Incorporating Culture into Foreign Language Learning 将文化融入外语学习.doc

将文化融入外语学习incorporating culture into foreign language learningcontentsabstract.ikey words .i摘要.ii关键词.iiintroduction.1i. language and culture.3a. language.3b. culture.3c. the relationship between language and culture.4ii. incorporating culture into foreign language learning6 (1) paying attention to the cultural differences reflected in languages.6a. vocabulary 7b. phatic communion .9c. thanks and compliments .10d. privacy and taboos 11e. idioms, proverbs and sayings 13(2) paying attention to the differences in non-verbal communication.15a. the movement of our bodies 16b. our use of space 17c. our concept of time .18conclusion.20bibliography.21acknowledgement.22abstractwith the progress in the field of science and technology, nowadays, we can talk easily with people from all over the world. we are learning foreign languages and we become more and more familiar with cross-cultural communication. an increasing number of people have found that culture is of great importance in the process of learning a foreign language; without culture learning we could not achieve our purpose. we must incorporate culture into our foreign language learning. this thesis is devoted to a discussion on this issue from two parts. the first part focuses on the question of why we need to learn culture in our foreign language acquisition, mainly dealing with the relationship between language and culture, and introducing you the famous sapir-whorf hypothesis. the second part discusses how to incorporate culture into foreign language learning, holding that in our learning process, we must always pay attention to the cultural differences reflected in both verbal and non-verbal communication, and this is a very useful way for us to develop our cultural sensitivity and can enable us to use a foreign language both grammatically and pragmatically. thus we can communicate with native-speakers in a smooth way. key wordslanguage; culture; interdependence; cultural differences摘 要随着科技的进步，如今我们已经能够很容易地与世界各地的人交流。外语学习已经成为时代的需求。随着我们对跨文化交际的不断熟悉，越来越多的人发现在外语学习中起着很重要的作用。没有对文化的学习我们就不能达到外语学习的目的。我们必须将对文化的学习融入到外语学习的过程中。本文将从两个部分对该问题做一讨论。第一部分讨论为什么要将文化学习融入外语学习之中。该部分主要介绍文化与语言之间的相互关系，并将介绍萨丕尔-沃夫假说；第二部分介绍如何将文化融入外语学习。在我们的学习过程中，我们必须时时注意反映在语言和非语言交际中的文化差异。这是一个培养文化敏感性的有方法，并能使我们不仅能在语法上而且能在语用上正确地使用外语。由此，我们能更好地与世界各民族的人们交流。 关键词 语言；文化；相互依存；文化差异introduction as our society develops, foreign language learning becomes more and more popular. and, nowadays, english is generally regarded as the international or global language. in china, foreign language learning has gained great impetus especially in recent years, which can be illustrated by the fact that more and more primary schools have opened english classes. though our theories and practice for english teaching and learning develop quickly in recent years, there is one aspect which seems to be neglected by most educators, that is, the learning of culture involved in the learning a foreign language. in most secondary schools, what most teachers concern is grammar. after years of hard study under this guidance, some learners can use english correctly, (here by “correctly”, i mean “without grammar or spelling mistakes”), but not appropriately. when they are conversing with a native-speaker, their words may cause misunderstanding, sometimes even leave a bad impression on their counterpart, although the language they use in communication may be faultless. one day, when i was in an english corner held by a foreign teacher, the teacher sneezed violently. then a boy said, “someone is missing you.” and this made the teacher confused for quite a moment. then whats the reason for this kind of barrier in communication? the answer lies in the culture differences between china and the western countries. in china, if someone sneezes, we generally regard it as a sign of someones missing or cursing him. but in english-speaking countries, no such an association is attached to this. and in such kind of situation, usually, they would say, “ god bless you” to show their care for the people concerned. as all of us know, language is a tool for communication. but, even a sentence is grammatically correct, if used in an inappropriate situation or break the custom of a particular people, this sentence cant achieve the purpose of communication, and sometimes it can even lead to some unexpected results. as stated in deng yanchang and liu runqings language and culture (1991:2), “because of cultural differences, misunderstanding may arise; because of cultural differences, a serious question may cause amusement or laughter; a harmless statement may cause displeasure or anger. because of cultural differences, jokes by a foreign speaker may be received with blank faces and stony silence. yet the same stories in the speakers own country would leave audiences holding their sides with laugher.”so, incorporating culture into the process of foreign language learning is, in fact, a very important aspect. the following will deal with this issue from two aspects, that is, why do we need to learn culture in our foreign language acquisition, and how can we incorporate culture in our learning?i. language and culturea. languageabout what is language, there are various definitions from different respects. for example, sapir (1921) defined