9.10: Culture and Language
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Scientists wondered in how far culture affects the way people use language. In 1991 Yum studied the indirectness of statements in Asian and American conversations. The statement "Please shut the door" was formulated by Americans in an indirect way. They might say something like "The door is open" to signal that they want to door to be shut. Even more indirect are Asian people. They often do not even mention the door but they might say something like "It is somewhat cold today". Another cultural difference affecting the use of language was observed by Nisbett in 2003 in observation about the way people pose questions. When American speaker ask someone if more tea is wanted they ask something like "More tea?". Different to this Asian people would ask if the other one would like more drinking as for Asians it seems obvious that tea is involved and therefore mentioning the tea would be redundant. For Americans it is the other way round. For them it seems obvious that drinking is involved so they just mention the tea.
This experiment and similar ones indicate that people belonging to Asian cultures are often relation orientated. Asians focus on relationships in groups. Contrasting, the Americans concentrate on objects. The involved object and its features are more important than the object's relation to other objects. These two different ways of focusing shows that language is affected by culture.
A experiment which clearly shows these results is the mother-child interaction which was observed by Fernald and Morikawa in 1993. They studied mother-child talk of Asian and American mothers. An American mother trying to show and explain a car to her child often repeated the object "car" and wants the child to repeat it as well. The mother focuses on the features of the car and labels the importance of the object itself. The Asian mother shows the toy car to her child, gives the car to the child and wants it to give the car back. The mother shortly mentions that the object is a car but concentrates on the importance of the relation and the politeness of giving back the object.
Realising that there are plenty differences in how people of different cultures use language the question arises if languages affects the way people think and perceive the world.