Chapter 9 Language and culture

1. Chapter 9 Language and culture Chapter 10 Language acquisition Chapter 11 Second Language Acquisition

2. What is culture? • In a broad sense, culture means the total way of life of a people, including the patterns of belief, customs, objects, institutions, techniques, and language that characterizes the life of the human community. • In a narrow sense, culture may refer to local or specific practice, beliefs or customs, which can be mostly found in folk culture, enterprise culture or food culture, etc. • There are generally two types of culture: material and spiritual.

3. The relationship between language and culture • The same word may stir up different associations in people under different cultural background, e.g. the word “dog”. • Language expresses cultural reality, reflects the people’s attitudes, beliefs, world outlooks, etc. • The culture both emancipates and constrains people socially, historically and metaphorically. • Culture also affects its people’s imagination or common dreams which are mediated through the language and reflected in their life. • On the one hand, language as an integral part of human being, permeates in his thinking and way of viewing the world, language both expresses and embodies cultural reality; on the other, language, as a product of culture, helps perpetuate the culture, and the changes in language uses reflect the cultural changes in return.

4. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis • Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, proclaimed that the structure of the language people habitually use influences the ways they think and behave, i.e. different languages offer people different ways of expressing the world around, they think and speak differently, this is also known as linguistic relativity. • Sapir and Whorf believe that language filters people’s perception and the way they categorize experiences. This interdependence of language and thought is now known as Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

5. Strong version & weak version • Strong version believes that the language patterns determine people’s thinking and behavior; • Weak version holds that the former influence the latter. ----The study of the linguistic relativity or SWH has shed two important insights: • There is nowadays a recognition that language, as code, reflects cultural preoccupations and constrains the way people think. • More than in Whorf’s days, however, we recognize how important context is in complementing the meanings encoded in the language.

6. Linguistic evidence of cultural differences • Denotative meaning ---- a meaning that can be found in a dictionary. • Connotative meaning ---- a meaning or idea suggested by a word or thing in addition to the formal meaning or nature of the word or thing. • Iconic meaning ---- the image or icon invoked in mind by a word. • For example, “rose”.

7. Some cultural differences in language use • Greetings and terms of address • Thanks and compliments • Color words • Privacy and taboos • Rounding off numbers • Words and cultural-specific connotations • Cultural-related idioms, proverbs and metaphor

8. The significance of cultural teaching and learning • Learning a foreign language is inseparable from learning its culture. • We need to learn enough about the language’s culture so that we can communicate in the target language properly to achieve not only the linguistic competence but also the pragmatic or communicative competence as well.

9. Cultural overlap • Cultural overlap refers to the identical part of culture between two societies owing to some similarities in the natural environment and psychology of human beings. For example, the superior tends to refer to himself or herself by means of kinship terms, such as “Have daddy/mummy/teacher told you that?”

10. Cultural diffusion • Through communication, some elements of culture A enter culture B and become part of culture B, this phenomenon is known as cultural diffusion. • One typical example of cultural diffusion is the appearance of loan words. • The practice of observing holidays of foreign origins and accepting concepts from other cultures. • The attitude towards cultural diffusion (esp. cultural imperialism owing to linguistic imperialism)

11. Intercultural communication • Intercultural or cross-cultural communication is communication between people from different cultures (their cultural perceptions and symbols systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event.) • In cross-cultural communication, we need to pay special attention to the significant differences regarding social relations and concept of universe from different perspectives such as language, food, dress, attitude towards time, work habits, social behavior and religious belief that can cause frustrations in communications and contacts.

12. Chapter 10 Language acquisition • Language acquisition----refers to the child’s acquisition of his mother tongue, i.e. how the child comes to understand and speak the language of his community.

13. Theories of child language acquisition • A behaviorist view of language acquisition (Skinners) • An innatist view of language acquisition (Chomsky) • An interactionist view of language acquisition • Cognitive factors in child language development

14. A behaviorist view of language acquisition • Traditional behaviorists view language as behavior and believe that language learning is simply a matter of imitation and habit formation. Imitation  Recognition  Reinforcement • The inadequacy of behaviorist view lies in explaining how children acquire complex language system. (See examples in P144)

15. An innatist view of language acquisition • According to the innatist view of language acquisition, human beings are biologically programmed for language and that the language develops in the child just as other biological functions such as walking.