it as,” a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.” hall (1968) defined it as “ the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbol.” however, there is, nowadays, a generally accepted definition,” language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.” (hu zhuanglin et al, 1998)language is the most important means of human communication. human beings get known of the world through their languages. they take language as the medium for their social life, using it to conduct daily communication, organize producing activities, or express their ideas and emotions. b. cultureculture, in a broad sense, includes literature, art, music, architecture, science and technology, philosophy, language (which characterizes the life of the human community) and some means of non-verbal communication (for example, the movement of our bodies, our use of space and our use of time). usually, people call it culture with a big c. in its narrow sense, culture refers to peoples way of living and customs, including the may they live, the way they organize their society, the relationship between family or social members, customs, food, table manners, all kinds of taboos, etc. this is what some people call culture with a small c. to put it another way, culture consists of all the shared products of human society.(robertson, 1981) c. the relationship between language and culturefrom the above definitions of language and culture, we can see that the relationship between them is very close.there are basically two different opinions on language. some take language as a sign system and think it is the total set of sound, grammar and vocabulary. others hold that language and culture relate with each other closely, and the use of a language can not be separated from its social settings. for a long time, what linguistic research focuses on was language itself, such as the sound system, the sentence structure, or the history and development of human language. that is, the subject of these researches was what saussure defined as langue, but not parole.anthropologists were the first to research into the relationship between language and culture. as early as the 19th century, the german ethnologist w. v. humboldt first researched into this field. at the beginning of the 20th century, an anthropological orientation in the study of language was developed both in england and in north america. this new tradition was characterized by its study of language in a sociocultural context. anthropologists, like bronislaw malinowski, john p. firth, franz boas, eward sapir, and benjamin lee whorf, have done a lot of important and creative work in this field and expressed their own understandings. later on, sociologists took interest in this issue. in the middle of the 60s, sociolinguistics rose and sociolinguists have contributed a lot in this field. people of pedagogy have stepped up in research of this field. in china, though there are some articles devoted to the discussion of it in some academic publications, in all, there is no research in a wide range. in the research of the relationship between language and culture, there is a very influential but also extremely controversial theory, that is, sapir-whorf hypothesis.sapir (1926) acknowledged the close relationship between language and culture, maintaining that they were inextricably related so that you could not understand or appreciate the one without a knowledge of the other. as stated in his book language, (p.207): “human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. it is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. the fact of the matter is that the real world is to a large extent unconsciously built on the language habits of the groupwe see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.” in whorfs view, the relationship between language and culture was a deterministic one. he said in his book (whorf, 1956:212-13):“it was found that 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 the individuals mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade.”the work of the american anthropological linguists eward sapir and benjamin lee whorf on the relation between language, thought and culture is commonly compressed into the sapir-whorf hypothesis, which consists of two parts, “linguistic relativity” and “linguistic determinism”. the former claims that languages, which differ radically in their vocabulary and structure, express different cultural meanings.whorfs is the most explicit formulation of the principle of linguistic relativity (whorf , 1956:221):“the linguistic relativity principlemeans, in informal terms, that users of markedly different grammars are pointed by the grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world.”the latter, that is, “linguistic determinism”, assumes that patterns of thought and perception reality are determined by ones native language.this hypothesis has developed into two versions, a strong version and a weak version. the strong, emphasizes the decisive role of language as the shaper of our thinking patterns. the weak version suggests that there is a correlation between language, culture and thought.nowadays, an increasing number of people find the weak version more acceptable. language is one part of culture; whats more, it is the most