Tradition has been defined as ‘the total set of beliefs, attitudes, customs, behaviour, and social habits of the members of a particular society’. Our tradition informs us what’s appropriate, what’s normal, what is 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 style 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 are affected by it, and it is affected by us. Culture is in a relentless 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 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, tradition is in using idiomatic language. Idiomaticity is arguably the most typical form of language, when it comes to percentages of the whole. Idiomatic language, most frequently found within the form of phrases consisting of more than one word, typically does not conform to say the grammatical structure of non-idiomatic language. For example, within the phrase, ‘at giant’, as used within the expression, ‘the general public at large’, or within the sentence, ‘The escaped convicts were at massive for 2 weeks earlier than being recaptured.’, the preposition ‘at’ appears before what seems 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 correct sentence, viz. before a noun, comparable to within the following examples, ‘at residence’, ‘at work’, ‘on the office’ et al. The phrase, ‘at large’ showing on the web page in isolation from any context that would make its meaning more clear, has an opaque quality the place semantic which means is worried, and perhaps still retains a few of its opacity of which means even within the context of a sentence.
To members of the community using such idiomatic language, there may be tacit agreement on what these phrases imply, 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 definitely understood and discovered, however what concerning the phrase, ‘to table a motion’? That phrase carries a cultural value that isn’t readily appreciated or apparent to a learner. The that means does not reside within the particular person words that make up the phrase. The verb, ‘to table’ should initially appear nonsensical to a learner. Likewise, ‘a motion’ should seem like an anachronism, having learned that motion is a synonym for the word ‘movement’.
Each tradition has its own assortment 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 two nations separated by the identical language would don’t have any ironical appeal. Ostensibly, we speak the identical language, the British and the Americans, however each varieties use many different words, and have many different phrases which might be often 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. Typically we think we have understood when now we have not.
This factors out another characteristic of tradition certain language; that it exists within a bigger entity, that localized varieties exist. What is understandable to a person from one region could also be unintelligible to at least one from another. If this is true within the community of a particular set of customers of 1 language, how a lot 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 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 appropriately, and more narrowly defined, by the members of that particular speech community, and conversely, just isn’t readily understood by those who come from another tradition or even another speech community, albeit ostensibly within the identical culture.
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