The Impact of Language on Culture

Author and Researcher: Naser Mallyar

Abstract
What is the impact of language on society, and what role does
language play in social change? Language is the tool that people
and societies interact with them and it does differ from each other.
Language is the way that people can show their culture because
they communicate through it. The transferring and passing of life-
style is happening through language and it’s the language which
shows the differences of cultures. As the money is the key and me-
dium role holder of power in changing the economic and political
systems the language is the medium of the life-world, respectively
can language be so powerful to play a role in changing the systems
as well. People have often tried to bring the world closer to the life-
world by making it a more human place, and they have tried to do
so through language, because on the whole they do not have a great
deal of worldly power, but only the words they speak. But through
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the words they speak and the practices they establish, they create
community. Language can change society. But even if I do not
want to short change the media of money and power, I believe the
role language plays needs more focused attention. Language is a
very complex phenomenon, and it is easy to become overwhelmed
by its complexities.
Key Words: Language, Culture, Identity, Transfer, Interaction
Introduction
Language can influence culture in a variety of ways. It can in-
fluence the way a community perceives the world, and can create
community through the use of varying languages and dialects in
different areas. It can both influence the way a society interacts
with the world, and create a cultural identity separate from the rest
of the world. Vocabulary can be a way for the young to separate
themselves from their elders, and reinforce their understanding of
the world. The words in a language also affect how an individual
perceives the world. As a child develops, having the words please"
and "thank you" in their day-to-day speech teaches them valuable
social behavioral skills. Speech is a primary way of teaching chil-
dren about their culture. Cultures whose language lack words relat-
ing to modern society may have difficulty understanding the behav-
ior of people whose lives are dominated by these concepts. If you
have never heard of blue tooth, how can you understand the behav-
ior of someone wandering around talking to himself?
Cultural identities can be created by the language that is used,
and entire societies may define themselves based on the language
and dialect they speak. (1) As one goes from north to south through
the Americas, the Spanish language becomes more and more like
Castilian Spanish, the Spanish spoken in Spain. Those who speak
Castilian Spanish are frequently considered more sophisticated and
intelligent than those who speak more informal dialects. Another
example is the country of Belgium. Most of its citizens speak either
Belgian or French. The speakers of both languages feel that they
‫سال سوم‬ The Impact of Language on Culture 080

are very different and better than those who speak the other lan-
guage (2). Their identity is determined by the language they speak.
One result of this is Belgium's recent inability to maintain a cohe-
sive government. The effect of language on culture, of differentiat-
ing and uniting groups of people, is more profound than most peo-
ple realize. Not only does the specific vocabulary reflect the cul-
ture, the language or dialect spoken can also both define and sepa-
rate cultures.
Does the Language I Speak Influence the Way I Think?
Does language I speak influence the way I think? People have
been asking this question for hundreds of years. Linguists have
been paying special attention to it since the 1940's, when a linguist
named Benjamin Lee Whorf studied Hopi, a Native American lan-
guage spoken in northeastern Arizona. Based on his studies, Whorf
claimed that speakers of Hopi and speakers of English see the
world differently because of differences in their language. (3)
What we have learned is that the answer to this question is
complicated. To some extent, it's a chicken-and-egg question: Are
you unable to think about things you don't have words for, or do
you lack words for them because you don't think about them? Part
of the problem is that there is more involved than just language and
thought; there is also culture. Your culture—the traditions, lifestyle,
habits, and so on that you pick up from the people you live and in-
teract with—shapes the way you think, and also shapes the way you
talk.
There's a language called Guugu Yimithirr (spoken in North
Queensland, Australia) that doesn't have words like left and right or
front and back. Its speakers always describe locations and direc-
tions using the Guugu Yimithirr words for north, south, east, and
west. So, they would never say that a boy is standing in front of a
house; instead, they'd say he is standing (for example) east of the
house. They would also, no doubt, think of the boy as standing east
of the house, while a speaker of English would think of him as
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standing in front of the house (4). Has our language affected our
way of thinking? Or has a difference in cultural habits affected both
our thoughts and our language? Most likely, the culture, the thought
habits, and the language have all grown up together. The problem
isn't restricted to individual words, either. In English, the form of
the verb in a sentence tells whether it describes a past or present
event (Mary walks vs. Mary walked). Hopi doesn't require that; in-
stead, the forms of its verbs tell how the speaker came to know the
information, so you would use different forms for first-hand knowl-
edge (like I'm hungry) and generally known information (like the
sky is blue). Of course, English speakers may choose to include
such information (as in, I hear Mary passed the test), but it's not re-
quired. Whorf believed that because of this difference, Hopi speak-
ers and English speakers think about events differently, with Hopi
speakers focusing more on the source of the information and Eng-
lish speakers focusing more on the time of the event.(4)
Objects are treated differently by the syntax of different lan-
guages as well. In English, some nouns (like bean) are 'countable'
and can be made plural (beans), while others are 'mass' and can't be
made plural (you can have two cups of rice but not two rices).
Other languages, like Japanese, don't make this distinction; instead,
classifiers like cup of are used for all nouns. Researchers are study-
ing whether this property of the language makes English speakers
more aware of the distinction between substances and individual
objects. And it shows that the people who their first language is
English are more concern amount the amount of things they use in
compare to Japanese people that they do not care much.
Here's one more example. People’s ideas are different as their
cultures are differing in some way. An example of it can be the im-
portance and believes of cultures on time. Whorf said that because
English treats time as being broken up into large pieces that can be
counted—three days, four minutes, half an hour—English speakers
tend to treat time as a group of objects—seconds, minutes, hours—
‫سال سوم‬ The Impact of Language on Culture 081

