How do you communicate? How do you think? We use language as a system to create and exchange meaning with one another, and the types of words we use influence both our perceptions and others' interpretation of our meanings. Language is one of the more conspicuous expressions of culture. As such, the role of language is central to our understanding of intercultural communication.
The Study of Language
Linguistics is the study of language and its structure. Linguistics deals with the study of particular languages and the search for general properties common to all languages. It also includes explorations into language variations (i.e. dialects), how languages change over time, how language is stored and processed in the brain, and how children learn language. The study of linguistics is an important part of intercultural communication. Areas of research for linguists include phonetics (the study of the production, acoustics, and hearing speech sounds), phonology (the patterning of sounds), morphology (the patterning of words), syntax (the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), and pragmatics (language in context). When you study linguistics, you gain insight into one of the most fundamental parts of being human—the ability to communicate. You can understand how language works, how it is used, plus how it is developed and changes over time. Since language is universal to all human interactions, the knowledge attained through linguistics is fundamental to understanding cultures.
World Languages
Languages differ in a number of ways. Not all languages, for example, have a written form. Those that do use a variety of writing systems. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, while Hindi uses Devanagari. Chinese has a particularly ancient and rich written language, with many thousands of pictographic characters. Because of the complexity and variety of Chinese characters, there is a simplified equivalent called Pinyin, which enables Chinese characters to be referenced using the Latin alphabet. This is of particular usefulness in electronic communication. The arrival of touch-enabled smartphones has been of great benefit to languages with alternative writing systems such as Chinese or Arabic (Godwin-Jones, 2017d). Smartphones and word processors can now support writing systems that write right to left such as Hebrew.
Sample text in Korean (Hangeul)
모든 인간은 태어날 때부터 자유로우며 그 존엄과 권리에 있어 동등하다. 인간은 천부척으로 이성과 양싱을 부여받았으며 서로 형첸개의 청신으로 헹동하여야 한다.
Translation:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Languages evolve over time. Historical linguists trace these changes and describe how languages relate to one another. Language families group languages together, according to similarities in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Languages within a same family derive from a common ancestor, called a proto-language (Nowak & Krakauer, 1999). Membership in a given family is determined through comparative linguistics, i.e., studying and comparing the characteristics of the languages in question. Linguists use the metaphor of a family tree to depict the relationships among languages. One of the largest families is IndoEuropean, with more than 4000 languages or dialects represented. Indo-European languages include Spanish, English, Hindi/Urdu, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers, followed by German, French and Persian. Nearly half the human population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language (Skirgård, 2017). How the languages are related can be shown in the similar terms for "mother" (see sidebar).
Mother in Indo-European languages
- Sanskrit matar
- Greek mater
Some regions have particularly rich linguistic traditions, such as is the case for Africa and India. In India, there are not only Indo-European languages spoken (Hindi, Punjabi), but also languages from other families such as Dravidian (Telugu, Tamil), Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai, and a few other minor language families. Papua/New Guinea has a particularly rich variety of languages; with over 850 languages, it is the most linguistically diverse place on earth. In such cultures, most people are multilingual, often speaking 3 or more languages, along with a lingua franca - a common denominator -, such as Swahili in parts of Africa, English in India, or Tok Pisin, an English-based creole, in New Guinea.
There are languages which do not belong to families, known as language isolates (Campbell, 2010). Well-known examples include Basque, a language spoken in the border area between France and Spain, and Korean. Language isolates tend to develop in geographical isolation, separated from other regions, for example, through mountain ranges or the sea. In some cases, geographical features such as dense forests may result in different dialects or even languages spoken in areas which are actually quite close to one another. A dialect refers to a variety of a language that is used by a particular group of speakers, defined normally regionally, but could be related to social class or ethnicity as well. Dialects are closely related to one another and normally mutually intelligible.
Language Is Arbitrary and Symbolic
Words, by themselves, do not have any inherent meaning. Humans give meaning to them, and their meanings change across time.
For example, when my cousin Eric was three, I babysat him one afternoon and told him I needed to cut his chicken before he could eat. I took out a knife and, wide-eyed, and asked, “Is that a sword?” I laughed - not because he was wrong, but because his question perfectly showed how language is shaped by our experiences. In his three-year-old world of fairy tales and cartoons, “sword” was the only word he knew for something sharp. He hadn’t yet learned the word “knife,” so he used the closest label he had available to him. It was a reminder that meanings are in people, not in words - what a word represents depends entirely on the person using it and the context they bring to it. Read more below in "Student Voices" about the communication misunderstandings that can occur because of arbitrary language differences.
Let’s have some fun with words. Words are like sandwiches - they have layers. Just as “bologna” means lunch meat to some and “nonsense” to others, words have two types of meanings: denotative and connotative. The denotative meaning is the straightforward dictionary definition. For instance, if you looked up the word “chicken,” you would find it defined as a “bird” and not a “coward.” In contrast, connotative meaning refers to the emotional or cultural associations that a word may carry, which can vary across people and communities.
