What issues are raised by reading works in translation? Do works in translation belong in an English literature class?

When groups are ready, reconvene as a class to share responses. Encourage students to take notes to help them prepare for their homework assignment and ensure they are prepared for further discussion in a future class.

To close class, ask students how their thinking about language and culture evolved during the course of this discussion.

Going further | Randomly, give each student one of the following six articles to read (note that the last one is heavy on philosophy, so reserve it for more sophisticated thinkers) and annotate for homework:

• “Listening To (and Saving) the World’s Languages.”
• “Indian Tribes Go in Search of Their Lost Languages.”
• “Abroad: D.I.Y. Culture.”
• “Globish: The Worldwide Dialect of the Third Millennium.”
• “Should English Be the Law?”
• “Language Is Culture and Culture Is Language.”

Note that the quotations on the handout were taken from some of these sources.

In a future class, ask students to return to their original groups and discuss further the questions they examined together earlier, using what they learned from their additional reading. They should begin by taking turns and sharing the main ideas from their new readings, and then build on their earlier discussion by drawing on these articles. Finally, reconvene as a class to discuss students’ new insights on the big questions about language, culture and globalization.

Teachers might be interested in this article detailing the implications of the relationship between language and culture for teachers.

Alternatively, or additionally, students write personal essays about their relationships with language and culture. They might focus on one or more of the following questions:

• What is your relationship to your native language and culture?
• What is your relationship to other languages and cultures?
• How does language shape your identity?
• How does culture (or cultures) shape your identity?
• In what way have you created your own culture and identity by adopting elements from those you have lived in?

Standards | From McREL , for grades 6-12:

Behavioral Studies 1. Understands that group and cultural influences contribute to human development, identity and behavior. 3. Understands that interactions among learning, inheritance and physical development affect human behavior.

Foreign Language 4. Understands traditional ideas and perspectives, institutions, professions, literary and artistic expressions, and other components of the target culture. 5. Understands that different languages use different patterns to communicate and applies this knowledge to the target and native languages.

Language Arts 1. Uses the general skills and strategies of the writing process. 5. Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process. 7. Uses the general skills and strategies to understand a variety of informational texts. 8. Uses listening and speaking strategies for different purposes.

Life Skills: Working With Others 1. Contributes to the overall effort of a group. 4. Displays effective interpersonal communication skills.

Technology 3. Understands the relationships among science, technology, society and the individual.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Should we have auto Translator OR we have to meet in the middle? What about digital information languages? Or it will be cloud-cultures !!

I don’t know where my article has gone. Even though, I considerer that people speaking endangered langauges has more facilities to learn other languages than people speaking majority idioms.

MIQUEL ÀNGEL ESTÉVEZ (Barcelona [Catalonia]) Southern Europe

In culture there is language in it. I think you can explain the concept or compare some example. It’s easy to understand.

language helps children gain an insight into another culture, another way of life, which may or may not be related to their own.

Bishop Mora Salesian High School Ms. Barranco Jason P Period 4 6/2/2010

Importance of Culture

If you say that a language is dying, it means that not a lot of people speak it anymore and the young are not learning it. If my native language, which is Spanish, would die out I would be very emotional because Spanish is a language that is spoken by a lot of people and in my opinion people should not be ashamed to speak the language of their culture. To me language is very important to one’s identity because it shows where you are coming from. One interesting thing I learned from this video was that people are now teaching their languages through songs. One thing I would like to learn more about languages that are dying out so that I can be more informed. Eric Zemmour is a man who is stressed about the idea that the French language is dying out. English in France is rising more than Spanish in the United States because English is a language that is easier to learn and is more common then Spanish. French is dying out within its own culture, but it is thriving in different cultures such as African, Arabian, Canadian, and in many more cultures. I’ exception culturelle refers to the legal exclusion of French cultural products such as movies. The fear that it reflects is that taking out French products will decrease even more the language of French which is already dying out. Writers outside of France write in French because they love the language and want to learn a different culture. Their use of the French language reflects their identity to French culture because they are part of it since they speak their language. Some groups create and use their own language to be distinct from their own culture and not be the same as everyone else. The effects of sharing a vocabulary and language lets cultures mix together, therefore making words we call slang. Language reflects culture because since the beginning of that culture the same language has been spoken throughout. Languages shape cultures because it makes them different from everyone else and serves as their own identity. Culture is an identification in the world which shows where you come from. Cultures around the whole world are changing because they are being introduced to new languages and cultures which cause them to mix and combine with each other. Technology and internet affect cultures because they make it easier to access different cultures from a computer. My primary language is Spanish and now I think I use it more because I have learned how to speak it well and my whole family speaks it at home. In my family it is disrespectful to speak English in front of our family because not all know it and do not understand what we are saying. Languages in many different cultures are becoming extinct and less used. The more advanced a culture gets is only due to globalization. Globalization is only being done by the Americans. Politics interfere with ones country. Someone’s culture is part of their genes. People now get influenced by different cultures by means of television and radio. To know your own culture you have to speak your native tongue. Cultures may alter many things in ones life. Culture may help some people relax and lay back. A language is a key part to a culture. Culture in the global world is one’s identity and shows who you are. Every different race and ethnicity has their own distinctive language to separate themselves from the rest. They do different rituals and traditions to keep there culture alive. Many cultures have mixed together through trade and influence. Slang words have come from two cultures being mixed together. An example would be Spanglish, which mixes Spanish and English together. My thoughts about my own culture changed because I do not want my culture to die out. My relationship with my culture and tongue is very close because I visit El Salvador every year. My relationship with other languages is not close because I do not know any other language. Language identifies whether you are Asian, African, Hispanic, and others. Culture also shows who you are because they have different traditions. I have kept my family traditions and hope my kids will too.

Bishop Mora Salesian High School Los Angeles, CA Nicholas A 06/02/10 Ms. Barranco 4th Period

Languages die after a period of time when people don’t speak that type of language. The older generations don’t pass it down to their younger generations and it slowly stops the language from being taught to the future generation. The older generations won’t always be around so little by little we lose that type of language, because younger generations don’t learn it. If I knew that my language was dying, then I myself would try to save it. It meant a lot to me because it was my native tongue all of my life and I would hate for it to be extinct by the time my grand children are learning a language.

It is important that my language stay because that is what my whole culture and life is made up of. It is the back-bone of my life, my culture. One interesting thing that I have learned from this video is that, native cultures and languages are slowly dying. We must make sure none of the languages face extinction. Another thing I would like to learn from the video, is that is there any culture of languages going on extinction?

“Pardon my French”

Eric Zemmour is considered to be a polarizing figure because of his hard critics of the newspaper, and of the press trying to get information of him. The reason why the rise of English in France is “more acute” is because English is a “ready-to-wear culture”. They would always try to attack the people in the French area, because they were weak and they couldn’t fight back. French were thriving in the wars or when they went into battles. They would show that they were thriving by attack there opponents quickly and they would end up making a mistake some where and end up suffering fro m there mistake.

The “one exception culturelle” was the policy of culturalism. They took there culture very seriously. Without there culture they wouldn’t have any type of structure in there order or anything at all. One fear the “exception culturelle” reflected on was the francophone culture. The reason why some of the people outside of France write in French is because French is now-a-days concentrated outside of France. It has developed so much that states are now using things from the French people. Their use of their language and culture helps them reflect on there identity because it shows them the things they believe in and what they are defending and supporting.