16. An interactionist view of language acquisition • The interactionist view holds that language develops as a result of the complex interplay between the human characteristics of the child and the environment in which the child develops. Integrated with the innatist view, the interactionist further claims that the modified language which is suitable for the child’s capability is crucial in his language acquisition. (motherese)

17. Cognitive factors in child language development • 1) Language development is dependent on both the concepts children form about the world and what they feel stimulated to communicate at the early and later stages of their language development. (the acquisition of perfect tense and the concept of present relevance) • 2) The cognitive factors determine how the child makes sense of the linguistic system himself instead of what meanings the child perceives and expresses. (the acquisition of negative form)

18. Language environment & the critical period hypothesis • Two important factors: the linguistic environment children are exposed to and the age they start to learn the language. • In behaviorist approach, language environment plays a major role in providing both language models to be imitated and necessary feedbacks. • The innatist view emphasizes more on children’s internal processing of the language items to be learnt. The environment functions as a stimulus that triggers and activates the pre-equipped UG to process the materials provided by the linguistic environment around the children. • The interactionist view calls for the quality of the language samples available in the linguistic environment, only when the language is modified and adjusted to the level of children’s comprehension, do they process and internalize the language items.

19. Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) • ---- Eric Lenneberg argues that the LAD, like other biological functions, works successfully only when it is stimulated at the right time ---- a specific and limited time period for language acquisition. • The strong version of CPH suggests that children must acquire their first language by puberty or they will never be able to learn from subsequent exposure. • The weak version holds that language learning will be more difficult and incomplete after puberty. (Support in Victor’s and Genie’s cases)

20. Stages in child language development • Phonological development • Vocabulary development 1) Under-extension 2) Over-extension 3) Prototype theory • Grammatical development 1) Telegraphic speech (2) 2) Sentences of three main elements (2.5) • Pragmatic development

21. Atypical development • Atypical or abnormal language development occurs due to trauma or injury. Atypical language development includes: • Hearing impairment • Mental retardation • autism • stuttering • Aphasia • Dyslexia and dysgraphia

22. Chapter 11 Second Language Acquisition • Second Language Acquisition ---- formally established itself as a discipline around the 1970s, refers to the systematic study of how one person acquires a second language subsequent to his native language. • Distinguish second language & foreign language

23. Connections between first language acquisition and second language acquisition • The first language study has served as a backcloth for perceiving and understanding new facts about second language learning (Littlewood, 1986). • SLA is different from first language acquisition. • Interlanguage

24. Contrastive analysis (CA) (1960s) • Positive transfer----facilitate target language learning • Negative transfer----interfere or hinder target language learning • It is believed that differences between the native language and the target language would pose difficulties in second/foreign language learning and teaching, e.g. • *To touch the society . • *There are more people come to study in the states. • *I wait you at the gate of the school.

25. Shortcomings of CA • The CA was soon found problematic, for many of the predictions of the target language learning difficulty formulated on the basis of contrastive analysis turned out to be either uninformative or inaccurate. Predicted errors did not materialize in learner language while errors did show up that the contrastive analysis had not predicted. “differences” and “difficulties” are not identical concepts.

26. Error analysis (EA) • The contrastive approach to learners’ errors has shed new light on people’s attitudes: the errors are significant in telling the teacher what needs to be taught, in telling the researcher how learning proceeds and those errors are a means whereby learners test their hypotheses about the language to be learnt. • Two main sorts of errors: Interlingual errors & intralingual errors

27. Interlingual errors ----Interlingual errors mainly result from cross-linguistic interference at different levels such as phonological, lexical, grammatical or discoursal etc. For examples, a.Substitution of [t] for [W] and [d] for [T]: threetree, thisdis. b.Shortening of long vowels: sheepship, meetmit

28. Intralingual errors ----The intralingual errors mainly from faulty or partial learning of the target language, independent of the native language. • Two types of errors have been well exploited: overgeneralization & cross-association

29. Overgeneralization Overgeneralization ---- the use of previously available strategies in new situations. • Walked, watched, washed… *rided, *goed, *doed, *eated… • Jane advise me to give up smoking. Jane told me to give up smoking. *Jane hoped me to give up smoking. *Jane suggested me to give up smoking.

