语言与社会期末问题及答案汇总.docx

1. How do you understand the influence of culture on communication?1) Culture is everything and everywhere .Our culture supplies us with the answers to those and countless questions about what the world looks like and how you live and communicate within this world. 2) Culture is the foundation of communication,and when cultures are diverse,communication practices may be different.Countless aspects of culture help determine and guide communication behavior.3) The world looks,sounds,tastes,and feels the way is dose because our culture has given you the criterion of perception.2. What are the major factors that influence language communication?The three elements that directly influence our perception and communication:(1)cultural values.It inform a member of a culture about what is good and bad,right and wrong,true and false,positive and negative,and the like.Cultural values define what is worth dying for,what is worth protecting,what frightens people,what are proper subjects for study and for ridicule,and what types of events lead individuals to group solidarity.Most important,cultural values guide both perception and behavior.(2)worldview(religion).A worldview is a cultures orientation toward such things as God,nature,life,death,the universe,and other phiosophical issues that are concerned with the meaning of life and with “being”.(3)Social organization.The manner in which a culture arganizes itself is directed to the institutions within that culture.The families who raise you and the governments with which you associate and hold allegiance to all help determine how you perceive the world and how you behave within the world.3.Discuss the differences between positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies with examples. (1)Positive politeness strategies: those showing the closeness, intimacy, and rapport between speaker and hearerNagative politeness strategies: those indicating the social distance between speaker and hearer(2) Positive Politeness: is redress directed to the addressees positive face, his desire that his wants should be thought of as desirable.Redress consists in partially satisfying that desire by communicating that ones own wants are in some respects similar to the addressees wants.The linguistic realizations of Positive Politeness are in many respects representative of the normal linguistic behavior between intimates. Nagative politeness :Redressive action addressed to the addressees negative face.Addressee wants to have his freedom unhindered and his attention unimpeded.Specific and focused to minimize the particular imposition that the FTA effects.Politeness in Western cultures is always considered with negative politeness behaviour.(3)Categories of Positive Politeness: Claim common ground; Categories of negative politeness: use indirect speech acts;question;hedge (deliberately vague expression);be pessimistic;minimize the FTA;give gifts4.Try to find examples to illustrate the positive and negative strategies used in the Chinese cultural context considering the factors of “in-group”vs.”out-group”membership in communication.(1)Positive strategies: Use in- group identity markers；Using any of the innumerable ways to convey in- group membership: address forms, language or dialect, jargon or slang and ellipses.Examples:“Honey, can you give me the beer?”“Hey brother, whats going on?”“How about a drink?”(2)Negative strategies: Opposing tensions: desire to give hearer an “out“ by being indirect, and the desire to go on record.Solved by the compromise of conventional indirectness, the use of phrases and sentences that have contextually unambiguous meanings which are different from their literal meaning.Examples:“Can you please shut the door?” “You couldnt possibly tell me the time, please?” 5.What are the distinctions between performatives and constatives according to Austin?(1)Conditions:true or false(constative)-the constatives utterance is verifiable and it is either true or false;felicity conditions(performative)-the performatives require not only “the appropriate circumstances.”but also the appropriate language.(2)grammatical criterion:the performative verb is in the present tense and each sentence has s first person subject(3)lexical criterion:”state”(constative) “hereby”(performative)6.Please explain the main distinction between the concept of utterance and the concept of sentence with examples.(1)Utterance can succeed as an act of communication even if the speaker does not possess the attitude he is expressingOccasionally utterances are both nonliteral and indirect. For example, one might utter I love the sound of your voice to tell someone nonliterally (ironically) that she cant stand the sound of his voice and thereby indirectly to ask him to stop singing. When uttering the sentences, the speaker is actually doing something, instead of stating or describing something(2)There are many sentences whose standard uses are not strictly determined by their meanings but are not implicatures or figurative uses eitherThe sentence does not express a complete proposition.Sentences used for ethical evaluationSentence meaning is constituted by its literal meaning and reference in context. The meaning is conveyed by the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses (locutionary act) following the syntactic and semantic rules.7.Illustrate the function of context in interpreting the meaning of language in communication. 文本一： Context to a certain extent, reduce the barriers of communication, make communication more smooth, so that communication can receive good results. Language environment is essential for understanding language.