The reason why I think that people create their own languages is so that way they can identify their true selves and see what really lies inside of their hearts. The effects of having shared vocabulary and languages is that people who are trying to create their own languages and cultures they might want to take their own ideas and say that they own this or that, which then leads to conflicts, battles, and wars. Languages reflect on culture by having communicate with other people and tell everyone how there culture is constructed of, it also shapes it by having the identity of the people shape it with rules and their types of orders.

Culture is something that you believe in, or something that you do often, and u know that what you are doing is right. I believe it is static, because any culture can change you so much without you even knowing it. The new technologies affect our culture by making our lives easier for us to do, or making things so harsh for us. My primary language was English, and I have used this language all of my life.

Culture is the belief in something you choose to believe in. It comes from ideas all around the world and that is how it is constructed. It’s not just one person, who makes a culture in one day, but it takes time for a culture to be made, and it is due to the way we would want it be.

The language and culture had formed so many things such as how we talk with one another, or how private schools were made for us. It’s an opportunity to have us protected from the world. My relationship to my culture and language is very strong, but with other languages and cultures it not as strong, it’s very slim. My culture shapes me because it shows the type of class I have for people, and it also shapes people because it shows them and people the class that person has. I have adapted to my language and culture and it has made me become a young, responsible, caring, kind, and gentle man that I am.

What a great article!

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The Relationship between Language and Culture

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The Language and Culture Debate

• First Online: 05 December 2019

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• Joseph Shaules 2  

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This chapter explores approaches to understanding the relationship between language and culture. Although language and culture are commonly understood to be related, they are traditionally seen as different domains of knowledge. Common conceptualizations of culture are introduced, with an emphasis on recent work in the area of culture and cognition. A definition of culture as it is used in this work is given. This chapter then discusses different approaches to viewing the relationship between language and culture, including the idea of linguistic relativism. Debates about linguistic relativism are said to often be far removed from the practical concerns of language teachers. The notion of linguaculture—the idea that language is culture bound—is also introduced. This chapter then explores the idea that shared meaning is central to both language and culture. This chapter lays the groundwork for the following chapter, which proposes that neurolinguistics and embodied simulation theory provide new insight into the interconnection between language and culture.

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It has been seen that language is much more than the external expression and communication of internal thoughts formulated independently of their verbalization. In demonstrating the inadequacy and inappropriateness of such a view of language, attention has already been drawn to the ways in which one’s native language is intimately and in all sorts of details related to the rest of one’s life in a community and to smaller groups within that community. This is true of all peoples and all languages; it is a universal fact about language.

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Anthropologists speak of the relations between language and culture . It is indeed more in accordance with reality to consider language as a part of culture . Culture is here being used, as it is throughout this article, in the anthropological sense, to refer to all aspects of human life insofar as they are determined or conditioned by membership in a society. The fact that people eat or drink is not in itself cultural; it is a biological necessity for the preservation of life. That they eat particular foods and refrain from eating other substances, though they may be perfectly edible and nourishing, and that they eat and drink at particular times of day and in certain places are matters of culture, something “acquired by man as a member of society,” according to the classic definition of culture by the English anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor . As thus defined and envisaged , culture covers a very wide area of human life and behaviour, and language is manifestly a part, probably the most important part, of it.

Although the faculty of language acquisition and language use is innate and inherited, and there is legitimate debate over the extent of this innateness, every individual’s language is “acquired by man as a member of society,” along with and at the same time as other aspects of that society’s culture in which people are brought up. Society and language are mutually indispensable. Language can have developed only in a social setting, however this may have been structured, and human society in any form even remotely resembling what is known today or is recorded in history could be maintained only among people utilizing and understanding a language in common use.

Language is transmitted culturally; that is, it is learned . To a lesser extent it is taught , when parents, for example, deliberately encourage their children to talk and to respond to talk, correct their mistakes, and enlarge their vocabulary . But it must be emphasized that children very largely acquire their first language by “grammar construction” from exposure to a random collection of utterances that they encounter. What is classed as language teaching in school either relates to second-language acquisition or, insofar as it concerns the pupils’ first language, is in the main directed at reading and writing , the study of literature , formal grammar , and alleged standards of correctness, which may not be those of all the pupils’ regional or social dialects . All of what goes under the title of language teaching at school presupposes and relies on the prior knowledge of a first language in its basic vocabulary and essential structure, acquired before school age.

If language is transmitted as part of culture, it is no less true that culture as a whole is transmitted very largely through language, insofar as it is explicitly taught. The fact that humankind has a history in the sense that animals do not is entirely the result of language. So far as researchers can tell, animals learn through spontaneous imitation or through imitation taught by other animals. This does not exclude the performance of quite complex and substantial pieces of cooperative physical work, such as a beaver’s dam or an ant’s nest, nor does it preclude the intricate social organization of some species, such as bees. But it does mean that changes in organization and work will be the gradual result of mutation cumulatively reinforced by survival value; those groups whose behaviour altered in any way that increased their security from predators or from famine would survive in greater numbers than others. This would be an extremely slow process, comparable to the evolution of the different species themselves.

There is no reason to believe that animal behaviour has materially altered during the period available for the study of human history—say, the last 5,000 years or so—except, of course, when human intervention by domestication or other forms of interference has itself brought about such alterations. Nor do members of the same species differ markedly in behaviour over widely scattered areas, again apart from differences resulting from human interference. Bird songs are reported to differ somewhat from place to place within species, but there is little other evidence for areal divergence. In contrast to this unity of animal behaviour, human cultures are as divergent as are human languages over the world, and they can and do change all the time, sometimes with great rapidity, as among the industrialized countries of the 21st century.

The processes of linguistic change and its consequences will be treated below. Here, cultural change in general and its relation to language will be considered. By far the greatest part of learned behaviour, which is what culture involves, is transmitted by vocal instruction, not by imitation. Some imitation is clearly involved, especially in infancy, in the learning process, but proportionately this is hardly significant.

Through the use of language, any skills, techniques, products, modes of social control, and so on can be explained, and the end results of anyone’s inventiveness can be made available to anyone else with the intellectual ability to grasp what is being said. Spoken language alone would thus vastly extend the amount of usable information in any human community and speed up the acquisition of new skills and the adaptation of techniques to changed circumstances or new environments . With the invention and diffusion of writing, this process widened immediately, and the relative permanence of writing made the diffusion of information still easier. Printing and the increase in literacy only further intensified this process. Modern techniques for broadcast or almost instantaneous transmission of communication all over the globe, together with the tools for rapidly translating between the languages of the world, have made it possible for usable knowledge of all sorts to be made accessible to people almost anywhere in the world. This accounts for the great rapidity of scientific, technological, political, and social change in the contemporary world. All of this, whether ultimately for the good or ill of humankind, must be attributed to the dominant role of language in the transmission of culture.

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Article contents

Language and power.

• Sik Hung Ng Sik Hung Ng Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China
• , and  Fei Deng Fei Deng School of Foreign Studies, South China Agricultural University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.436
• Published online: 22 August 2017

Five dynamic language–power relationships in communication have emerged from critical language studies, sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, and the social psychology of language and communication. Two of them stem from preexisting powers behind language that it reveals and reflects, thereby transferring the extralinguistic powers to the communication context. Such powers exist at both the micro and macro levels. At the micro level, the power behind language is a speaker’s possession of a weapon, money, high social status, or other attractive personal qualities—by revealing them in convincing language, the speaker influences the hearer. At the macro level, the power behind language is the collective power (ethnolinguistic vitality) of the communities that speak the language. The dominance of English as a global language and international lingua franca, for example, has less to do with its linguistic quality and more to do with the ethnolinguistic vitality of English-speakers worldwide that it reflects. The other three language–power relationships refer to the powers of language that are based on a language’s communicative versatility and its broad range of cognitive, communicative, social, and identity functions in meaning-making, social interaction, and language policies. Such language powers include, first, the power of language to maintain existing dominance in legal, sexist, racist, and ageist discourses that favor particular groups of language users over others. Another language power is its immense impact on national unity and discord. The third language power is its ability to create influence through single words (e.g., metaphors), oratories, conversations and narratives in political campaigns, emergence of leaders, terrorist narratives, and so forth.

