MARIANO MARCOS STATE UNIVERSITY

College of Teacher Education

MODULE 2
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

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Module LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

2

INTRODUCTION

What language do you speak?

What is your religion?
What holidays do you celebrate?
What is your racial identification?
What is your ethnic identity?
What is your culture?

Culture is that which shapes us; it shapes our identity and influences our behavior.
Culture is our “way of being,” more specifically, it refers to the shared language, beliefs,
values, norms, behaviors, and material objects that are passed down from one generation
to the next. (Reference: https://www.purdueglobal.edu/blog/social-behavioral-sciences/what-is-cultural-diversity/)

Of all the nations in the world, the United States of America is the most culturally
diverse. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2009 population in America was:
• 80% White
• 16% Hispanic or Latino origin (may be of any race)
• 13% African American
• 5% Asian
• 1% American Indian/Alaskan Native
• 0.2% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander2
Reference: https://www.purdueglobal.edu/blog/social-behavioral-sciences/what-is-cultural-diversity/

On the other hand, our country, the islands of the Philippines are inhabited by a
number of different ethnic groups.

The majority of the population is composed of ethnolinguistic groups whose languages

are Austronesian also known as Malayo-Polynesian in origin. Many of these groups
converted to Christianity, particularly the lowland-coastal groups, and adopted many
foreign elements of culture.

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Ethnic groups include the Cebuano, Ilocano, Pangasinense, Kapampangan, Tagalog,

Bicolano, Waray, Surigaonon, Zamboangueño and Hiligaynon and many more.
In western Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, there are indigenous groups who practice
Islam. The Spanish called them Moros after the Moors (despite no resemblance or cultural
ties to them apart from their religion). In the Agusan Marsh and the highlands of Mindanao,
there are native ethnic groups collectively known as the Lumad. Unlike the Moros, these
people do not practice Islam, and maintain their animistic beliefs and traditions though
some of them have converted to Christianity as well. (Reference:
https://sites.google.com/site/philippinetribes/ethnic-groups-of-the-philippines)

The term culturally diverse is often used interchangeably with the concept of
multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism is defined as a system of beliefs and behaviors that recognizes and

respects the presence of all diverse groups in an organization or society, acknowledges and
values their socio-cultural differences, and encourages and enables their continued
contribution within an inclusive cultural context which empowers all within the organization
or society.

Sociologist Dr. Caleb Rosado, who specializes in diversity and multiculturalism,

described seven important actions involved in the definition of multiculturalism:
1. recognition of the abundant diversity of cultures;
2. respect for the differences;
3. acknowledging the validity of different cultural expressions and contributions;
4. valuing what other cultures offer;
5. encouraging the contribution of diverse groups;
6. empowering people to strengthen themselves and others to achieve their maximum
potential by being critical of their own biases; and
7. celebrating rather than just tolerating the differences in order to bring about unity
through diversity.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the chapter, the students should be able to:

1. trace the origin and developments of language based on theories and
hypotheses;
2. analyze the shades of meanings of words and expressions based on semiotics;
and

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3. explain how language affect culture and vice versa.

WARM UP ACTIVITY

Ramon Bautista, a famous pop culture personality in a rave party during the
celebration of the Kadayawan Festival last 2014, remarked, “Ang daming hipon dito sa
Davao,” and led the people in chanting “hipon.”

This insulted the Duterte family and many other conservative and professional
people in Davao.

Why do you think so?

Read the following news articles regarding this issue from the following links:

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/630097/dutertes-blast-ramon-bautista-for-calling-
davao-city-women-hipon
https://www.rappler.com/entertainment/ramon-bautista-persona-non-grata-davao-
city-hipon-remark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er71RBlNFnI

LESSON 1

Accounts on the Origin of Language

For us to better understand the special relationship of language to culture, let us

know some theories and accounts of how language originated and developed.

The accounts of the origin and development of language come from different
traditions and points of view. Among them are the biblical, evolution, and scientific point of
view.

Biblical Account on the Origin of Language

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Theories on the origin of speech, which have been increasing steadily since the
“Enlightenment,” are all directed against biblical pronouncements. Only the German Johann
Peter Süssmilch (1707–1767) affirmed by saying:

“If it is supposed that man himself was the inventor, then he should already, before
the invention of speech, have made use of another kind of language. Man must have
been clever and resourceful without possessing speech, and this is evidently
impossible. Then only God’s intelligence remains.”

The Bible affirms that God spoke to Adam, who understood what he was told. This confirms
that the first man, Adam, already possessed the God-given gift of speech in all its fullness.
He was able to converse intelligently (Gen. 2:23; Gen. 3:2, 10, 12, 13) and even had the
ability to create new words: “So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air
and all the beasts of the field” (Gen. 2:20).

In the creation account that follows, each feature of our planet was formed with a
divine verbal command.

The Bible does not describe an original development of language. Rather, language is
shown to be a trait of God Himself. In just the third verse of Genesis 1, we read:
“And God said, Let there be light ….”