instead of as a smooth unbroken stream. This, he said, makes us

think that time is 'stuff' that can be saved, wasted, or lost. The Hopi,
he said, don't talk about time in those terms, and so they think about
it differently; for them it is a continuous cycle. But this doesn't nec-
essarily mean that our language has forced a certain view of time
on us; it could also be that our view of time is reflected in our lan-
guage, or that the way we deal with time in our culture is reflected
in both our language and our thoughts. It seems likely that lan-
guage, thought, and culture form three strands of a braid, with each
one affecting the others.(5)
But people think in language, right?
Much of the time, yes. But not always. You can easily call up
mental images and sensations that would be hard to describe in
words. You can think about the sound of a symphony, or the smell
of garlic bread. None of these thoughts require language.
So it's possible to think about something even if I don't have a
word for it?
Yes. Take colors, for example. There are an infinite number of
different colors, and they don't all have their own names. If you
have a can of red paint and slowly add blue to it, drop by drop, it
will very slowly change to a reddish purple, then purple, then bluish
purple. Each drop will change the color very slightly, but there is
no one moment when it will stop being red and become purple. The
color variety is continuous. Our language, however, isn't continu-
ous. Our language makes us break the color variety up into 'red',
'purple', and so on.(5)
The Dani of New Guinea have only two basic color terms in
their language, one for 'dark' colors (including blue and green) and
one for 'light' colors (including yellow and red). Their language
breaks up the color range differently from ours. But that doesn't
mean they can't see the difference between yellow and red; studies
have shown that they can see different colors just as English speak-
ers can. (3)
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The power of language to reflect culture and influence thinking

was first proposed by an American linguist and anthropologist, Ed-
ward Sapir (1884–1939), and his student, Benjamin Whorf (1897–
1941). The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis stated that the way we think
and view the world is determined by our language (7). Instances of
cultural language differences are evidenced in that some languages
have specific words for concepts whereas other languages use sev-
eral words to represent a specific concept. For example, the Arabic
language includes many specific words for selecting a certain type
of horse or camel. Cultural differences have also been noted in the
ways in which language is used pragmatically. In our American cul-
ture, new skills are typically taught and learned through verbal in-
struction. In some cultures, new skills are learned through nonver-
bal observation. A distinction has also been made between cultures
that encourage independent learning and those that encourage coop-
erative learning (6).
Does Language Effect Students of Schools?
Differences in the social roles of adults and children also influ-
ence how language is used. Home and school contexts may repre-
sent different cultures, subcultures, or both and may influence lan-
guage achievement in noticeable ways. Nonverbal cues (e.g., facial
expression) and contextual cues (e.g., shared experience) have dif-
ferent communicative roles in different cultures (Kaiser & Rasmin-
sky, 2003). Children may be expected, and thus taught, to speak
only when an adult addresses them. They are not encouraged to ini-
tiate conversations with adults or to join spontaneously in ongoing
adult conversations. Additionally, in some cultures, children who
enthusiastically volunteer answers at school are considered show-
offs (7).
During the 1970s and 1980s, educators and linguists researched
and debated the verbal-deficit perspective. This perspective con-
tended that anyone who did not use Standard English did not have a
valid language and thus was verbally deficient. Although the verbal
‫سال سوم‬ The Impact of Language on Culture 081

-deficit perspective has now been proven invalid, it is important to

understand the research that was conducted to either support or dis-
credit that perspective
The importance of family context in language achievement was
more recently described by Hart and Risley (1995, 1999). Findings
from their longitudinal study document the significance of
“talkativeness” in families in influencing language acquisition
rather than the family’s socioeconomic status or ethnic group iden-
tity. Differences in language use were attributed to the complex
family culture—not simply due to socioeconomic status or ethnic
group identity. Among the families that were studied, the most im-
portant difference was in the amount of talking (8).
Conclusion
Language develops from the wants of the people who tend to
disperse themselves in a common given location over a particular
period of time. This tends to allow people to share a way of life that
generally links individuals in a certain culture that is identified by
the people of that group. The affluence of communication that
comes along with sharing a language promotes connections and
roots to ancestors and cultural histories.
Language also includes the way people speak with peers, fam-
ily members, authority figures, and strangers. Language learning
process can also be affected by cultural identity via the understand-
ing of specific words, and the preference for specific words when
learning and using a second language. Since many aspects of a per-
son's cultural identity can be changed, such as citizenship or influ-
ence from outside cultures can change cultural traditions, language
is a main component of cultural identity.
So our language doesn't force us to see only what it gives us
words for, but it can affect how we put things into groups. One of
the jobs of a child learning language is to figure out which things
are called by the same word. We learn to group things that are simi-
lar and give them the same label, but what counts as being similar
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enough to fall under a single label may vary from language to lan-
guage. In other words, the influence of language isn't so much on
what we can think about, or even what we do think about, but rather
on how we break up reality into categories and label them. And in
this, our language and our thoughts are probably both greatly influ-
enced by our culture. Language help people to express their be-
lieves, ideas and life-style. When there is a language among people,
there is an identity that people hold to show their culture.
The learning of a different language won’t change the way
someone things but it will give us more information about the birth
place of that language and help us learn and upgrade our knowledge
of that language and if the new language is very different from your
own, it may give you some insight into another culture and another
way of life.
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3. Nunberg, Geoffrey. 1996. "Snowblind." Natural Language and
Linguistic Theory 14: p. 205-213.
4. Pullum, Geoffrey. 1991. The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and
Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
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influence-way-i-think
6. Otto, Jul 19, 2013, Culture and Language, Pearson Allyn Bacon
Prentice Hall
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8. Anderson & Lightfoot, 2002; Crystal, 1987; Hayes, Ornstein, &
Gage, 1987)
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