• power behind language
• power of language
• intergroup communication
• World Englishes
• oratorical power
• conversational power
• leader emergence
• al-Qaeda narrative
• social identity approach

Introduction

Language is for communication and power.

Language is a natural human system of conventionalized symbols that have understood meanings. Through it humans express and communicate their private thoughts and feelings as well as enact various social functions. The social functions include co-constructing social reality between and among individuals, performing and coordinating social actions such as conversing, arguing, cheating, and telling people what they should or should not do. Language is also a public marker of ethnolinguistic, national, or religious identity, so strong that people are willing to go to war for its defense, just as they would defend other markers of social identity, such as their national flag. These cognitive, communicative, social, and identity functions make language a fundamental medium of human communication. Language is also a versatile communication medium, often and widely used in tandem with music, pictures, and actions to amplify its power. Silence, too, adds to the force of speech when it is used strategically to speak louder than words. The wide range of language functions and its versatility combine to make language powerful. Even so, this is only one part of what is in fact a dynamic relationship between language and power. The other part is that there is preexisting power behind language which it reveals and reflects, thereby transferring extralinguistic power to the communication context. It is thus important to delineate the language–power relationships and their implications for human communication.

This chapter provides a systematic account of the dynamic interrelationships between language and power, not comprehensively for lack of space, but sufficiently focused so as to align with the intergroup communication theme of the present volume. The term “intergroup communication” will be used herein to refer to an intergroup perspective on communication, which stresses intergroup processes underlying communication and is not restricted to any particular form of intergroup communication such as interethnic or intergender communication, important though they are. It echoes the pioneering attempts to develop an intergroup perspective on the social psychology of language and communication behavior made by pioneers drawn from communication, social psychology, and cognate fields (see Harwood et al., 2005 ). This intergroup perspective has fostered the development of intergroup communication as a discipline distinct from and complementing the discipline of interpersonal communication. One of its insights is that apparently interpersonal communication is in fact dynamically intergroup (Dragojevic & Giles, 2014 ). For this and other reasons, an intergroup perspective on language and communication behavior has proved surprisingly useful in revealing intergroup processes in health communication (Jones & Watson, 2012 ), media communication (Harwood & Roy, 2005 ), and communication in a variety of organizational contexts (Giles, 2012 ).

The major theoretical foundation that has underpinned the intergroup perspective is social identity theory (Tajfel, 1982 ), which continues to service the field as a metatheory (Abrams & Hogg, 2004 ) alongside relatively more specialized theories such as ethnolinguistic identity theory (Harwood et al., 1994 ), communication accommodation theory (Palomares et al., 2016 ), and self-categorization theory applied to intergroup communication (Reid et al., 2005 ). Against this backdrop, this chapter will be less concerned with any particular social category of intergroup communication or variant of social identity theory, and more with developing a conceptual framework of looking at the language–power relationships and their implications for understanding intergroup communication. Readers interested in an intra- or interpersonal perspective may refer to the volume edited by Holtgraves ( 2014a ).

Conceptual Approaches to Power

Bertrand Russell, logician cum philosopher and social activist, published a relatively little-known book on power when World War II was looming large in Europe (Russell, 2004 ). In it he asserted the fundamental importance of the concept of power in the social sciences and likened its importance to the concept of energy in the physical sciences. But unlike physical energy, which can be defined in a formula (e.g., E=MC 2 ), social power has defied any such definition. This state of affairs is not unexpected because the very nature of (social) power is elusive. Foucault ( 1979 , p. 92) has put it this way: “Power is everywhere, not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.” This view is not beyond criticism but it does highlight the elusiveness of power. Power is also a value-laden concept meaning different things to different people. To functional theorists and power-wielders, power is “power to,” a responsibility to unite people and do good for all. To conflict theorists and those who are dominated, power is “power over,” which corrupts and is a source of social conflict rather than integration (Lenski, 1966 ; Sassenberg et al., 2014 ). These entrenched views surface in management–labor negotiations and political debates between government and opposition. Management and government would try to frame the negotiation in terms of “power to,” whereas labor and opposition would try to frame the same in “power over” in a clash of power discourses. The two discourses also interchange when the same speakers reverse their power relations: While in opposition, politicians adhere to “power over” rhetorics, once in government, they talk “power to.” And vice versa.

The elusive and value-laden nature of power has led to a plurality of theoretical and conceptual approaches. Five approaches that are particularly pertinent to the language–power relationships will be discussed, and briefly so because of space limitation. One approach views power in terms of structural dominance in society by groups who own and/or control the economy, the government, and other social institutions. Another approach views power as the production of intended effects by overcoming resistance that arises from objective conflict of interests or from psychological reactance to being coerced, manipulated, or unfairly treated. A complementary approach, represented by Kurt Lewin’s field theory, takes the view that power is not the actual production of effects but the potential for doing this. It looks behind power to find out the sources or bases of this potential, which may stem from the power-wielders’ access to the means of punishment, reward, and information, as well as from their perceived expertise and legitimacy (Raven, 2008 ). A fourth approach views power in terms of the balance of control/dependence in the ongoing social exchange between two actors that takes place either in the absence or presence of third parties. It provides a structural account of power-balancing mechanisms in social networking (Emerson, 1962 ), and forms the basis for combining with symbolic interaction theory, which brings in subjective factors such as shared social cognition and affects for the analysis of power in interpersonal and intergroup negotiation (Stolte, 1987 ). The fifth, social identity approach digs behind the social exchange account, which has started from control/dependence as a given but has left it unexplained, to propose a three-process model of power emergence (Turner, 2005 ). According to this model, it is psychological group formation and associated group-based social identity that produce influence; influence then cumulates to form the basis of power, which in turn leads to the control of resources.

Common to the five approaches above is the recognition that power is dynamic in its usage and can transform from one form of power to another. Lukes ( 2005 ) has attempted to articulate three different forms or faces of power called “dimensions.” The first, behavioral dimension of power refers to decision-making power that is manifest in the open contest for dominance in situations of objective conflict of interests. Non-decision-making power, the second dimension, is power behind the scene. It involves the mobilization of organizational bias (e.g., agenda fixing) to keep conflict of interests from surfacing to become public issues and to deprive oppositions of a communication platform to raise their voices, thereby limiting the scope of decision-making to only “safe” issues that would not challenge the interests of the power-wielder. The third dimension is ideological and works by socializing people’s needs and values so that they want the wants and do the things wanted by the power-wielders, willingly as their own. Conflict of interests, opposition, and resistance would be absent from this form of power, not because they have been maneuvered out of the contest as in the case of non-decision-making power, but because the people who are subject to power are no longer aware of any conflict of interest in the power relationship, which may otherwise ferment opposition and resistance. Power in this form can be exercised without the application of coercion or reward, and without arousing perceived manipulation or conflict of interests.