30. Cross-association • Cross-association refers to the phenomenon that the close association of the two similar words often leads to confusion, e.g. • Other/another, much/many, stalagmite/stalactite… • It may alsooccurs at all levels of language from phonological to syntactic, e.g. The coffee is too hot to drink. *The apricot is too sour to eat it.

31. Errors & mistakes • Errors ---- unintentionally deviant from the target language and not self-corrigible by the learner (failure in competence)； • Mistakes ---- either intentionally or unintentionally deviant forms and self-corrigible (failure in performance).

32. Interlanguage (S. Pit Corder & Larry Selinker) • Interlangauge ---- learners’ independent system of the second language which is of neither the native language nor the second language, but a continuum or approximation from his native language to the target language. • What learners produce, correct or wrong, are evidence or the approximation from their first language to the target language.

33. Characteristics of interlanguage • Interlanguage has three important characteristics: systematicity, permeability and fossilization. • Fossilization---- a process occurring from time to time in which incorrect linguistic features become a permanent part of the way a person speaks or writes a language.

34. The role of native language in 2nd language learning • Language transfer: positive & negative (behaviorism) • Mentalists argued that few errors were caused by language transfer; transfer is not transfer, but a kind of mental process. • Three interacting factors in determining language transfer: A learner’s psychology Perception of native-target language distance Actual knowledge of the target language

35. 2nd language learning models and input hypothesis • Behaviorism model emphasizes the role of imitation and positive reinforcement, a “nurture” position; • The mentalists or the innativists shift to a “nature” position by stressing that human beings equipped innately with language acquisition device, are capable of language learning provided with adequate language input. • The social interactionists argue that language and social interaction cannot be separated.

36. Krashen’s Input Hypothesis • Krashen make a distinction between acquisition & learning. • He put forward that learners advance their language learning gradually by receiving comprehensible input. • He defined comprehensible input as “i + 1” : “i” represents learners’ current state of knowledge, the next stage is an “i + 1”. • Krashen mistook input and intake, thus receive criticism.

37. Individual differences • Language aptitude • Motivation • Learning strategies • Age of acquisition • Personality

38. Language aptitude • Language aptitude refers to a natural ability for learning a second language. It is believed to be related to a learner’s general intelligence. John Carroll identified some components of language aptitude: • Phonemic coding ability • Grammatical sensitivity • Inductive language learning ability • Rote learning ability

39. Motivation • Motivation can be defined as the learner’s attitudes and affective state or learning drive. It has a strong impact on his efforts in learning a second language. Generally four types of motivations have been identified: • Instrumental motivation • Integrative motivation • Resultative motivation • Intrinsic motivation

40. Learning strategies • Learning strategies are learners’ conscious, goal-oriented and problem-solving based efforts to achieve learning efficiency. According to Chamot (1986) & Oxford (1990), three types of strategies have been identified: • Cognitive strategies ---- analyzing,synthesis and internalizing what has been learned. • Metacognitive strategies ---- planning, monitoring and evaluating one’s learning. • Affect/social strategies ---- the ways learners interact with other speakers. • Cohen (1998) further distinguishes language learning strategies and language using strategies.

41. Age of acquisition • The Critical Period Hypothesis • Recent studies support the hypothesis that in terms of learning achievement and grammaticality the younger learners outperform the adults.

42. Personality • In terms of communicative ability rather than grammatical accuracy or knowledge of grammatical rules, the personality traits such as extroversion, talkative, self-esteem, self-confidence can be found in successful second language learners ( as in the case of Liyang: Crazy English).