important carrier of culture. language and culture are intrinsically dependent on each other and they evolve together through the history. some social scientists consider language the keystone of culture. without language, they maintain, culture would not be possible. on the other hand, language is influenced and shaped by culture; it reflects culture.the purpose of learning a foreign language is to communicate with others by using it that is, receiving and transmitting information through a foreign language. communication through a foreign language is different from that through ones mother tongue in that the participants of the former don not belong to the same cultural setting, while that of the latter do. then, we could say that the essence of communication through a foreign language is intercultural communication. thus, without knowledge of the culture, we can not learn or use a foreign language well. we must try our best to incorporate cultural learning into the process of foreign language learning.ii. incorporating culture into foreign language learning(1) paying attention to the cultural differences reflected in languagesas stated above, language is a very important carrier of culture. different languages reflect different cultures. so, in order to use a foreign language correctly and appropriately, we must pay attention to the cultural differences reflected in languages. the following will be devoted to a discussion on this from several respects.a. vocabularycultural differences can be reflected in the vocabulary of different system of languages. as for this aspect, there are roughly three types.i) words which exist in one language but have no equivalence in another languagethe cause for this phenomenon is simple. because of the different living environment and history, some thing or concept is unique to one culture. take english and chinese for example, there are a large number of words of this kind. “jiaozhi”(饺子) and “mantou”(馒头) are very common food in china, but there are no such things in the western countries. thus, there is no words devoted to these things. while, on the other hand, for a chinese, he would not know what a “hamburger” is until he sees and tastes it himself. other examples, such as, “kang”(炕, a heatable brickbed), “bingtanghulu”(冰糖葫芦, candied haws on a stick), “yushui”(雨水, rain water, 2nd solar term), etc, are all of this kind. similarly, there are no chinese equivalents for the english words “cowboy” or ” happie”- two well-known products of american society. we have no concept of brunch (late morning meal eaten instead of breakfast and lunch) and we have never slept in a motel (hotel for motorists, with space for parking cars near the rooms).ii) words which seemingly imply the same but with different associative meanings in different cultures. the meaning of a word is not unitary, but consists of two parts- the conceptual meaning and the associative meaning. the conceptual meaning is the core of the meaning of a word. it refers to a thing or a concept directly and clearly, thus, it is also called referential meaning. on the other hand, the associative meaning of a word is something extra, which includes connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflective meaning and collective meaning (g. leech, 1974:23) the conceptual meaning of a word is relatively stable, while the associative meaning of a word is usually unstable, which may vary for people, event, time or space. so, when learning a foreign language, we should pay attention to the differences reflected in the associative meaning of a word. examples of this kind also bound. a chinese and an american have different feelings towards some color words. for example, in english, “green” is associated with envy or jealousy like in “green with envy” or “green-eyes”. “blue” suggests sentimental or unhappy feelings in english-speaking countries, as in “blue, blue is my love” or “i am in a blue mood”. meanwhile, “blue is also associated with high social position or being aristocratic as in “he is a real blue blood. but in chinese, the words “绿” and ”蓝” do not get such associations. red is usually associated with celebrations and joyful occasions. this is true in both english-speaking countries and china. for example, red-letter day (holidays such as christmas and other special days); roll the red carpet for someone (meaning to give a lavish welcome). similarly, in chinese, “红双喜” (double happiness written in red) is the traditional symbol for an event of special joy. in “开门红”, the color red is symbolic of good fortune. though there are some similarities in some aspects of the associative meaning of “red”, there are still differences. in china, red is associated with revolution and socialism as in the red army (红军), red guard (红卫兵), red and expert (又红又专, both socialist-minded and professionally qualified), etc (deng yanchang and liu runqing, 1991:65). the chinese word “红” has a favorable meaning, while the english word “red” with a capital “r”, is often used as a synonym for a communist, usually in a derogatory sense.likewise, people have different impressions towards “communism”, “dragon”, and “dog”, etc, because of their cultural differences.iii) some things or concepts are represented by one or perhaps two terms in one language, but by many more ter