The Bible states that animals were created “after their kind” (verses 21, 24-25).
Humans, though, were not—they were created after the God kind: “in our image, after our
likeness” (verse 26). As such, man was given the divine ability to think and translate
thoughts into words. After creating man and woman, God immediately spoke to them, “Be
fruitful, and multiply …” (verse 28).

The first reference to writing may be in Genesis 4:26, which can be translated as “to
read, to publish the name of the Lord” – then began man TO CALL upon the name of the
Lord. Whatever the case, writing is inferred as developing early in human history.

Another significant Biblical point about language is that God allowed man flexibility
and creativity in developing his vocabulary, coining new words. God brought the animals to
Adam “to see what he would call them; And whatever Adam called each living creature, that
was its name. So, Adam gave names to all …” (Genesis 2:19-20; New King James Version).

The Biblical view explains not only why all mankind (and only mankind) has language,
but also why mankind universally shares the smaller unique aspects of language (Language
Universal).

The Biblical account makes no significant mention of language development after

creation until at the tower of Babel. “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one

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speech” (Genesis 11:1). Because of man’s pride when the Tower of Babel was built, God
imposed the judgment of the confusion of man’s language.

After the Flood, the growing multitudes gathered in the plain of Shinar in order to
establish a powerful, compact civilization and to build a tower that would reach unto
heaven—a tower that, later accounts explain, would enable man to survive another flood, in
defiance of God.

Verses 6-8 state: “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one
language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which
they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that
they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from
thence upon the face of all the earth ….”

God foresaw the rapid development of evil designs among a people of one language
living in one place. So He intervened to confound the language, forcing man to spread out
around the world with those of his own language.

This explains early major changes in languages and the existence of “language
isolates”—languages with no known connection to or development from other languages.
From those primary, separate languages, minor developments of languages and dialects
occurred naturally over thousands of years, bringing us to the point today where there are
over 7,000 different languages around the world.

According to the biblical account, man has been speaking and writing for around 6,000
years—the full course of his existence. Archaeologists have dated the earliest discovered,
generally accepted use of written language to around 5,500 years ago.

This definitely supports the biblical record. If humans really started to evolve in
“speaking” 2.5 million years ago, and reached linguistic “modernity” 100,000 years ago,
then nearly 95,000 years is a long time to wait before recording the spoken word on
“paper.”

And it was not just one single, isolated culture that began writing 5,500 years ago.
From this time and just after, several peoples and cultures from different areas in and
around the Middle East and Asia started writing. In fact, the dates for early writing across
certain countries are so similar that scientists argue over which language developed first.

Some of the earliest examples are the Indus script (India, undeciphered, around 3500
b.c.), Sumerian cuneiform (Iraq, 3100 b.c.), Proto-Elamite cuneiform (Iran, undeciphered,
around 3100 b.c.), and Proto-Egyptian hieroglyphs (around 3300 b.c.). The earliest-
discovered texts are generally in the form of pictographs—simple images representing ideas
that gradually morphed into even simpler yet more abstract signs.

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Debate abounds regarding the dating, and even authenticity, of earlier discoveries of
writing, such as the European Vinča symbols (dated roughly to 5500 b.c.). Excluding these
controversial items, the general consensus for writing is that it originated in the fourth
millennium b.c.

The Biblical account explains why language is exclusively human and why it is
hardwired into our brains and vocal anatomy: because God deliberately designed it as such.

Mythological Accounts on the Origin of Language

Mythology refers to a collection of myths, especially one belonging to a particular

religious or cultural tradition. A myth is a traditional story, especially one concerning the
early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically
involving supernatural beings or events.

Here are two myths about how language originated.

The Hindu World Tree. According to one Hindu myth, there was once a very tall tree
that grew out from the very center of the earth. It was called the “World Tree” or
“Knowledge Tree”, and grew so tall that it almost reached the heavens. The tree decided
that it would keep growing so that its head would be in heaven and its branches on the
earth, so it could make all humankind gather under it and prevent them from ever
separating. The god Brahma discovered the tree’s intentions and as punishment for it being
so proud, he cut off all of the tree’s branches and scattered them all over the earth. Where
each branch fell a Wata tree began to grow, and with it a new language and culture for
humankind.

The Death of Wurruri. An aboriginal tribe from southern Australia has a rather
gruesome myth regarding why we do not all speak the same language. The story goes that
there was once a very obnoxious old woman named Wurruri who enjoyed walking around
with her walking stick and using it to render useless the fires around which people slept.
One day, she died, and the news spread throughout the land, much to the delight of those
who she had plagued in her lifetime. They all came to see her body, and one group began to
eat the flesh of the corpse. They immediately began to speak a particular language and
wandered off in a specific direction. The next group ate what was inside the woman’s
intestines, and began speaking a different language and wandered off in a different
direction. The last group ate the intestines themselves, and started to speak a third
language and wandered off in a third direction. Thus, the different aboriginal tribes and their
languages were a product of eating a different body part.