Language–Power Relationships

As indicated in the chapter title, discussion will focus on the language–power relationships, and not on language alone or power alone, in intergroup communication. It draws from all the five approaches to power and can be grouped for discussion under the power behind language and the power of language. In the former, language is viewed as having no power of its own and yet can produce influence and control by revealing the power behind the speaker. Language also reflects the collective/historical power of the language community that uses it. In the case of modern English, its preeminent status as a global language and international lingua franca has shaped the communication between native and nonnative English speakers because of the power of the English-speaking world that it reflects, rather than because of its linguistic superiority. In both cases, language provides a widely used conventional means to transfer extralinguistic power to the communication context. Research on the power of language takes the view that language has power of its own. This power allows a language to maintain the power behind it, unite or divide a nation, and create influence.

In Figure 1 we have grouped the five language–power relationships into five boxes. Note that the boundary between any two boxes is not meant to be rigid but permeable. For example, by revealing the power behind a message (box 1), a message can create influence (box 5). As another example, language does not passively reflect the power of the language community that uses it (box 2), but also, through its spread to other language communities, generates power to maintain its preeminence among languages (box 3). This expansive process of language power can be seen in the rise of English to global language status. A similar expansive process also applies to a particular language style that first reflects the power of the language subcommunity who uses the style, and then, through its common acceptance and usage by other subcommunities in the country, maintains the power of the subcommunity concerned. A prime example of this type of expansive process is linguistic sexism, which reflects preexisting male dominance in society and then, through its common usage by both sexes, contributes to the maintenance of male dominance. Other examples are linguistic racism and the language style of the legal profession, each of which, like linguistic sexism and the preeminence of the English language worldwide, has considerable impact on individuals and society at large.

Space precludes a full discussion of all five language–power relationships. Instead, some of them will warrant only a brief mention, whereas others will be presented in greater detail. The complexity of the language–power relations and their cross-disciplinary ramifications will be evident in the multiple sets of interrelated literatures that we cite from. These include the social psychology of language and communication, critical language studies (Fairclough, 1989 ), sociolinguistics (Kachru, 1992 ), and conversation analysis (Sacks et al., 1974 ).

Figure 1. Power behind language and power of language.

Power Behind Language

Language reveals power.

When negotiating with police, a gang may issue the threatening message, “Meet our demands, or we will shoot the hostages!” The threatening message may succeed in coercing the police to submit; its power, however, is more apparent than real because it is based on the guns gangsters posses. The message merely reveals the power of a weapon in their possession. Apart from revealing power, the gangsters may also cheat. As long as the message comes across as credible and convincing enough to arouse overwhelming fear, it would allow them to get away with their demands without actually possessing any weapon. In this case, language is used to produce an intended effect despite resistance by deceptively revealing a nonexisting power base and planting it in the mind of the message recipient. The literature on linguistic deception illustrates the widespread deceptive use of language-reveals-power to produce intended effects despite resistance (Robinson, 1996 ).

Language Reflects Power

Ethnolinguistic vitality.

The language that a person uses reflects the language community’s power. A useful way to think about a language community’s linguistic power is through the ethnolinguistic vitality model (Bourhis et al., 1981 ; Harwood et al., 1994 ). Language communities in a country vary in absolute size overall and, just as important, a relative numeric concentration in particular regions. Francophone Canadians, though fewer than Anglophone Canadians overall, are concentrated in Quebec to give them the power of numbers there. Similarly, ethnic minorities in mainland China have considerable power of numbers in those autonomous regions where they are concentrated, such as Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Collectively, these factors form the demographic base of the language community’s ethnolinguistic vitality, an index of the community’s relative linguistic dominance. Another base of ethnolinguistic vitality is institutional representations of the language community in government, legislatures, education, religion, the media, and so forth, which afford its members institutional leadership, influence, and control. Such institutional representation is often reinforced by a language policy that installs the language as the nation’s sole official language. The third base of ethnolinguistic vitality comprises sociohistorical and cultural status of the language community inside the nation and internationally. In short, the dominant language of a nation is one that comes from and reflects the high ethnolinguistic vitality of its language community.

An important finding of ethnolinguistic vitality research is that it is perceived vitality, and not so much its objective demographic-institutional-cultural strengths, that influences language behavior in interpersonal and intergroup contexts. Interestingly, the visibility and salience of languages shown on public and commercial signs, referred to as the “linguistic landscape,” serve important informational and symbolic functions as a marker of their relative vitality, which in turn affects the use of in-group language in institutional settings (Cenoz & Gorter, 2006 ; Landry & Bourhis, 1997 ).

World Englishes and Lingua Franca English

Another field of research on the power behind and reflected in language is “World Englishes.” At the height of the British Empire English spread on the back of the Industrial Revolution and through large-scale migrations of Britons to the “New World,” which has since become the core of an “inner circle” of traditional native English-speaking nations now led by the United States (Kachru, 1992 ). The emergent wealth and power of these nations has maintained English despite the decline of the British Empire after World War II. In the post-War era, English has become internationalized with the support of an “outer circle” nations and, later, through its spread to “expanding circle” nations. Outer circle nations are made up mostly of former British colonies such as India, Pakistan, and Nigeria. In compliance with colonial language policies that institutionalized English as the new colonial national language, a sizeable proportion of the colonial populations has learned and continued using English over generations, thereby vastly increasing the number of English speakers over and above those in the inner circle nations. The expanding circle encompasses nations where English has played no historical government roles, but which are keen to appropriate English as the preeminent foreign language for local purposes such as national development, internationalization of higher education, and participation in globalization (e.g., China, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Egypt, Israel, and continental Europe).

English is becoming a global language with official or special status in at least 75 countries (British Council, n.d. ). It is also the language choice in international organizations and companies, as well as academia, and is commonly used in trade, international mass media, and entertainment, and over the Internet as the main source of information. English native speakers can now follow the worldwide English language track to find jobs overseas without having to learn the local language and may instead enjoy a competitive language advantage where the job requires English proficiency. This situation is a far cry from the colonial era when similar advantages had to come under political patronage. Alongside English native speakers who work overseas benefitting from the preeminence of English over other languages, a new phenomenon of outsourcing international call centers away from the United Kingdom and the United States has emerged (Friginal, 2007 ). Callers can find the information or help they need from people stationed in remote places such as India or the Philippines where English has penetrated.

As English spreads worldwide, it has also become the major international lingua franca, serving some 800 million multilinguals in Asia alone, and numerous others elsewhere (Bolton, 2008 ). The practical importance of this phenomenon and its impact on English vocabulary, grammar, and accent have led to the emergence of a new field of research called “English as a lingua franca” (Brosch, 2015 ). The twin developments of World Englishes and lingua franca English raise interesting and important research questions. A vast area of research lies in waiting.

Several lines of research suggest themselves from an intergroup communication perspective. How communicatively effective are English native speakers who are international civil servants in organizations such as the UN and WTO, where they habitually speak as if they were addressing their fellow natives without accommodating to the international audience? Another line of research is lingua franca English communication between two English nonnative speakers. Their common use of English signals a joint willingness of linguistic accommodation, motivated more by communication efficiency of getting messages across and less by concerns of their respective ethnolinguistic identities. An intergroup communication perspective, however, would sensitize researchers to social identity processes and nonaccommodation behaviors underneath lingua franca communication. For example, two nationals from two different countries, X and Y, communicating with each other in English are accommodating on the language level; at the same time they may, according to communication accommodation theory, use their respective X English and Y English for asserting their ethnolinguistic distinctiveness whilst maintaining a surface appearance of accommodation. There are other possibilities. According to a survey of attitudes toward English accents, attachment to “standard” native speaker models remains strong among nonnative English speakers in many countries (Jenkins, 2009 ). This suggests that our hypothetical X and Y may, in addition to asserting their respective Englishes, try to outperform one another in speaking with overcorrect standard English accents, not so much because they want to assert their respective ethnolinguistic identities, but because they want to project a common in-group identity for positive social comparison—“We are all English-speakers but I am a better one than you!”

