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Culture and Language


e.: as unique individuals, as a whole) and this view of our self influences our communication. Our culture shows us how to communicate with other people and how to interpret their behavior through a system of knowledge. The term culture refers to the systems of knowledge used by a large number of people. The boundaries between cultures are often set by the political or national boundaries between countries.
             The language we speak is learned within our culture and also reflects it. Over time the changes in the language spoken by a group of people signify as well the changes in the culture. Young people use a particular language that they have learned through the years from their elders, but they have added to these language elements that reveal changes in our culture. For example, they use words taken from the Internet, the cinema and the music. They even form words of their own. Usually this set of words, the elder people cannot understand it, since through these words, and young people manage to differentiate themselves from the grown-ups.
             According to Hymes&Gumperz (1974) all human languages contain elements that are universal and elements that are unique. Phonological rules tell speakers how the sounds of their language are combined to form words. Grammatical rules tell speakers how to order words (e.g., nouns, objects, verbs) to form sentences. Semantic rules tell speakers the relationship between words and the things to which they refer. Pragmatic rules tell speakers how to interpret the meaning of utterances. The rules of a language are a function of the speech community using the language. Speech communities are groups of people who use similar rules to guide how they use language and interpret others" use of language.
             Within speech communities, there are speech situations, occasions when individuals speak to each other. Each speech situation is faced with different type of speech. For example, someone will use a different kind of speech if he/she attends to a party than the one he/she will use in a job interview.


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