In the Philippines, below is a myth that tells how people had language:

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Igorot Myth. In the beginning there were no people on the earth. Lumawig, the Great
Spirit, came down from the sky and cut many reeds. He divided these into pairs which he
placed in different parts of the world, and then he said to them, "You must speak." .
Immediately the reeds became people, and in each place was a man and a woman who
could talk, but the language of each couple differed from that of the others. Then Lumawig
commanded each man and woman to marry, which they did. By and by there were many
children, all speaking the same language as their parents. These, in turn, married and had
many children. In this way there came to be many people on the earth.

Five Scientific Theories on the Origins of Language

What was the first language? How did language begin—where and when? Until
recently, a sensible linguist would likely respond to such questions with a shrug and a sigh.
As Bernard Campbell states flatly in "Humankind Emerging" (Allyn & Bacon, 2005), "We
simply do not know, and never will, how or when language began."

It is hard to imagine a cultural phenomenon that is more important than the

development of language. And yet no human attribute offers less conclusive evidence
regarding its origins. The mystery, says Christine Kenneally in her book "The First Word," lies
in the nature of the spoken word:
"For all its power to wound and seduce, speech is our most ephemeral creation; it is
little more than air. It exits the body as a series of puffs and dissipates quickly into the
atmosphere. ... there are no verbs preserved in amber, no ossified nouns, and no
prehistorical shrieks forever spread-eagled in the lava that took them by surprise."

The absence of such evidence certainly has not discouraged speculation about the
origins of language. Over the centuries, many theories have been put forward—and just
about all of them have been challenged, discounted, and often ridiculed. Each theory
accounts for only a small part of what we know about language.

Here, identified by their disparaging nicknames, are five of the oldest and most
common theories of how language began.

The Bow-Wow Theory. According to this theory, language began when our ancestors
started imitating the natural sounds around them. The first speech was onomatopoeic—
marked by echoic words such as moo, meow, splash, cuckoo, and bang.

What's wrong with this theory?

Relatively few words are onomatopoeic, and these words vary from one language to
another. For instance, a dog's bark is heard as au au in Brazil, ham ham in Albania, and
wang, wang in China. In addition, many onomatopoeic words are of recent origin, and not
all are derived from natural sounds.

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The Ding-Dong Theory. This theory, favored by Plato and Pythagoras, maintains that
speech arose in response to the essential qualities of objects in the environment. The
original sounds people made were supposedly in harmony with the world around them.

What's wrong with this theory?

Apart from some rare instances of sound symbolism, there is no persuasive evidence,
in any language, of an innate connection between sound and meaning.

The La-La Theory. The Danish linguist Otto Jespersen suggested that language may
have developed from sounds associated with love, play, and (especially) song.

What's wrong with this theory?

As David Crystal notes in "How Language Works" (Penguin, 2005), this theory still fails
to account for "... the gap between the emotional and the rational aspects of speech
expression... ."

The Pooh-Pooh Theory. This theory holds that speech began with interjections—
spontaneous cries of pain ("Ouch!"), surprise ("Oh!"), and other emotions ("Yabba dabba
do!").

What's wrong with this theory?

No language contains very many interjections, and, Crystal points out, "the clicks,
intakes of breath, and other noises which are used in this way bear little relationship to the
vowels and consonants found in phonology."

The Yo-He-Ho Theory. According to this theory, language evolved from the grunts,
groans, and snorts evoked by heavy physical labor.

What's wrong with this theory?

Though this notion may account for some of the rhythmic features of the language, it
doesn't go very far in explaining where words come from.

As Peter Farb says in "Word Play: What Happens When People Talk" (Vintage, 1993):
"All these speculations have serious flaws, and none can withstand the close scrutiny of
present knowledge about the structure of language and about the evolution of our species."

But does this mean that all questions about the origin of language are unanswerable?
Not necessarily. Over the past 20 years, scholars from such diverse fields as genetics,
anthropology, and cognitive science have been engaged, as Kenneally says, in "a cross-
discipline, multidimensional treasure hunt" to find out how language began. It is, she says,
"the hardest problem in science today."

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As William James remarked, "Language is the most imperfect and expensive means
yet discovered for communicating thought."

Otto Jespersen’s Origin of Language as Play (1922)

Danish linguist Jesperson suggested that language comes out of play, laughter,
cooing, courtship, emotional mutterings and the like. He even suggests that, contrary to
other theories, perhaps some of our first words were actually long and musical, rather than
the short grunts many assume we started with.

According to Jespersen, primitive speakers were not reticent and reserved beings, but
youthful men and women babbling merrily on, without being so particular about the
meaning of each word. They chattered away for the mere pleasure of chattering. Primitive
speech resembles the speech of little baby himself, before he begins to frame his own
language after the pattern of the grownups; the language of our remote forefathers was like
that ceaseless humming and crooning with which no thoughts are as yet connected, which
merely amuses and delights the little one. Language originated as play, and the organs of
speech were first trained in this singing sport of idle hours.

