Tradition 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 is appropriate, what’s regular, what’s acceptable when dealing with different members of our society. Our culture lets us know what to expect from others, what they will say in sure situations, and the manner in which they will say it. It lets us know how they will act, and how they will react. It’s the knowledge of the ages handed down to the present. We’re affected by it, and it is affected by us. Tradition is in a constant state of flux, changing incrementally, changing the way we speak and the way we think, the way we act and the way we react.
That tradition 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 the use of idiomatic language. Idiomaticity is arguably the most common form of language, when it comes to percentages of the whole. Idiomatic language, most often discovered in the form of phrases consisting of more than one word, typically doesn’t conform to say the grammatical structure of non-idiomatic language. For instance, within the phrase, ‘at massive’, as used within the expression, ‘the public at giant’, or in the sentence, ‘The escaped convicts had been at large for two weeks earlier than being recaptured.’, the preposition ‘at’ seems before what appears to be an adjective, ‘large’. This appears to be in direct contradiction to the ‘normal’ place such a part of speech occupies in a grammatically correct sentence, viz. earlier than a noun, akin to within the following examples, ‘at dwelling’, ‘at work’, ‘on the office’ et al. The phrase, ‘at large’ appearing on the page in isolation from any context that would make its which means more transparent, has an opaque quality where semantic meaning is concerned, and maybe still retains some of its opacity of that means even within the context of a sentence.
To members of the community utilizing such idiomatic language, there’s tacit agreement on what these phrases mean, despite their opaque quality. Idioms are cultural entities.
To learners of a overseas language, any international language, culture imbues language with this opacity. The word, table is easily understood and discovered, however what about the phrase, ‘to table a motion’? That phrase carries a cultural value that is not readily appreciated or obvious to a learner. The which means doesn’t reside within the particular person words that make up the phrase. The verb, ‘to table’ must 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’.
Each culture has its own collection of phrases that are peculiar to it, and whose meanings should not readily apparent. Were this not so, George Bernard Shaw’s adage that America and Britain are nations separated by the identical language would haven’t any ironical appeal. Ostensibly, we speak the same language, the British and the Americans, but both varieties use many different words, and have many various phrases that are typically mutually unintelligible, and generally uttered very differently. Typically only the context in which a phrase or word is used serves to disentangle. Sometimes even the context is just not quite enough. Typically we think we’ve got understood when we have now not.
This points out another characteristic of culture certain language; that it exists within a bigger entity, that localized varieties exist. What’s comprehensible to an individual from one area could also be unintelligible to at least one from another. If this is true within the community of a particular set of users of 1 language, how much more must it hold true to learners of that language. Many a learner of English, feeling herself proficient, has gone to England only to find the language at worst totally unintelligible, and at finest emblematic, however still not absolutely comprehensible.
The ‘cultural weighting’ of any language, within the form of idiomatic phrases, is understood by members of that cultural community, or perhaps more accurately, and more narrowly defined, by the members of that particular speech community, and conversely, will not be readily understood by those that come from one other tradition and even one other speech community, albeit ostensibly within the identical culture.
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