7 - Language and culture

Summary

This chapter discusses important strands of thought regarding the interrelation of language and culture, from the complementary perspectives of culture's influence on linguistic form and the role of linguistic form in social action and culture. It begins with a discussion of the conceptual relationship between the two elements of the dyad. The study of linguistic form can be surveyed either from the perspective of organizational components or in terms of identifiable theories, the study of the language-culture nexus defies comprehensive exposition based on such rubrics. The ethnography of communication (EoC) was the earliest effort to develop a framework for the description of linguistic behaviour in wider social and cultural contexts. Recent publications on language endangerment aimed at popular audiences implicate the shift from local languages to global ones in significant losses of cultural knowledge, especially detailed knowledge of local environments and resource use.