It is quite interesting to note that these modern views [on the commonality of
language and music and of language and dance] were anticipated in great detail by
Jespersen (1922). In his speculations about the origin of language, he arrived at the view
that referential language must have been preceded by singing, which in its turn was
functional in fulfilling the need for sex (or love), on the one hand, and the need for
coordinating collective work, on the other. These speculations have, in turn, their origins in
[Charles] Darwin's 1871 book The Descent of Man.

We may conclude from a widely-spread analogy that this power would have been
especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes, serving to express various emotions.
The imitation by articulate sounds of musical cries might have given rise to words expressive
of various complex emotions.

The modern scholars mentioned above agree in rejecting the well-known scenario
according to which language originated as a system of monosyllabic grunt-like sounds that
had the (referential) function of pointing at things. Instead, they propose a scenario
according to which referential meaning was slowly grafted upon nearly autonomous
melodious sound."

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Central Activity 1

Explain in not more than 150 words but not less than 100 words which of the theories
on the origin of language is most believable to you. Make sure to have this explanation
undergo plagiarism check conforming with the policy as discussed in the syllabus.

LESSON 2

Semiotics or Sign Language

Semiotics, also called semiology, the study of signs and sign-using behavior was defined by
one of its founders, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, as the study of “the life of signs within
society.”

Although the word was used in this sense in the 17th century by the English philosopher John
Locke, the idea of semiotics as an interdisciplinary field of study emerged only in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries with the independent work of Saussure and of the American philosopher
Charles Sanders Peirce

Is language connected to signs?

Of course! Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a
system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, military signals, etc. A science that studies the life of
signs within society is conceivable and a part of social psychology and consequently of general
psychology; we shall call it semiology (from Greek, semeion "sign") Semiology would show what
constitutes sign and what laws govern them

Is culture related to signs?

Very much! Semiotics of culture is a research field within semiotics that attempts to define
culture from semiotic perspective and as a type of human symbolic activity, creation of signs and a
way of giving meaning to everything around. Therefore, here culture is understood as a system of
symbols or meaningful signs. Because the main sign system is the linguistic system, the field is
usually referred to as semiotics of culture and language.

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Under this field of study symbols are analyzed and categorized in certain classes within the
hierarchal system. With postmodernity, metanarratives are no longer as pervasive and thus
categorizing these symbols in this postmodern age is more difficult and rather critical.

What is a SIGN?

We seem as a species to be driven by a desire to make meanings: above all, we are surely
Homo significans - meaning-makers.

Distinctively, we make meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs'. Indeed,
according to Peirce, 'we think only in signs' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.302).

Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odors, flavors, acts or objects, but such things
have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning. 'Nothing is a
sign unless it is interpreted as a sign', declares Peirce (Peirce 1931-58, 2.172). Anything can be a sign
as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something - referring to or standing for something
other than itself.

We interpret things as signs largely unconsciously by relating them to familiar systems of

conventions. It is this meaningful use of signs which is at the heart of the concerns of semiotics.

The two dominant models of what constitutes a sign are those of the linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure and the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.

Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign.

He defined a sign as being composed of:

1. a 'signifier' -- the form which the sign takes; and

2. the 'signified' -- the concept it represents.

The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified
(Saussure 1983, 67). The relationship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as
'signification', and this is represented in the Saussurean diagram by the arrows. The horizontal line
marking the two elements of the sign is referred to as 'the bar'.

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If we take a linguistic example, the word 'Open' (when it is invested with meaning by
someone who encounters it on a shop doorway) is a sign consisting of:
1. a signifier: the word open;
2. a signified concept: that the shop is open for business.

A sign must have both a signifier and a signified. You cannot have a totally
meaningless signifier or a completely formless signified (Saussure 1983, 101; Saussure 1974,
102-103). A sign is a recognizable combination of a signifier with a particular signified.

The same signifier (the word 'open') could stand for a different signified (and thus be a
different sign) if it were on a push-button inside a lift ('push to open door'). Similarly, many
signifiers could stand for the concept 'open' (for instance, on top of a packing carton, a small
outline of a box with an open flap for 'open this end') - again, with each unique pairing
constituting a different sign.

For more information about Semiotics or Sign Language, watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3XvJDxjIpU

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Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication is the transfer of information through the use of body

language including eye contact, facial expressions, gestures and more.

Example: smiling when you meet someone conveys friendliness, acceptance and
openness.
Paralinguistics is the part of communication outside of the words themselves – the
volume, speed, intonation of a voice along with gestures and other non-verbal cues.

Kinesic communication is one of the many ways we can communicate non-verbally. It

is the technical term for body language, i.e., communicating by body movement.

Central Activity 2

Look at the images (signs) below. Explain in not more than 5 sentences the signifier
and the signified.

(Pipe)

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(Dog)

(Bible)

LESSON 3
Theories in Language and Culture

Theory refers to a plausible (believable) or scientifically acceptable general principle

or body of principles offered to explain phenomena (Merriam, 2020).

We need to study theories that explains the relationship and development of language
and culture.