Puns are a great way to see this difference in action. Consider the following “Dad jokes”: Joke #1: “I used to be a banker… but I lost interest.” The denotative meaning of interest refers to the percentage earned on money in a bank, while the connotative meaning refers to enthusiasm. Joke #2: “I’m reading a book about anti-gravity… it’s impossible to put down.” Here, impossible to put down could literally mean something that defies gravity, while the connotative meaning reflects how we often describe a very engaging book. Joke #3: “I don’t trust stairs… they’re always up to something.” Denotatively, stairs go upward, but connotatively, the phrase up to something often implies mischievous behavior.
These jokes work because they rely on the playful overlap between denotative and connotative meanings. The dictionary gives us the basics, but it’s the extra layers of meaning that create humor, emotion, and cultural nuance. In other words, when it comes to language, it’s always good to read between the puns. Ba dum bump!
Student Voices
Figure 5.1.1: Filipino Rice Dessert
Growing up in the Philippines, I was surrounded by food that felt like home. Filipino food is deeply tied to our culture—we even have a saying, “Kapag busog ang tiyan, busog ang puso,” which means “When the stomach is full, the heart is happy.” Because of that, food naturally becomes the easiest way for me to share where I come from.
One afternoon, I was at my boyfriend’s house. He comes from Mexican heritage, and as someone who is an immigrant and still adjusting to life in the U.S., I’ve always appreciated how curious and welcoming they are about my culture. When they asked me about Filipino food, I immediately lit up. It felt comforting to talk about something that reminded me of home.
I started sharing one of my favorite Filipino desserts: puto—a steamed rice cake that’s soft, slightly sweet, and similar to a fluffy muffin. Growing up, my mom would make puto in the afternoons, and it became a little ritual of comfort in our household. So naturally, I wanted to introduce it to them.
But the moment I said the word puto, everyone paused and then burst out laughing. They kept asking, “Did you really say… puto?” At first, I was confused, but then my boyfriend explained that puto is a curse word in Spanish. I suddenly felt embarrassed, like I had accidentally said something offensive without realizing it. I worried they thought I was joking or trying to be inappropriate.
I quickly tried to explain that in Filipino culture, puto is just a dessert—one that families share during merienda, gatherings, or celebrations. It took a moment, but once they understood, we all laughed about it together. The misunderstanding turned into a moment of learning for all of us: a reminder that the same word can carry completely different meanings across cultures.
In the end, what could have been an awkward moment actually helped me feel more connected to them. It showed me how cultural translation can get messy, but also how genuine curiosity and patience can turn confusion into connection.
Francheska Castro, California Community College Student
Language Evolves
Many people view language as fixed, but in fact, language constantly changes. As time passes and technology changes, people add new words to their language, repurpose old ones, and discard archaic ones. New additions to American English in the last few decades include blog, sexting, and selfie. Repurposed additions to American English include cyberbullying, tweet, and app (from application). Whereas affright, cannonade, and fain are becoming extinct in modern American English. Other times, speakers of a language borrow words and phrases from other languages and incorporate them into their own. Wisconsin, Oregon, and Wyoming were all borrowed from Native American languages. Typhoon is from Mandarin Chinese, and influenza is from Italian.
Language Shapes Our Thought
What would your life be like if you had been raised in a country other than the one where you grew up? Or suppose you had been born male instead of female, or vice versa. You would have learned another set of customs, values, traditions, other language patterns, and ways of communicating. You would be a different person who communicated in different ways. The link between language and culture and the idea that language shapes how we think about our world was famously described in the work of Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis postulates that your native language has a profound influence on how you see the world, that you perceive reality in the context of the language you have available to describe it. According to Sapir (1929), "The 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. The world in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached" (p. 162). From this perspective, all language use – from the words we use to describe objects to the way sentences are structured – is tied closely to the culture in which it is spoken. In 1940, Whorf wrote:
The background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for people's mental activity, for their analysis of impressions, for their synthesis of their mental stock in trade. Formulation of ideas is not an independent process, strictly rational in the old sense, but is part of a particular grammar and differs, from slightly to greatly, among different grammars...We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages (p. 231).
Whorf studied native American languages such as Hopi and was struck by differences to English which pointed to different ways of viewing the world, for example, how the Hopi language has no present, past, or future tense verbs. Instead, it divides the world into what Whorf called the manifested and unmanifest domains. The manifested domain deals with the physical universe, including the present, the immediate past and future; the verb system uses the same basic structure for all of them. The unmanifest domain involves the remote past and the future, as well as the world of desires, thought, and life forces. The set of verb forms dealing with this domain are consistent for all of these areas, and are different from the manifested ones. Also, there are no words for hours, minutes, or days of the week.
