Navoiy state pedagogical institute the faculty of the english languages and literature the department of the english language and

2.1 An Overview of the Teaching of Culture in L2/FL Education
Culture is a term used to describe all aspects of human social life. Culture is not static; people from within particular groups can create and re-create their own culture and values. One key element of culture is language, which will be described briefly below. Language is described by applied linguist Halliday (1973, 1985) as “the systematic resource for expressing meaning in context, not the set of all grammatical sentences” (Halliday, cited in Jordan, 2004, p. 6) which is used by people as a means to “deal with the external world…and…with each other” (ibid., p. 7). From this view, language can be understood as a set of linguistic units – morphemes, words, sentences – that people use as a tool for communication or to express their own feelings, thoughts and attitudes. Culture and language are heavily entwined. Language is created by human beings, so the development of language parallels the development of human society. Culture represents human society, because it reflects all aspects of human social life, the relationship among community members, and their history and development. From that view, language is seen as a part of culture and people use language to enact and reflect on culture. People from different cultures have their own ways of doing things, so the language they use in communication reflects cultural differences. It is noted that language and culture have an inextricable and interdependent relationship (Choudhury, 2013); they are not separable, but depend on each other and each supports the development of the other (Mitchell & Myles, 2004). The relationships between language and culture have been noted by numerous anthropologists and linguists in the development of foreign language education (Beishamayum, 2010; Byram, 1989; Choudhury, 2013; Fishman, 1996; Gao, 2006; Kramsch, 1998; Liddicoat et al., 2003; Mitchell & Myles, 2004; Risager, 2005, 2006; Thanasoulas, 2001). The two earliest linguists,named Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, determined the mutual relationship between language and culture through the “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis”11 (reviewed by Hussein, 2012; Jalalah, 1993). The “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” proposed that language controls the thoughts and perceptions of individuals, therefore language conditions their worldviews. People from different cultural groups have different worldviews and it is language that shapes their cultures. Language is a reflection of human beings‟ society and the changes within that social context affect the language people use. In other words, language affects culture and, culture affects language. The “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” sparked considerable academic debate and discussion, and has contributed to the cultural turn in linguistics in the 1980s (see Section 2.3.3.3 for more detail). The links between language and culture consist of: language as a part of culture (language is an important tool to master for anyone who wants to enter into and understand a given culture); language as an index of culture (language reveals the ways of thinking and doing things in the associated culture); and language as symbolic of culture (languages can be used as symbols to defend or foster the cultures associated with them) (summarised from Fishman, 1996, p. 452). In a similar way, their relationship is described, including: language expresses cultural reality (people use language to express facts, ideas or events for sharing information from their own viewpoints); language embodies cultural reality (the way people use language in communication to create meanings that are understandable to others, for example, the way they use verbal or non-verbal languages means that they are expressing themselves); and language symbolises cultural reality (language is a system of signs that is seen as having a cultural value itself)(summarised from Kramsch, 1998, p. 3). The relationship between language and culture is strong, and “culture is embedded in language as an intangible, all-pervasive and highly variable force” (Crozet & Liddicoat, 1999, p. 116).Figure 2.2 illustrates how language and culture interact with each other in communication at a number of levels. Points of articulation between language and culture are evident by five specific features of communication: culture in context; culture in the general structure of a text; culture within shorter units of texts; culture in the organisation of the units of texts; and culture in linguistic structures/words/syntax/non-verbal. These links can be briefly understood as follows: culture in context consists of knowledge about the world from individuals‟ views, so culture contains specific and local meanings. In context, culture has different implications to language. As such, culture is less apparently attached to language. Culture in a text structure means culture can be found in the way spoken or written texts have been shaped. Textual features, like a part of language, differ from country to country and embody different cultural activities. For example, in pragmatic and interactional norms, culture is expressed through the use of speech acts (for example, the ways to say „thank you‟). Language use determines the value of human communication, but more than that, a cultural framework guides the interpretation of language use. Culture in linguistic structures can be seen in the presence of culture in linguistic forms, words, syntax and non-verbal language. The terms „languaculture‟ (Risager, 2005, p. 110) has been widely used to indicate that language and culture are tightly related to each other by an invisible tie and cannot be separated,but are acquired together. Languaculture is a meaningful and relevant concept, because it can sum up language and culture in one word and, further, it explicitly illustrates the tie between them. In language education, it is important to consider which cultural aspects should be integrated into teaching. The sections below will discuss the five dimensions of culture applicable to foreign language teaching and the history of teaching culture up to the present time
Many language researchers, scholars, educators and teachers have conceptualised the teaching and learning of L2/FL as the study of the linguistic and cultural dimensions with the aim to “enable learners to communicate with people coming from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds in a multicultural world” (Cankova et al., 2007, p. 5). L2/FL education always includes the presentation of cultural content, giving teachers and students the opportunities to work with national and universal issues: Language teaching has admittedly always had a cultural dimension in terms of content, either universal/encyclopaedic or national. Reading pieces have been studied that have been written for the occasion, or taken from unadapted literature, and conversational exercises have been constructed on the basis of conversational examples and translated texts – some with a cohesive content, other strongly fragmented in character (Risager, 2007, p. 3).The history of foreign language instruction is shaped by nations. The teaching and learning of language subjects is nationalised and involves the presentation of culture of the studied language. With respect to English language study, the focus is on the country, the people and the English language (Risager, 2007). A cultural dimension has been acknowledged for a long time, but it was not until the nineteenth century that researchers begin to work on a „culture such as their spoken language, music, written documents, buildings, education, politics and religion. Their practices are comprised of all communication processes, which can be understood as verbal or non-verbal communication, interpretations of time and space, the context of communication in social situations, their appropriateness or inappropriateness, and the taboos. Perspectives are their perceptions, beliefs, values and attitudes. Communities include the social contexts, circumstances and groups in which members carry out cultural practices.Persons are the individual members of a culture who uniquely express themselves (Moran, 2011). These five elements are inseparable and interrelated, because they jointly encompass “people‟s shared set of practices, connect to their shared set of products, reflect a set of perspectives of the world, and are set within specific social contexts” (Song, 2013, p. 101). Cultural dimensions play an important role in the total improvement of students‟ language competence. For foreign language learners and future global citizens, learning entails mastering grammatical, communicative and cultural competence in order to be proficient in intercultural communications. The five essential dimensions of culture may assist in reviewing our approaches to L2/FL education.