Most familiar of these theories on language and culture are:

a. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
b. Ethnopoetics
c. Piaget’s Assimilation and Accommodation

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Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

In the early twentieth century, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf proposed that language
influences the way we think. Their hypothesis was first advanced by Sapir, an American
anthropological linguist in 1929 and subsequently developed by Whorf who was a student
of Sapir. The theory is also known as the theory of linguistic relativity, linguistic relativism,
linguistic determinism, Whorfian hypothesis, and Whorfianism ( Nordquist, 2019).

This idea, known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, is the foundation of the theory of linguistics
determinism which states that it is impossible to fully learn or understand a second
language because the primary language is so fully ingrained within an individual.
Consequently, it is impossible to fully understand other culture ( Models of Language and
Culture, 2020 ). Further, this hypothesis forwards that the structure of a language
determines a native speaker's perception and categorization of experience.

For example, someone from the desert or the tropics who has never experienced snow
cannot think about snow. Try to imagine how you would explain snow to someone who had
never experienced or see even just a picture or a video clip of snow. You might not have
experienced a snow yet, but you already have seen it in movies or in the television. Hence,
you have some vicarious experience of a snow. However, since your experience of a snow
comes only from a secondary source ( television, movie or video) your experience of a snow
is not whole or complete.

The idea that a person's native language determines how he or she thinks was popular
among behaviorists of the 1930s and on until cognitive psychology theories came about,
beginning in the 1950s and increasing in influence in the 1960s. Behaviorism taught that
behavior is a result of external conditioning and does not take feelings, emotions, and
thoughts into account as affecting behavior.

Author Lera Boroditsky gave some background on ideas about the connections between
languages and thought:

"The question of whether languages shape the way we think goes back centuries;
Charlemagne proclaimed that 'to have a second language is to have a second soul.' But the
idea went out of favor with scientists when Noam Chomsky's theories of language gained
popularity in the 1960s and '70s. Dr. Chomsky proposed that there is a universal grammar
for all human languages—essentially, that languages don't really differ from one another in
significant ways...." ("Lost in Translation. (The Wall Street Journal," July 30, 2010)

One big problem with the original Sapir-Whorf hypothesis stems from the idea that if a
person's language has no word for a particular concept, then that person would not be able
to understand that concept, which is untrue.

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Language does not necessarily control humans' ability to reason or have an emotional
response to something or some idea.

For example, take the German word sturmfrei, which essentially is the “feeling” when you
have the whole house to yourself because your parents or roommates are away. Just
because English does not have a single word for the idea does not mean that Americans or
Filipinos cannot understand the concept ( Nordquist, 2019).

Sapir’s linguistic relativity has two dominant points:

a. The language we speak and think in shapes the way we perceive the world.
b. The existence of the various language systems implies that the people who think in
these different languages must perceive the world differently.

Sapir realized that there is a close relationship between language and culture so that the
one cannot be understood and appreciated without knowledge of the other. In his own
words, he emphasized (Basel Al-Sheikh Hussein, 2012):
“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 up on
the language habits of the group…We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as
we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of
interpretation.” (Sapir, 1929b, P.207).

To Sapir, language is more dominant than culture or society. It is language that

controls how people think about their community and culture. Language has embedded
within it ways of looking at the world. In other words, language not only expresses our
thoughts and perceptions but also shapes the way we think and perceive. When we learn a
language, we learn not only words but also ways of thinking and perceiving. The Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis indicates that rather than objects and events forcing themselves onto our
consciousness, it is our language that determines our consciousness, and hence our
perception of objects and events. Learning a language means not only learning words but
also acquiring the perceptions embedded in that language. In other words, language both
reflects and shapes our cultural experiences.

The formulation of the linguistic relativity, for which Whorf is famous, was the result
of his prolonged study of the Hopi language (an American Indian language). His first
attempts at interpreting the Hopi grammar according to the usual Indo-European categories
were abandoned when they produced unexplainable irregularities. The linguistic structures
that he found were very different from those of his mother tongue, English. Whorf argues

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that this implies a different way of thinking (Basel Al-Sheikh Hussein, 2012). The Hopis have
different perception of the world because they have a different language from his (Whorf’s).

Different speakers, then, view the world differently. If speakers of one language have
certain words to describe things and speakers of another language lack similar words, then
speakers of the first language will find it easier to talk about those things (Basel Al-Sheikh
Hussein, 2012).

This is the case if we consider the technical terms used in different sciences; for
instance, physicians talk easily about medical phenomena, more than anyone else. A
stronger claim is that, if one language makes distinctions that another does not make, then
those who use the first language will more readily perceive the differences in their
environment (Basel Al-Sheikh Hussein, 2012).