Many countries in the expanding circle nations are keen to appropriate English for local purposes, encouraging their students and especially their educational elites to learn English as a foreign language. A prime example is the Learn-English Movement in China. It has affected generations of students and teachers over the past 30 years and consumed a vast amount of resources. The results are mixed. Even more disturbing, discontents and backlashes have emerged from anti-English Chinese motivated to protect the vitality and cultural values of the Chinese language (Sun et al., 2016 ). The power behind and reflected in modern English has widespread and far-reaching consequences in need of more systematic research.

Power of Language

Language maintains existing dominance.

Language maintains and reproduces existing dominance in three different ways represented respectively by the ascent of English, linguistic sexism, and legal language style. For reasons already noted, English has become a global language, an international lingua franca, and an indispensable medium for nonnative English speaking countries to participate in the globalized world. Phillipson ( 2009 ) referred to this phenomenon as “linguistic imperialism.” It is ironic that as the spread of English has increased the extent of multilingualism of non-English-speaking nations, English native speakers in the inner circle of nations have largely remained English-only. This puts pressure on the rest of the world to accommodate them in English, the widespread use of which maintains its preeminence among languages.

A language evolves and changes to adapt to socially accepted word meanings, grammatical rules, accents, and other manners of speaking. What is acceptable or unacceptable reflects common usage and hence the numerical influence of users, but also the elites’ particular language preferences and communication styles. Research on linguistic sexism has shown, for example, a man-made language such as English (there are many others) is imbued with sexist words and grammatical rules that reflect historical male dominance in society. Its uncritical usage routinely by both sexes in daily life has in turn naturalized male dominance and associated sexist inequalities (Spender, 1998 ). Similar other examples are racist (Reisigl & Wodak, 2005 ) and ageist (Ryan et al., 1995 ) language styles.

Professional languages are made by and for particular professions such as the legal profession (Danet, 1980 ; Mertz et al., 2016 ; O’Barr, 1982 ). The legal language is used not only among members of the profession, but also with the general public, who may know each and every word in a legal document but are still unable to decipher its meaning. Through its language, the legal profession maintains its professional dominance with the complicity of the general public, who submits to the use of the language and accedes to the profession’s authority in interpreting its meanings in matters relating to their legal rights and obligations. Communication between lawyers and their “clients” is not only problematic, but the public’s continual dependence on the legal language contributes to the maintenance of the dominance of the profession.

Language Unites and Divides a Nation

A nation of many peoples who, despite their diverse cultural and ethnic background, all speak in the same tongue and write in the same script would reap the benefit of the unifying power of a common language. The power of the language to unite peoples would be stronger if it has become part of their common national identity and contributed to its vitality and psychological distinctiveness. Such power has often been seized upon by national leaders and intellectuals to unify their countries and serve other nationalistic purposes (Patten, 2006 ). In China, for example, Emperor Qin Shi Huang standardized the Chinese script ( hanzi ) as an important part of the reforms to unify the country after he had defeated the other states and brought the Warring States Period ( 475–221 bc ) to an end. A similar reform of language standardization was set in motion soon after the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty ( ad 1644–1911 ), by simplifying some of the hanzi and promoting Putonghua as the national standard oral language. In the postcolonial part of the world, language is often used to service nationalism by restoring the official status of their indigenous language as the national language whilst retaining the colonial language or, in more radical cases of decolonization, relegating the latter to nonofficial status. Yet language is a two-edged sword: It can also divide a nation. The tension can be seen in competing claims to official-language status made by minority language communities, protest over maintenance of minority languages, language rights at schools and in courts of law, bilingual education, and outright language wars (Calvet, 1998 ; DeVotta, 2004 ).

Language Creates Influence

In this section we discuss the power of language to create influence through single words and more complex linguistic structures ranging from oratories and conversations to narratives/stories.

Power of Single Words

Learning a language empowers humans to master an elaborate system of conventions and the associations between words and their sounds on the one hand, and on the other hand, categories of objects and relations to which they refer. After mastering the referential meanings of words, a person can mentally access the objects and relations simply by hearing or reading the words. Apart from their referential meanings, words also have connotative meanings with their own social-cognitive consequences. Together, these social-cognitive functions underpin the power of single words that has been extensively studied in metaphors, which is a huge research area that crosses disciplinary boundaries and probes into the inner workings of the brain (Benedek et al., 2014 ; Landau et al., 2014 ; Marshal et al., 2007 ). The power of single words extends beyond metaphors. It can be seen in misleading words in leading questions (Loftus, 1975 ), concessive connectives that reverse expectations from real-world knowledge (Xiang & Kuperberg, 2014 ), verbs that attribute implicit causality to either verb subject or object (Hartshorne & Snedeker, 2013 ), “uncertainty terms” that hedge potentially face-threatening messages (Holtgraves, 2014b ), and abstract words that signal power (Wakslak et al., 2014 ).

The literature on the power of single words has rarely been applied to intergroup communication, with the exception of research arising from the linguistic category model (e.g., Semin & Fiedler, 1991 ). The model distinguishes among descriptive action verbs (e.g., “hits”), interpretative action verbs (e.g., “hurts”) and state verbs (e.g., “hates”), which increase in abstraction in that order. Sentences made up of abstract verbs convey more information about the protagonist, imply greater temporal and cross-situational stability, and are more difficult to disconfirm. The use of abstract language to represent a particular behavior will attribute the behavior to the protagonist rather than the situation and the resulting image of the protagonist will persist despite disconfirming information, whereas the use of concrete language will attribute the same behavior more to the situation and the resulting image of the protagonist will be easier to change. According to the linguistic intergroup bias model (Maass, 1999 ), abstract language will be used to represent positive in-group and negative out-group behaviors, whereas concrete language will be used to represent negative in-group and positive out-group behaviors. The combined effects of the differential use of abstract and concrete language would, first, lead to biased attribution (explanation) of behavior privileging the in-group over the out-group, and second, perpetuate the prejudiced intergroup stereotypes. More recent research has shown that linguistic intergroup bias varies with the power differential between groups—it is stronger in high and low power groups than in equal power groups (Rubini et al., 2007 ).

Oratorical Power

A charismatic speaker may, by the sheer force of oratory, buoy up people’s hopes, convert their hearts from hatred to forgiveness, or embolden them to take up arms for a cause. One may recall moving speeches (in English) such as Susan B. Anthony’s “On Women’s Right to Vote,” Winston Churchill’s “We Shall Fight on the Beaches,” Mahatma Gandhi’s “Quit India,” or Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream.” The speech may be delivered face-to-face to an audience, or broadcast over the media. The discussion below focuses on face-to-face oratories in political meetings.

