Culture has been defined as ‘the total set of beliefs, attitudes, customs, behaviour, and social habits of the members of a particular society’. Our culture informs us what’s appropriate, what’s normal, what’s acceptable when dealing with other members of our society. Our culture lets us know what to expect from others, what they will say in certain situations, and the way in which they will say it. It lets us know how they will act, and the way they will react. It’s the wisdom of the ages handed down to the present. We’re affected by it, and it is affected by us. Tradition is in a relentless state of flux, altering incrementally, changing the way we speak and the way we think, the way we act and the way we react.
That culture is indelibly linked to language is undeniable, for language is a vehicle by which it is transmitted, probably its chief vehicle. One observable way in which language acts as a vehicle for, or a transmitter of, culture is in using idiomatic language. Idiomaticity is arguably the most typical form of language, in terms of percentages of the whole. Idiomatic language, most frequently discovered in the form of phrases consisting of more than one word, often does not conform to say the grammatical structure of non-idiomatic language. For example, within the phrase, ‘at large’, as used within the expression, ‘the public at giant’, or within the sentence, ‘The escaped convicts had been at giant for 2 weeks earlier than being recaptured.’, the preposition ‘at’ appears earlier than what appears to be an adjective, ‘massive’. This seems to be in direct contradiction to the ‘regular’ place such a part of speech occupies in a grammatically right sentence, viz. earlier than a noun, reminiscent of in the following examples, ‘at home’, ‘at work’, ‘at the office’ et al. The phrase, ‘at massive’ appearing on the web page in isolation from any context that will make its meaning more transparent, has an opaque quality the place semantic meaning is worried, and perhaps still retains some of its opacity of which means even within the context of a sentence.
To members of the community utilizing such idiomatic language, there is tacit agreement on what these phrases imply, despite their opaque quality. Idioms are cultural entities.
To learners of a international language, any international language, culture imbues language with this opacity. The word, table is well understood and discovered, but what in regards to the phrase, ‘to table a motion’? That phrase carries a cultural worth that’s not readily appreciated or apparent to a learner. The which means doesn’t reside in the individual words that make up the phrase. The verb, ‘to table’ should initially seem nonsensical to a learner. Likewise, ‘a motion’ must appear like an anachronism, having learned that motion is a synonym for the word ‘movement’.
Every culture has its own collection of phrases which are peculiar to it, and whose meanings usually are not readily apparent. Had been this not so, George Bernard Shaw’s adage that America and Britain are two nations separated by the identical language would haven’t any ironical appeal. Ostensibly, we speak the identical language, the British and the Americans, however each varieties use many alternative words, and have many alternative phrases which are usually mutually unintelligible, and typically uttered very differently. Typically only the context in which a phrase or word is used serves to disentangle. Typically even the context isn’t quite enough. Sometimes we think we have understood when now we have not.
This points out another characteristic of tradition certain language; that it exists within a larger entity, that localized varieties exist. What’s understandable to a person from one region could also be unintelligible to 1 from another. If this is true within the community of a particular set of users of 1 language, how much more should it hold true to learners of that language. Many a learner of English, feeling herself proficient, has gone to England only to search out the language at worst totally unintelligible, and at best emblematic, but still not absolutely comprehensible.
The ‘cultural weighting’ of any language, in the form of idiomatic phrases, is understood by members of that cultural community, or maybe more accurately, and more narrowly defined, by the members of that particular speech community, and conversely, is just not readily understood by those that come from one other culture or even another speech community, albeit ostensibly within the identical culture.
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