Ethnopoetics

Ethnopoetics, also known as Cultural Poetics is a method of recording text versions

of oral poetry or narrative performances (i.e. verbal lore) that uses poetic lines, verses,
and stanzas (instead of prose paragraphs) to capture the formal, poetic performance
elements which would otherwise be lost in the written texts. The goal of any ethnopoetic
text is to show how the techniques of unique oral performers enhance the aesthetic value
of their performances within their specific cultural contexts. Major contributors to
ethnopoetic theory include Jerome Rothenberg, Dennis Tedlock, and Dell Hymes.
Ethnopoetics is considered a subfield of ethnology, anthropology, folkloristics, stylistics,
linguistics, and literature and translation studies (Wikipedia, 2020).

Poetics can be considered as the recurrent patternings of linguistic forms. Hence, it

can also be considered that ethnopoetics (or cultural poetics) refers to the various
traditions of such recurrent patternings of linguistic forms. Such recurrent patternings of
linguistic forms describe the ways that languages facilitate possibilities for people to orient
and imagine. This means that people, especially in the olden times have developed a
pattern in constructing their poetry (oral literature). There was a structure that they
developed and practiced in constructing and reciting their oral literatures. This became a
tradition; hence it became ethnopoetics. Example of which are the haikus, dirge and epic.
These types of oral literatures have distinct structures and traditions of construction and
delivery. In the Philippines, we have the kundiman, balagtasan, dallot and bugtong. Each of
these has unique patterning or structure which was determined by our forefathers. All of
them exemplified cultural traits of the Filipinos.

Let us discuss kundiman a little further and see how the poetics of kundiman reveal
the culture and history of the Filipinos.

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In the Philippines, a type of love song known as the kundiman had existed since the early
19th century. But in the early 20th century kundiman had developed into art song.

The term kundiman comes from the Tagalog phrase kung hindi man or ‘if it were not so’.
Written in the Tagalog language, these folksongs were subtly patriotic but typically disguised
as love songs. Filipinos, in their long struggle against an oppressive Spanish regime, saw it as
a tool that would ultimately unite Filipino revolutionaries to wage war against the Spaniards
in 1896 during the Spanish-American War. (Quiliano Niñeza Anderson, 2015)

The composer Francisco Santiago (1889-1947) who is sometimes called the Father of
Kundiman Art Song regarded the Kundiman as something that expresses the lofty
sentiment of love, and even heroism in a melancholy mood of the Filipinos (Quiliano Niñeza
Anderson, 2015)

Filipinos have a sentimental love for their nation. This is their culture and how they perceive
their experience during the colonial period. The Filipinos then had developed a sentimental
love for their motherland who they perceived as imprisoned in a colonial power. Hence,
their ethnopoetics, which is the kundiman showed the pattern of their linguistic expression
for their culture (behavior) of sentimental love and heroism for their motherland and their
melancholy (sadness) that the country is under a foreign control.

This simple example shows that language is truly intertwined with its culture and is much
reflected through its oral traditions and literature. Hence, folk literature and ethnopoetics
are rich sources of data on how language reflects the culture of a certain society or group of
people.

Below is the lyrics of the first published Kundiman in the Philippines by Francisco Santiago. It
talks about the sadness of the Filipinos during the Spanish regime. ‘Anak’ refers to the
natives. Dalita refers to the Philippines which at that time is suppressed. The sadness was
expressed in disguise of a love song so that the colonizers will have no suspicion that this is a
patrioric song. However, Filipinos who have similar feelings and notions towards their
colonial experience can relate to the true sentiment of the poem, performed through a
song. Look at the last stanza of the kundiman, in which the speaker is hoping for hope
(ihulog and pag-asa). He is asking heavens to shower hope in the land. This is the hope of
freedom. Freedom they believe will free them from ‘dalita’, which means sorrow.

Anak Dalita Lyrics By Francisco Santiago

Lyrics
Ako’y anak ng dalita at tigib ng luha
Ang naritong humihibik na bigyan ng awa
Buksan mo ang langit at kusa mong pakinggan
Ang aking ligalig sa kapagdaramdam

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At kung hindi ka mahahabag

Sa lungkot kong dinaranas
Puso’t diwa’y nabibihag
Sa libing masasadlak

Magtanong ka kung ‘di tunay

sa kislap ng mga tala
Magtanong ka rin saulap
ng taglay kong dalita

Sa dilim ng gabi aking nilalamay

Tanging larawan mo ang nagiging ilaw
Kung ikaw ay mahimbing sa gitna ng dilim
Ay iyong ihulog puso mo sa akin

Ang iyong ihulog, ang iyong ihulog

Buhay pag-asa, pag-asa.
If you want to know how this kundiman is sung, watch this YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j398PnJqomM

Piaget’s Assimilation and Accommodation

Jean Piaget’s theory of language development suggests that children use both assimilation
and accommodation to learn language. Piaget was interested in how children organize
‘data’ and settled on two fundamental responses stimuli: assimilation of knowledge, and
accommodation of knowledge.

Assimilation is the process of changing one’s environment to place information into an

already-existing schema (or idea). Assimilation of knowledge occurs when a learner
encounters a new idea, and must ‘fit’ that idea into what they already know. Think of this as
filling existing containers.

