4.3: Language as Cultural Practice

Language as Cultural Practice

Speakers view language as a symbol of their social identity. As the sayings go: “You are what you speak” and “you are what you eat.” The words that people use have cultural reality. They serve to express information, beliefs and attitudes that are shared by the cultural group. Stereotype perceptions come into play when we think about race (Asian, African, European, Native American), religion (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheist), social status (working class, middle class, wealthy, upper class) and citizenship status (US born, visa holder foreigner, undocumented worker). Cultural stereotypes are formed by extending the characteristics of a person or group of persons to all others, as in the belief that “all Americans are individualists and all Chinese are group-followers, collectivists.”

Along with cultural beliefs about groups of people, individuals manifest specific views regarding languages themselves. Some make judgments about Language X as being “difficult to learn”, “not useful in society” and “too boring”. Others might view Language Y as the means “to get ahead”,“to make friends”, “to complete a college requirement” or “to participate in the global marketplace”.

According to royal court gossip in the 16th century, King Charles V of Europe had definite opinions about the languages he spoke: French was the language of love; Italian was the best language to talk to children; German was the appropriate language to give commands to dogs; Spanish was the language to talk to God.

Cultural meanings are assigned to language elements by members of the speech community who, in turn, impose them to others who want to belong to the group. Expressions such as “bug off”, “you know”, “you don’t say” and “crack house” have a common meaning to members of a cultural group. Members in a speech group tend to share a common social space and history and have a similar system of standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating and acting. Based on one’s experience of the world in a given cultural group, one uses this knowledge (cultural schemata) to predict interactions and relation- ships regarding new information, events and experiences.

Schemata function as knowledge structures that allow for the organization of information needed to perform daily cultural routines (eating breakfast, going shopping, planning a party, visiting friends). We can examine cultural patterns of behavior in relation to cultural scripts. The concept of cultural scripts is a metaphor from the language of theater. They are the “scripts” that guide social behavior and language use in everyday speaking situations.

“Attending a wedding”, for example, calls for a variety of speech situations (locations and occasions requiring the use of different styles of language). First, there are a series of initial activities (dressing with proper attire, driving to the ceremony, greeting other persons attending the ceremony), then the actual wedding ceremony (participating in the diverse wedding rituals), and finally the post-wedding activities (attending the wedding banquet, engaging in the different activities—eating, dancing, toasting the wedding couple, interacting with other attendees, and taking leave at the end of the festive celebration.

Each speech situation may consist of a range of speech events, different ways of speaking involving various genres/styles: colloquial/informal language, reading of a text, song, prayer, farewell speech.

At the same time, each speech event might encompass a broad range of conversational acts such as greetings, questions, suggestions, advise, promises and expressions of gratitude. For individuals who live in a bilingual or multilingual world, verbal behavior is even more dynamic since questions such as Who speaks What language to Whom, When and Where come into play during most conversational situations.