(1) Context is an important means to resolve ambiguity: Any language has many words are ambiguous, used in a sentence usually embodies a meaning, it must make a choice based on context. In a language environment, the speaker only people to express a meaning. Polysemy is also very common in English, and some kind of meaning can often be reflected through the context. However, the existence of polysemy and ambiguity does not cause confusion in communication, because the specific context can make it simple.(2) Context is the basis for understanding the meaning of a sentence: The sentence meaning besides the literal meaning and the implied meaning outside. The conversational implicature is people, because of a discourse meaning does not comply with the principles of conversation. It is the true meaning of words according to the context of, interpretation of discourse implication overtones.文本二：speakers of a language must possess in order to express their intentions and interpret those of others. In order to investigate how we can “make meaning” by using language it is necessary to bring in the notion of context, that is, the way the various elements are combined, how they relate to the world at large, and the purposes for which they are used. This side of language study is generally called pragmatics . The central message of pragmatics is that meaning does not come ready-made or packaged in words or sentences, but is constructed by speakers and hearers through processes of interpretation, in the context in which the language is used.There are three levels (or layers) of context: a) the linguistic context; b) the interactional context, or the ways in which peoples utterances are organized and follow one another in a regular manner; c) the social context, or the ways in which institutional, socio-economic, cultural, and political considerations influence and are influenced by the verbal actions of people.Therefore, to use English appropriately, effectively and critically in a wide range of situations, it is very important for learners of English,8.Please explain the differences of cultural context with examples.(课本178页划线部分)9.Explain the concepts of “language style”and “register”with your own examples. (1) language style means due to the authors life experience and artistic accomplishment of the creation of the different features, language style is a writer with special style works of creative language.For example, Pure and fresh and elegant: li bai,Stall depressed:Du fu, QingJian popular:Bai juyi , The powerful tragic:Qu yuan,Comfort quiet:Tao yuanming,Bold sweep:Cao cao.(2) Register is often an indicator of the formality or official nature of an occasion, or a mark of authority. Linguists make the distinction that register varies with use, rather than with the user. For example, most peoples speech contains pointers, lexical, syntactical, and phonological, of their class or social status. Such speech changes register when it is altered to fit an occasion, such as appearing in court or speaking to a bureaucrat, writing a scientific paper, making a business presentation, or interacting with an older relative or small child.10.Some people argue that gender difference in language use is a kind of subcultural differences between men and women.What is your opinion on the issue?In my opinion,we do not Pay attention to the differences of gender language differences but also focus on the similarities between men and women in language. In order to fully explain the relationship between language and gender, we should pay more attention to the differences and similarities between men and women. Although many scholars believe that men and women come from different cultures, this kind of culture is just a different sub culture. The mainstream culture plays a very important role in the process of the socialization of men and women. So whether it is male or female, they will be in the process of socialization to learn the values and behavior of the mainstream culture, but also learn to score the values and behavior of their own sub culture. In this way, their behavior, including language behavior, must have both similarities and differences. So it is not reasonable for researchers to study the differences alone. Therefore, in our study of language and gender should abandon such a concept: such as the overthrow of the null hypothesis; if only the overthrow of the null hypothesis (the difference that men and women have significant research) makes sense, actually keep null hypothesis research is found. Only in this way, we will not intentionally expose the facts and seek evidence to prove the existence of differences.11.Explain why bilingualism/multilingualism is a socially related phenomenon.In the traditional civilization period, the bilingual phenomenon exist in a natural way, bilingual phenomenon appeared during this period is mainly depending on the regional division. In the modern civilization period, the bilingual phenomenon mainly exists in the economic and diplomatic purposes. With the implementation of global integration, bilingual phenomenon and language phenomenon will be more obvious.Language is the product of society, so the bilingual phenomenon, both national between different languages and the different languages, between different families belong to a social phenomenon.People living in a particular social environment in the environment are commonly used in a particular language.As the change of its living environment, the language they use has been changed.At the same time, different areas or with different ethnic people communicate with each other also creates a person can take two or more than two language variant, it also makes what we call the bilingual or multilingual phenomenon.Therefore, it is not hard to find, bilingual phenomenon is a social phenomenon of language application.12.Discussion on the phenomenon of using English as a means of instruction of subject course in many Chinese universities from bilingual perspective.Multilingual applications in important international conferences, multilingualism in cultural exchanges, bilingual