Accommodation is the process of changing one’s schema to adapt to the new

environment. Piaget believed children need to first develop mentally before language
acquisition can occur. According to him, children first create mental structures within the
mind (schemas) and from these schemas, language development happens (Human
Language Development, 2016). Accommodation of knowledge is more substantial, requiring
the learner to reshape those containers.

You can think of these containers as ‘schema.’

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Schema are fluid and constantly evolving vessels students use to process what they see,
read, and feel. Examples:

When a child learns the word for dog, they start to call all four-legged animals dogs. This is
assimilation. People around them will say, no, that is not a dog, it is a cat. The schema for
dog then gets modified to restrict it to only certain four-legged animals. That is
accommodation.

Assimilation is like adding air into a balloon. You just keep blowing it up. It gets bigger and
bigger. For example, a two year old’s schema of a tree is “green and big with bark” — over
time the child adds information (some trees lose their leaves, some trees have names, we
use a tree at Christmas, etc.) Your balloon just gets full of more information that fits neatly
with what you know and adds onto it (Terry Heik, 2019)..

Accommodation is when you must turn your round balloon into the shape of a poodle. This
new balloon ‘animal’ is a radical shift in your schema (or balloon shape). This complete
change in the schema involves a lot of cognitive energy, or accommodation, a shift in our
schema (Terry Heik, 2019).

This theory describes the inseparable connection of language and culture. For
language to be learned and developed, a person needs to assimilate and accommodate
something from his/her culture. The more things that he/she accommodates and
assimilates from his culture, the richer his/her language use is.

How do you think, language development and cultural awareness occur in these pictures?

Central Activity 3
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Answer the quiz to be given by your professor.

Assessment

BY GROUP
Individually read “Shimenawa” (Short Story from Japan).
As a group, brainstorm and discuss your answers to the following questions:

1. Identify one set of Signifier and Signified in the story and tell how this set is related
to the Japanese people or their culture.
2. Identify a major cultural behavior that is described in this story. How does this
cultural behavior affect their language or way of communication? What is the
effect of this cultural behavior to their personal lives?
3. Compare or contrast the Japanese’ concept of kinship reflected in this story to that
of the Filipinos’. What are the similarities or differences?

Write a summary of your discussion on a sheet of yellow paper. Make sure to still follow the
numbering of the questions above.

Shimenawa
(Modern Short Story from Japan)
By: Naoko Kumagai

Uncle Kazuya, my father’s older brother, hung himself in the barn behind his
house in Ishikari, just outside Sapporo in Hokkaido.

He had left a note:

I’m found out. It’s too late. Help.

“He went door to door and bribed people so they’d vote for him,” my mother said.
“He was running for city council. He was an idiot.”
“Your grandma’s pretty upset,” was all my father could say. She had called us with
the news that early Tuesday morning, September 1988.

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My 14-year-old self tried to detect sadness, anger, anything in my father’s

expression. He rustled the Vancouver Sun he was reading and held the broadsheet
up to his face like a shield. I was at the foot of the long dining table; he was at the
head. We were remote satellites temporarily at rest. He didn’t go to the funeral.

***

It was the beginning of a lesson for me. Death doesn’t necessarily bring people
together; it can lift the veil and reveal how far apart you are. If my father ever cried as
much as he needed to, I imagine he would flood every creek, every river vein, until
the waters would rise into swirling pools. He would have to be compelled by some
extraordinary force to soften him, crack him open and invite the grief in.

***

As the eldest son, Kazuya was expected to stay in the house in Ishikari where he’d
been born. He and Aunt Yuko brought up their two boys on the farm. I had met my
uncle only once during a visit to Ishikari when I was ten, a hazy recollection, aside
from his booming voice. I pieced the rest of him together from hearing fragmented
anecdotes and muted conversations between my parents. Kazuya was full of life, a
man to be feared. He was generous, oppressive, a thief (he stole land that belonged
to my father), a bully, a giant. He contained my shifting preoccupations with Japan,
the country where I was born but didn’t know. He was a thread to slippery, remote
family clues. My parents had told me very little. They were born in Japan at the end
of the Second World War; they grew up poor. Married, immigrated, Canada. They
moved through life like the walking embalmed. They held the war in the marrow of
their soft child bones.
My father drank himself numb and did his best to follow his father’s credo: “A real
man only speaks three words a day.”

At the end, his brother broke the family rules. I’m found out. It’s too late. Help. He
would never have expressed such a cacophony when he was alive. It was too many
words.

***

After hearing of Kazuya’s suicide, I contemplated rope in all its variations. My old
skipping rope with wood handles, the tent rope in the garage, the multi-purpose
yellow plastic twine in my father’s workroom that didn’t seem to have a purpose. A
rubber hose in the grass, the trailing line of an extension cord, the white TV cable
with metal ends. I conjured up heavy loops of rope lying on the ground in my uncle’s
barn, like columns of sinister, sleeping vipers.