Taken to its extreme, this kind of linguistic determinism would prevent native speakers of different languages from having the same thoughts or sharing a worldview. In other words, without the vocabulary for something, people would be unable to even conceive of it. For example, if a language had no word for “freedom,” its speakers supposedly could not imagine the concept at all. Most scholars find this view too rigid. Instead, what is more widely accepted today is the idea of linguistic relativity - the idea that language influences and shapes how we see the world, but it does not absolutely determine our thoughts. For example, English distinguishes between “blue” and “green,” but in Vietnamese the word xanh can refer to both, with context clarifying which is meant. This doesn’t mean Vietnamese speakers cannot tell the difference between blue and green - it simply means their language groups the colors differently. After all, translation is in fact possible, and bilingualism exists, both of which phenomena should be problematic in a strict interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It is also the case that many cultures are multilingual, with children growing up exposed to multiple languages. These realities highlight that while language shapes thought, it does not set unbreakable boundaries around it.
- Linguistic determinism: language controls thought in culture.
- Linguistic relativity: language influences thought in culture, and therefore differences among languages cause differences in the thoughts of their speakers. Hua (2014), P. 176
Regardless of which linguistic theory one accepts, it is widely agreed that vocabulary of a language reflects important aspects of everyday life. Linguist Anna Wierzbicka (2013) offers striking examples from the Australian Aboriginal language Warlpiri. This language includes words such as japi (entrance to a sugar ant’s nest), laja (hole or burrow of a lizard), kuyu (meat-bearing animal; which includes edible birds but excludes other birds), karnpi (fat under skin of an emu), papapapa-ma (to make the sound of a male emu calling to its chicks), and yulu (the limp or relaxed state of a slain kangaroo whose hind legs have been broken in preparation for cooking).
As these examples illustrate, the words of a language reflect the speakers’ special interests. For the speakers of a particular language, their words "fit the world" as they see it—but how they see it depends, to some extent, on what they want to see and what they pay attention to. This is true also of European languages, and English is no exception, either. The conviction that the words of our native language fit the world as it really is, is deeply rooted in the thinking of many people, particularly those who have never been forced to move, existentially, from one language into another and to leave the certainties of their home language (Wierzbicka, 2014, p. 20).
Learning a second language leads one early on to appreciate the fact that there may not be a one-to-one correspondence between words in one language and those in another. While the dictionary definitions (denotation) may be the same, the actual usage in any given context (connotation) may be quite different. The word amigo in Spanish is the equivalent of the word friend in English, but the relationships described by that word can be quite different. During my travels in Guatemala, I experienced "hola amigo," as a common greeting, even among strangers. Just as in English, a Facebook "friend" is quite different from a childhood "friend". The German word Bier, as does the English "beer", refers to an alcoholic drink made from barley, hops, and water. In a German context, the word is used to describe an everyday drink commonly consumed with meals or in other social situations. In the American English context, usage of the word, "beer," immediately brings to the fore its status as alcohol, thus a beverage that is strictly regulated and its consumption restricted.
Figure 5.1.1: Beer in Germany: a drink like any other
Differences in the words available to describe everyday experiences become clear when we compare languages or look at how certain groups use vocabulary in specialized ways. For example, dog lovers often know dozens of terms for breeds, coat types, and behaviors that the average person might simply call “dog.” Similarly, sailing enthusiasts can easily distinguish between a jib, mainsail, and spinnaker, while most people would just say “sail.” In these cases, the depth of vocabulary reflects the group’s interests and expertise, not whether someone is a native speaker of the language.
Sometimes groups develop their own specialized vocabulary called jargon, which usually refers to technical or professional language. Think of the way gamers use terms like “nerf,” “grind,” or “GG,” or how medical professionals use words like “hypertension” instead of “high blood pressure.” Another related concept is argot, a kind of coded or secret language meant to exclude outsiders. For instance, texting abbreviations or slang used by teenagers might feel like an argot to parents, while historically, criminal groups have used argot to communicate without being understood by authorities.
Less immediately evident than vocabulary differences in comparing languages are differences in grammatical structures. If, for example, a language has different personal pronouns for direct address, such as the informal tu in French and the formal vous, both meaning ‘you’, that distinction is a reflection of one aspect of the culture. It indicates that there is a built-in awareness and significance to social differentiation and that a more formal level of language use is available. Native speakers of English may have difficulty in learning how to use the different forms of address in French, or as they exist in other languages such as German or Spanish. Speakers of American English, in particular, are inclined towards informal modes of address, moving to a first-name basis as soon as possible. Using informal addresses inappropriately can cause considerable social friction. It takes a good deal of language socialization to acquire this kind of pragmatic ability, that is to say, sufficient exposure to the forms being used correctly. While native speakers of English may deplore the formality of vous or its equivalent in other languages, in cultures where these distinctions exist, they provide a valuable device for maintaining relational distance when desired, for clearly distinguishing friends from acquaintances, and for preserving social harmony in institutional settings. Expanding on this notion, students of Korean learn early on in their studies that there is not just a distinction between familiar and formal "you", as exists in many languages, but that the code of respect and politeness of Korean culture dictates different vocabulary, intonation, and speech patterns depending on one's relationship to the addressee. This can extend to nonverbal conventions as well, such as bowing or increasing personal space.
