Faculty department

3.Language is culture and culture is language.
Language and culture are in complex homologous relationships. Language is intricately intertwined with culture (they developed together, influencing each other in the process, ultimately shaping what it means to be human). In this context, A.L. Kroeber (1923) said: "Thus culture began when speech appeared, and from that moment the enrichment of one means the further development of the other." If culture is a product of human interaction, then cultural manifestations are acts of communication accepted by certain speech communities. According to Rossi Lundi (1973), "the totality of messages that we exchange with each other while speaking a given language constitutes a speech community, that is, the whole society understood in terms of speech." He further explains that all children learn their language in their society, and in the process of learning a language, they also learn their culture and develop their cognitive abilities. Language communicates through culture, and culture also communicates through language: Michael Silverstein suggested that the communicative power of culture works not only in representing aspects of reality, but also in connecting one context to another. That is, communication is not only the use of symbols that “stand for” beliefs, feelings, identities or events, it is also a way to bring beliefs, feelings and identities into the current context.
According to the principle of linguistic relativity, how we think about the world is directly dependent on the language we use to talk about it. “The real world is largely unconsciously built on the language habits of the group. No two languages ​​are so similar as to represent the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are different, not just the same with different labels” (Edward Sapir, 1929). Therefore, speaking is accepting a culture, and knowing a culture is like knowing a language. Language and culture are homologous mental realities.
Cultural products are representations and interpretations of the world that must be conveyed in order to be lived. The problem is what happens in cross-cultural interaction, i.e. when the sender and recipient of the message belong to different cultures. Contact between cultures is expanding, and intercultural communication is essential for anyone who wants to get along with and understand those whose beliefs and backgrounds may be very different from their own.
Language can denote cultural identity, but it is also used to refer to other phenomena and to refer to outside of oneself, especially when a particular speaker uses it to explain their intentions. A certain language indicates the culture of a certain social group. So we can assume that language learning is culture learning, so language learning is culture learning because of the interdependence of language and culture learning.
A culture is a fuzzy set of attitudes, beliefs, behavioral conventions, underlying assumptions, and values ​​shared by a group of people that influence each member's behavior and their interpretation of the meanings of other people's behavior. And language is a means of expressing and embodying other phenomena. It expresses the values, beliefs and meanings that are shared by members of a given society due to their socialization in it.Language also refers to objects characteristic of a given culture, as evidenced by the proper names embodying these objects. Byran argued that the "loaf of bread" evokes a distinct object culture in British usage unless a conscious effort is made to purge it of this reference and introduce a new one. So, we can conclude that language is part of culture, and through it In fact, learning a language inevitably means learning a language and a culture. According to Butjest, "the study of culture is actually a key factor in the ability to use and master a foreign language system." The Bellagio Declaration of the European Cultural Foundation and the International Council for the Development of Education states: “For effective international cooperation, knowledge of other countries and their cultures is as important as knowledge of their languages, and such knowledge depends on the teaching of a foreign language.” Thus, the study of a language is the study of the behavior of a given society and its cultural practices. Language is a product of the thinking and behavior of society. The performance of an individual native speaker in a foreign language is directly related to his/her understanding of the culture of that language (Taylor, 1979), and one might consider teaching the culture through the learners' own languages ​​that can be used in a particular situation. a way to interpret another culture (Ager). Finally, we can conclude that immersion learning accelerates the acquisition of cultural knowledge: “…the integration of language and cultural learning through the use of language as a means for the ongoing socialization of students is a process that is not designed to mimic and reproduce the socialization of students.” native teachers, but to develop students' cultural competence from its present stage, turning it into intercultural competence" (Fengping Gao)