***
In July 1989, eleven months after Kazuya’s suicide, our family visited my
grandmother and Aunt Yuko in Ishikari. Grandma was a tiny, fierce woman, who was

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bowlegged and rocked side-to-side like a metronome as she walked. She often sat in
her corner in the living room, on a fat cushion on her knees.

One afternoon, I was sitting on the floor across from her. Her eyes were closed. For
a moment, I thought she might be sleeping upright. Then she was speaking.
“Do you eat sushi in Canada?” she asked me, opening her eyes.
I was fifteen and could speak some Japanese. She didn’t know a word of English.
“Yes. There’s lots of it everywhere,” I replied.
“It would be nice if you married a Japanese boy someday,” she said.
“They don’t exist in Canada,” I said.
She made a “hmmmm” sound and nodded.
“It’s sad,” she said. “That’s very sad. It would be nice if you could.”
Her gaze wandered away and did not return to me.
“I don’t know why he did it,” she said, her voice breaking.

***
I had heard that corruption was common in Japanese politics in Hokkaido; it was so
common that people didn’t particularly seem to be outraged by it. Some were often
more angered when their favourite politician was arrested for bribery, than by the
corruption itself. My uncle had been a popular councilman in his community. He
probably could have gone on, unscathed, been forgiven, if forgiveness was even
necessary.

So why did he do it?

“You must commit suicide at the height of your beauty.” This was something the
Japanese writer Yukio Mishima believed when he committed seppuku in a
government office at the age of 45 in 1970. Kazuya had been 52 when he died. Did
he believe he was past his beauty? Was his suicide in part, an act of vanity? Had he
been terrified of getting old?

In the Shinto religion, twists of sacred rice straw rope called shimenawa are used to
symbolize ritual purification and to ward off evil spirits. The shimenawa is hung over
the doors of temples, homes or building sites after they have been purified. The rope
is also used to encircle objects that are considered holy, such as trees or rocks.
Kazuya had used a piece of rice straw rope to end his life. He was not a religious
person. But was his death in some way an attempt at purification?

Through the years, I would turn the possibilities over and over again in my mind. It
occurred to me much later that it was a way for me to keep him alive.

***

This is a story I was told.

It was August 1973. My brother Jiro was four, sitting at dinner.

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“E tadaki mas,” my uncle said. Jiro picked up onigiri, a rice ball, with his hands and
mashed it into his mouth. Fish and rice on his plate, untouched. He stuffed another
onigiri in his mouth, bits of rice falling.
“Jiro-chan…” A warning from my mother. Jiro opened his mouth wide, splayed his
tongue covered in tiny white beads of rice. Kazuya stood up and roughly pulled Jiro
out of his chair.
“What are you doing?” My mother asked, getting up.
Kazuya went out the back door, carrying Jiro firmly under his arm. With the other
hand, he picked up a circle of rope hanging on the fence by the shed. In the yard
was a large oak tree with heavy, twisted branches. He wrapped the rope around my
brother once, then pushed him to the trunk of the oak, winding the rope around and
around.
“He must eat his dinner properly.” My uncle tied a thick knot at the end. “He needs
to learn to be a man.”
My mother was shouting at my uncle; Jiro was screaming, the sound flooding the
sky. Kazuya went back into the house, relaxed and entitled, as if he had just finished
a long day’s work.

No one remembers the rest. My mother never forgave my uncle. My father wasn’t
there. Jiro can’t recall any of it. He jokes that the incident is possibly the reason he
always, intuitively eats everything on his plate.

I invent my own ending. I imagine my mother struggling with the knot, with Jiro
sobbing to be free. A kodama, a tree spirit, in the form of an old woman, appears.
She unties Jiro, embraces his small body, presses her palm over his forehead as if
to calm a fever. She banishes the event from his mind. Early next morning, Jiro
peers out the window. A shimenawa with paper streamers is tied around the base of
the oak.

***

When the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011, I was living in Toronto. I called
my parents in Vancouver. My father picked up the phone. He usually passed the
receiver to my mother once he’d said hello because he hated talking on the phone,
but this time, he was watching the news, the endless looping footage of the
destruction, the lineups for food and water and the brown water surging over houses
and cars.

“Japan will disappear,” he said. “It’s going to disappear soon.”

He sounded like a child then, speaking in a voice I had never heard. He was trying to
reach relatives in Tokyo and couldn’t get through. Something in my father’s tone
indicated an opening, a chance to compensate for a lifetime of missed
conversations. We could start with my uncle.

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But I hesitated. I was too afraid to take the risk, to be evaded, dismissed. I told my
father I’d call back later. I hung up the phone and left the tangled cord spiraling from
the edge of the desk.

(The Author)
Naoko Kumagai has a background in journalism, publicity, screenwriting, and
filmmaking. She’s been awarded the Canadian Film Centre’s screenwriting prize,
has been published in Rice Paper and Event magazine and won Room magazine’s
non-fiction contest in 2014. Most recently, she was long listed for the CBC non-fiction
prize. She reads obsessively and loves a good almond milk latte.
She has an MFA from the University of Guelph.

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