Oratorical power may be measured in terms of money donated or pledged to the speaker’s cause, or, in a religious sermon, the number of converts made. Not much research has been reported on these topics. Another measurement approach is to count the frequency of online audience responses that a speech has generated, usually but not exclusively in the form of applause. Audience applause can be measured fairly objectively in terms of frequency, length, or loudness, and collected nonobtrusively from a public recording of the meeting. Audience applause affords researchers the opportunity to explore communicative and social psychological processes that underpin some aspects of the power of rhetorical formats. Note, however, that not all incidences of audience applause are valid measures of the power of rhetoric. A valid incidence should be one that is invited by the speaker and synchronized with the flow of the speech, occurring at the appropriate time and place as indicated by the rhetorical format. Thus, an uninvited incidence of applause would not count, nor is one that is invited but has occurred “out of place” (too soon or too late). Furthermore, not all valid incidences are theoretically informative to the same degree. An isolated applause from just a handful of the audience, though valid and in the right place, has relatively little theoretical import for understanding the power of rhetoric compared to one that is made by many acting in unison as a group. When the latter occurs, it would be a clear indication of the power of rhetorically formulated speech. Such positive audience response constitutes the most direct and immediate means by which an audience can display its collective support for the speaker, something which they would not otherwise show to a speech of less power. To influence and orchestrate hundreds and thousands of people in the audience to precisely coordinate their response to applaud (and cheer) together as a group at the right time and place is no mean feat. Such a feat also influences the wider society through broadcast on television and other news and social media. The combined effect could be enormous there and then, and its downstream influence far-reaching, crossing country boarders and inspiring generations to come.

To accomplish the feat, an orator has to excite the audience to applaud, build up the excitement to a crescendo, and simultaneously cue the audience to synchronize their outburst of stored-up applause with the ongoing speech. Rhetorical formats that aid the orator to accomplish the dual functions include contrast, list, puzzle solution, headline-punchline, position-taking, and pursuit (Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986 ). To illustrate, we cite the contrast and list formats.

A contrast, or antithesis, is made up of binary schemata such as “too much” and “too little.” Heritage and Greatbatch ( 1986 , p. 123) reported the following example:

Governments will argue that resources are not available to help disabled people. The fact is that too much is spent on the munitions of war, and too little is spent on the munitions of peace [italics added]. As the audience is familiar with the binary schema of “too much” and “too little” they can habitually match the second half of the contrast against the first half. This decoding process reinforces message comprehension and helps them to correctly anticipate and applaud at the completion point of the contrast. In the example quoted above, the speaker micropaused for 0.2 seconds after the second word “spent,” at which point the audience began to applaud in anticipation of the completion point of the contrast, and applauded more excitedly upon hearing “. . . on the munitions of peace.” The applause continued and lasted for 9.2 long seconds.

A list is usually made up of a series of three parallel words, phrases or clauses. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” is a fine example, as is Obama’s “It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day , in this election , at this defining moment , change has come to America!” (italics added) The three parts in the list echo one another, step up the argument and its corresponding excitement in the audience as they move from one part to the next. The third part projects a completion point to cue the audience to get themselves ready to display their support via applause, cheers, and so forth. In a real conversation this juncture is called a “transition-relevance place,” at which point a conversational partner (hearer) may take up a turn to speak. A skilful orator will micropause at that juncture to create a conversational space for the audience to take up their turn in applauding and cheering as a group.

As illustrated by the two examples above, speaker and audience collaborate to transform an otherwise monological speech into a quasiconversation, turning a passive audience into an active supportive “conversational” partner who, by their synchronized responses, reduces the psychological separation from the speaker and emboldens the latter’s self-confidence. Through such enjoyable and emotional participation collectively, an audience made up of formerly unconnected individuals with no strong common group identity may henceforth begin to feel “we are all one.” According to social identity theory and related theories (van Zomeren et al., 2008 ), the emergent group identity, politicized in the process, will in turn provide a social psychological base for collective social action. This process of identity making in the audience is further strengthened by the speaker’s frequent use of “we” as a first person, plural personal pronoun.

Conversational Power

A conversation is a speech exchange system in which the length and order of speaking turns have not been preassigned but require coordination on an utterance-by-utterance basis between two or more individuals. It differs from other speech exchange systems in which speaking turns have been preassigned and/or monitored by a third party, for example, job interviews and debate contests. Turn-taking, because of its centrality to conversations and the important theoretical issues that it raises for social coordination and implicit conversational conventions, has been the subject of extensive research and theorizing (Goodwin & Heritage, 1990 ; Grice, 1975 ; Sacks et al., 1974 ). Success at turn-taking is a key part of the conversational process leading to influence. A person who cannot do this is in no position to influence others in and through conversations, which are probably the most common and ubiquitous form of human social interaction. Below we discuss studies of conversational power based on conversational turns and applied to leader emergence in group and intergroup settings. These studies, as they unfold, link conversation analysis with social identity theory and expectation states theory (Berger et al., 1974 ).

A conversational turn in hand allows the speaker to influence others in two important ways. First, through current-speaker-selects-next the speaker can influence who will speak next and, indirectly, increases the probability that he or she will regain the turn after the next. A common method for selecting the next speaker is through tag questions. The current speaker (A) may direct a tag question such as “Ya know?” or “Don’t you agree?” to a particular hearer (B), which carries the illocutionary force of selecting the addressee to be the next speaker and, simultaneously, restraining others from self-selecting. The A 1 B 1 sequence of exchange has been found to have a high probability of extending into A 1 B 1 A 2 in the next round of exchange, followed by its continuation in the form of A 1 B 1 A 2 B 2 . For example, in a six-member group, the A 1 B 1 →A 1 B 1 A 2 sequence of exchange has more than 50% chance of extending to the A 1 B 1 A 2 B 2 sequence, which is well above chance level, considering that there are four other hearers who could intrude at either the A 2 or B 2 slot of turn (Stasser & Taylor, 1991 ). Thus speakership not only offers the current speaker the power to select the next speaker twice, but also to indirectly regain a turn.

Second, a turn in hand provides the speaker with an opportunity to exercise topic control. He or she can exercise non-decision-making power by changing an unfavorable or embarrassing topic to a safer one, thereby silencing or preventing it from reaching the “floor.” Conversely, he or she can exercise decision-making power by continuing or raising a topic that is favorable to self. Or the speaker can move on to talk about an innocuous topic to ease tension in the group.

Bales ( 1950 ) has studied leader emergence in groups made up of unacquainted individuals in situations where they have to bid or compete for speaking turns. Results show that individuals who talk the most have a much better chance of becoming leaders. Depending on the social orientations of their talk, they would be recognized as a task or relational leader. Subsequent research on leader emergence has shown that an even better behavioral predictor than volume of talk is the number of speaking turns. An obvious reason for this is that the volume of talk depends on the number of turns—it usually accumulates across turns, rather than being the result of a single extraordinary long turn of talk. Another reason is that more turns afford the speaker more opportunities to realize the powers of turns that have been explicated above. Group members who become leaders are the ones who can penetrate the complex, on-line conversational system to obtain a disproportionately large number of speaking turns by perfect timing at “transition-relevance places” to self-select as the next speaker or, paradoxical as it may seem, constructive interruptions (Ng et al., 1995 ).

More recent research has extended the experimental study of group leadership to intergroup contexts, where members belonging to two groups who hold opposing stances on a social or political issue interact within and also between groups. The results showed, first, that speaking turns remain important in leader emergence, but the intergroup context now generates social identity and self-categorization processes that selectively privilege particular forms of speech. What potential leaders say, and not only how many speaking turns they have gained, becomes crucial in conveying to group members that they are prototypical members of their group. Prototypical communication is enacted by adopting an accent, choosing code words, and speaking in a tone that characterize the in-group; above all, it is enacted through the content of utterances to represent or exemplify the in-group position. Such prototypical utterances that are directed successfully at the out-group correlate strongly with leader emergence (Reid & Ng, 2000 ). These out-group-directed prototypical utterances project an in-group identity that is psychologically distinctive from the out-group for in-group members to feel proud of and to rally together when debating with the out-group.