teaching, the introduction of foreign language education reform the original teaching materials, bilingual TV broadcasts, cross-cultural communication in international affairs and international trade, etc., all these phenomena show to the world that China is moving into a bilingual society closer.By accepting education of the school, almost all the Chinese students can speak at least two languages. In addition, since China joined the world trade organization, bilingual phenomenon also becomes more significant and prominent.In a variety of large and medium-sized city road signs can be seen everywhere, in both Chinese and English advertising and traffic also use the bilingual signs, many tourist attractions also asked the tour guide, driver and shops and restaurants waiters speak mandarin and English, some even asked for more languages.At the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 and further prove that the bilingual and multi-lingual phenomenon is must be the trend of the development of society.13.How to distinguish between a language and a dialect?Please use examples for your explanation.There are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, although a number of rough measures exist, which sometimes render contradictory results. The exact distinction is therefore a subjective one, dependent on the users frame of reference. In some cases difference of dialect shades into difference of language. Where the line between them is not clear, groups that are linguistically distinct are considered to speak different dialects of the same language if they can generally understand each other, although what constitutes this mutual intelligibility is itself not always clear.The line between dialects of one language and separate languages is somewhat arbitrary. However, wherever we draw the line, three points should be clear:(1)Every language has multiple dialects. (2)Every speaker of every language is also a speaker of at least one dialect of that language. (3)Since the pronunciation conventions of a dialect constitute an accent, every speaker of every language speaks with some accent. There is no such thing as speaking without an accent.14.Research on the influence of English on modern Chinese and report your findings with example.(1)From the perceptive of positive aspects: Firstly , with the spread of British democracy , Chinese peoples sense of democracy has been strengthened greatly . Secondly , for Chinese people , the spread of British individualism is a revolution of thoughts , especially for the young people . Thirdly , British capitalist constitutional monarchy provided a good modal for Chinese exploration of political system. (2) From the view of negative aspects: Some Chinese indulge in British culture , which is unfavorable for Chinese cultural hesitance .Take the English for example ,now Chinese people are learning English with the highly enthusiasm since English has become the language which is used all over the world . And English plays an important role in our education , employment , promotion and communication . That is to say , English has become a part of Chinese peoples daily life . However , the Chinese language learning is in an embarrassing situation . Compared to learning English with highly enthusiasm , more and more Chinese students hold an unconcerned attitude towards Chinese culture .15.Discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of English as a global language with examples.TheEnglishlanguageiseverywhere.Itisthemostwidelystudiedlanguageintheworld.There is no doubt that English has become a global language in business, diplomacy, education and politics. Advantages(1) Everyone would have a reasonable expectation of being able to communicate no matter where they were. (2)International trade would be facilitated by increased opportunities for communication between nations. (3)Some hostilities between nations might be averted if language barriers were no longer a factor. Disadvantags: (1)ManylanguageshavediedbecauseofthespreadofEnglish.Manystillhavelostalargenumberofspeakersandarebound tobedoomedinthenearfuture.(2) English has a diversity of accents and spelling conventions depending on country, so teaching English creates uncertainty as to which spelling and colloquial rules should be followed. (3)English is associated with colonial forces like England and the US which continue to exert political and economic pressures on countries so that they feel they must learn the language rather than desiring to learn it. (4)New ideas would be less common as peoples thinking began to conform to the same epistemology. 16.In what sense is language a part of human social behavior?(1) Language is one of the most powerful emblems of social behavior. In the normal transfer of information through language, we use language to send vital social messages about who we are, where we come from, and who we associate with.Given the social role of language, it stands to reason that one strand of language study should concentrate on the role of language in society.(2) Sociolinguistics has become an increasingly important and popular field of study, as certain cultures around the world expand their communication base and intergroup and interpersonal relations take on escalating significance. (3) A slightly different concern with language and society focuses more closely on the effect of particular kinds of social situations on language structure.(4) Another approach to language and society focuses on the situations and uses of language as an activity in its own right. (5) In approaching language as a social activity, it is possible to focus on discovering the specific patterns or social rules for conducting conversation and discourse(6) It is also possible to examine how people manage their language in relation to their cultural backgrounds and their goals of interaction.17.Why is it impor