Building on these experimental results Reid and Ng ( 2003 ) developed a social identity theory of leadership to account for the emergence and maintenance of intergroup leadership, grounding it in case studies of the intergroup communication strategies that brought Ariel Sharon and John Howard to power in Israel and Australia, respectively. In a later development, the social identity account was fused with expectation states theory to explain how group processes collectively shape the behavior of in-group members to augment the prototypical communication behavior of the emergent leader (Reid & Ng, 2006 ). Specifically, when conversational influence gained through prototypical utterances culminates to form an incipient power hierarchy, group members develop expectations of who is and will be leading the group. Acting on these tacit expectations they collectively coordinate the behavior of each other to conform with the expectations by granting incipient leaders more speaking turns and supporting them with positive audience responses. In this way, group members collectively amplify the influence of incipient leaders and jointly propel them to leadership roles (see also Correll & Ridgeway, 2006 ). In short, the emergence of intergroup leaders is a joint process of what they do individually and what group members do collectively, enabled by speaking turns and mediated by social identity and expectation states processes. In a similar vein, Hogg ( 2014 ) has developed a social identity account of leadership in intergroup settings.

Narrative Power

Narratives and stories are closely related and are sometimes used interchangeably. However, it is useful to distinguish a narrative from a story and from other related terms such as discourse and frames. A story is a sequence of related events in the past recounted for rhetorical or ideological purposes, whereas a narrative is a coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories formed by incorporating new stories and relating them to others so as to provide an ongoing basis for interpreting events, envisioning an ideal future, and motivating and justifying collective actions (Halverson et al., 2011 ). The temporal dimension and sense of movement in a narrative also distinguish it from discourse and frames. According to Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle ( 2013 ), discourses are the raw material of communication that actors plot into a narrative, and frames are the acts of selecting and highlighting some events or issues to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation, and solution. Both discourse and frame lack the temporal and causal transformation of a narrative.

Pitching narratives at the suprastory level and stressing their temporal and transformational movements allows researchers to take a structurally more systemic and temporally more expansive view than traditional research on propaganda wars between nations, religions, or political systems (Halverson et al., 2011 ; Miskimmon et al., 2013 ). Schmid ( 2014 ) has provided an analysis of al-Qaeda’s “compelling narrative that authorizes its strategy, justifies its violent tactics, propagates its ideology and wins new recruits.” According to this analysis, the chief message of the narrative is “the West is at war with Islam,” a strategic communication that is fundamentally intergroup in both structure and content. The intergroup structure of al-Qaeda narrative includes the rhetorical constructions that there are a group grievance inflicted on Muslims by a Zionist–Christian alliance, a vision of the good society (under the Caliphate and sharia), and a path from grievance to the realization of the vision led by al-Qaeda in a violent jihad to eradicate Western influence in the Muslim world. The al-Qaeda narrative draws support not only from traditional Arab and Muslim cultural narratives interpreted to justify its unorthodox means (such as attacks against women and children), but also from pre-existing anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism propagated by some Arab governments, Soviet Cold War propaganda, anti-Western sermons by Muslim clerics, and the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians. It is deeply embedded in culture and history, and has reached out to numerous Muslims who have emigrated to the West.

The intergroup content of al-Qaeda narrative was shown in a computer-aided content analysis of 18 representative transcripts of propaganda speeches released between 2006–2011 by al-Qaeda leaders, totaling over 66,000 words (Cohen et al., 2016 ). As part of the study, an “Ideology Extraction using Linguistic Extremization” (IELEX) categorization scheme was developed for mapping the content of the corpus, which revealed 19 IELEX rhetorical categories referring to either the out-group/enemy or the in-group/enemy victims. The out-group/enemy was represented by four categories such as “The enemy is extremely negative (bloodthirsty, vengeful, brainwashed, etc.)”; whereas the in-group/enemy victims were represented by more categories such as “we are entirely innocent/good/virtuous.” The content of polarized intergroup stereotypes, demonizing “them” and glorifying “us,” echoes other similar findings (Smith et al., 2008 ), as well as the general finding of intergroup stereotyping in social psychology (Yzerbyt, 2016 ).

The success of the al-Qaeda narrative has alarmed various international agencies, individual governments, think tanks, and religious groups to spend huge sums of money on developing counternarratives that are, according to Schmid ( 2014 ), largely feeble. The so-called “global war on terror” has failed in its effort to construct effective counternarratives although al-Qaeda’s finance, personnel, and infrastructure have been much weakened. Ironically, it has developed into a narrative of its own, not so much for countering external extremism, but for promoting and justifying internal nationalistic extremist policies and influencing national elections. This reactive coradicalization phenomenon is spreading (Mink, 2015 ; Pratt, 2015 ; Reicher & Haslam, 2016 ).

Discussion and Future Directions

This chapter provides a systematic framework for understanding five language–power relationships, namely, language reveals power, reflects power, maintains existing dominance, unites and divides a nation, and creates influence. The first two relationships are derived from the power behind language and the last three from the power of language. Collectively they provide a relatively comprehensible framework for understanding the relationships between language and power, and not simply for understanding language alone or power alone separated from one another. The language–power relationships are dynamically interrelated, one influencing the other, and each can draw from an array of the cognitive, communicative, social, and identity functions of language. The framework is applicable to both interpersonal and intergroup contexts of communication, although for present purposes the latter has been highlighted. Among the substantive issues discussed in this chapter, English as a global language, oratorical and narrative power, and intergroup leadership stand out as particularly important for political and theoretical reasons.

In closing, we note some of the gaps that need to be filled and directions for further research. When discussing the powers of language to maintain and reflect existing dominance, we have omitted the countervailing power of language to resist or subvert existing dominance and, importantly, to create social change for the collective good. Furthermore, in this age of globalization and its discontents, English as a global language will increasingly be resented for its excessive unaccommodating power despite tangible lingua franca English benefits, and challenged by the expanding ethnolinguistic vitality of peoples who speak Arabic, Chinese, or Spanish. Internet communication is no longer predominantly in English, but is rapidly diversifying to become the modern Tower of Babel. And yet we have barely scratched the surface of these issues. Other glaring gaps include the omission of media discourse and recent developments in Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis (Loring, 2016 ), as well as the lack of reference to languages other than English that may cast one or more of the language–power relationships in a different light.

One of the main themes of this chapter—that the diverse language–power relationships are dynamically interrelated—clearly points to the need for greater theoretical fertilization across cognate disciplines. Our discussion of the three powers of language (boxes 3–5 in Figure 1 ) clearly points in this direction, most notably in the case of the powers of language to create influence through single words, oratories, conversations, and narratives, but much more needs to be done. The social identity approach will continue to serve as a meta theory of intergroup communication. To the extent that intergroup communication takes place in an existing power relation and that the changes that it seeks are not simply a more positive or psychologically distinctive social identity but greater group power and a more powerful social identity, the social identity approach has to incorporate power in its application to intergroup communication.

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Language and Identity Essay

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Introduction

• Language and Gender
• Language and Racial Identity
• Language and Social Status

Works Cited

Language serves as a vital means of expression, facilitating communication and interaction. It’s not merely a tool for conveying thoughts but is intrinsically linked with an individual’s identity. The question arises: How is language profoundly intertwined with identity?

Individuals, each with their unique characteristics, employ language to express their distinctions or commonalities. In particular, language can be a unifying force for people belonging to a specific social group, highlighting the bond between language and identity from the beginning.

An individual’s identity is not fixed; it varies depending on the situation, purpose, and context. When people find themselves in new environments, they often reshape their identities to adapt. This adaptability underscores the need to explore how environmental changes can redefine the link between language and identity.

Language can also indicate a person’s social status, race, nationality, or gender. Typically, members of a specific group share a common language, reinforcing their unity. This shared linguistic experience solidifies group identity and fosters a sense of belonging through shared experiences and ease of communication.

In this language and identity essay, we explore the dynamic interplay between these two concepts, exploring how they mutually influence and define each other.

Language and Identity: Gender

The intersection of language and gender identity reveals distinct patterns. Across various cultures, gender-based variations in speech are prevalent. Historically, linguistic differences have been observed in how women and men communicate. These differences often stem from the divergent social statuses of men and women, significantly influencing their manner of speaking. Power dynamics and societal roles of subordination between genders typically manifest in their vocabulary choices.

In many societies, there is an expectation for women to use more refined and polite language compared to men. Such cultural norms frequently discourage women from using profanity or obscene language. In these contexts, women often occupy a subordinate position, with their social liberties being more restricted than men’s. This disparity can increase insecurity, uncertainty, and a lack of confidence among women (Talbot 35). Consequently, the use of language within a society can indicate the level of social freedom and gender equality. The linguistic choices of men and women are integral to the discourse on language and identity. Those are not merely reflections of individual preferences but norms deeply embedded in societal structures and expectations. Gendered language norms, as explored in educational settings, not only shape communication styles but also reinforce gender stereotypes and roles, perpetuating inequality. Thus, studying language about gender identity, a key component in teacher education programs, provides critical insights into the broader societal dynamics and power relations that govern gender interactions.

Language and Identity: Race

The intricate relationship between language and racial or ethnic identity is undeniable. An individual’s history shapes their language, leading to those with similar racial backgrounds often using similar languages for communication. One’s mother tongue, acquired at birth, is a fundamental aspect of racial identity, providing a crucial sense of belonging, especially in early life.

In many households, a specific language is used for family communication. This habitual use of a language fosters an association with affection and intimacy, setting it apart from the language used in public settings. For example, Hispanic families living in America often identify Spanish as a critical component of their racial identity.

Consequently, while they might use English in public spaces, they prefer Spanish for intimate conversations with friends and family. Spanish allows for expressing emotions and thoughts in ways that might be more challenging in English (Talbot 173). Speaking a particular language can create a bond among its speakers, delineating an ‘us versus them’ dynamic with those who do not say it.

However, this practice can also lead to social isolation for minorities who speak a different language than the majority. They may struggle to relate to those who do not speak their native language or express themselves in the dominant public language. Even in monolingual societies, people often resort to a distinct language or dialect within their close social circles, aiding in more apparent emotional expression.

The narrative “Aria” by Richard Rodriguez illustrates the role of language as a marker of racial identity. Rodriguez recounts how Spanish, the sole language spoken at home, influenced his upbringing in California, where English was the norm. This use of Spanish fostered a warm, familial environment.

This language choice created a comfortable and inviting atmosphere at home, but it also labeled English speakers as “flos gringos” – the others (Rodriguez 134). While Spanish strengthened familial bonds and provided a sense of identity, it simultaneously isolated the family socially, limiting their interactions to Spanish-speaking relatives.

The exclusive use of Spanish at home adversely affected Rodriguez and his siblings’ educational progress. A shift occurred when nuns from their school intervened, prompting the family to start using English at home. This change markedly improved their social interactions. However, over time, Rodriguez lost proficiency in Spanish, leading his relatives to call him “pocho derogatorily” – a term for someone who has lost their identity (Rodriguez 137). To his relatives, speaking Spanish was a crucial element of their identity. “Aria” underscores the significance of language in racial identity. Despite assimilating into American society, Rodriguez experienced a nostalgic connection to his heritage whenever he heard Spanish spoken, indicating its enduring link to his racial identity.

Language and Identity: Social Status

The social status of individuals often manifests in their speech patterns. Educational attainment significantly influences language proficiency, as those from higher social classes typically access better education. This access equips them with the skills to use language effectively in communication.

People from various social backgrounds tend to exhibit distinct dialects. These dialectic variations reflect their diverse social experiences. Grammatical differences are not the only distinguishing factors; phonological and phonetic variations are also prevalent, leading to distinct accents among different social statuses. Therefore, the linguistic divide between social classes acts as both a consequence and a reinforcer of social stratification, mirroring the complexities of societal hierarchies. This phenomenon underscores the intricate relationship between language use and social identity, where speech patterns become markers of social positioning and mobility.

During the nineteenth century, slavery was a prevalent institution in America. Slaves were relegated to the lowest social echelon. Slave owners were intent on preserving this hierarchy, deeming it improper for slaves to acquire literacy skills. The ability to read and write was seen as a potential elevation of the slaves’ intellectual status, which could threaten the established order. Thus, the enforced illiteracy of slaves perpetuated their subjugation and created a linguistic divide between them and their masters (Jones and Christensen 45). In modern times, every society exhibits some form of social stratification. This concept refers to the structured ranking of social classes within a societal hierarchy. Their relative social distances influence the linguistic impact between social groups. Language changes in a higher social class might have little to no effect on the language used by lower social classes. Conversely, social groups closely aligned in status may share similar linguistic traits.

Language is integral in facilitating effective communication between two parties. However, its efficiency largely depends on both parties’ language understanding. As such, language can be a tool for enhancing or impeding communication. Individuals need to understand the nuances of words within the specific language used.

Misinterpretation of language can lead to incorrect perceptions of the message being conveyed. This issue often arises because some words may have varied meanings depending on the context. Therefore, the speaker must assess the listener’s ability to comprehend the information, which should be a central consideration in the communication process (Tan 142). This ensures that the intended message is accurately understood.

Language has two main functions. It helps communicate and gives a group of people a sense of identity and pride. People usually identify themselves with a specific language. Various groups use jargon that is only comprehensible to people within the group.

Language may show the social status, gender, and race of an individual. People who belong to different social statuses usually use other languages. In addition, different genders use different language vocabularies. A study on the language vocabulary of different genders may help determine a society’s social freedom. Language is a source of racial identity. People usually use a specific language when communicating with people from their race. The use of this language creates racial identity.

Jones, Malinda E., and Ann E. Christensen. “Learning to Read.” Constructing Strong Foundations of Early Literacy . Routledge, 2022. 33-46.

Talbot, Mary, ed. Language and Power in The Modern World . Edinburgh University Press, 2019.

Rodriguez, Richard. “Aria.” The Blair Reader: Exploring Issues and Ideas . Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Ontario: Pearson Education Canada, 2007, pp. 133-139.

Tan, Amy “Mother Tongue.” The Blair Reader: Exploring Issues and Ideas . Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Ontario: Pearson Education Canada, 2007, pp. 140-144.

• Racism in the USA
• The Race Equality Concept
• Opinion About the Course and the Author Richard Rodriguez
• Embarking on Research by Rau, Gao and Wu (2006) and by Rodriguez, Ooms and Montanez (2008)
• The Achievement of Desire
• Sarah Baartman Discussion
• Sarah Baartman: A Victim of Discrimination
• Evidence of Racism in the American Schools
• Analysis on Religion, Racism and Family Conflicts
• Race, Inclusion, Exclusion, and Segregation
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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The Relationship between Language and Identity

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