6.2.8 CONCLUSIONES REFERENTES AL PERFIL DE FAMILIAS INCLUIDAS EN EL PROGRAMA DE AYUDAS P.E.R.

To begin with, the words and expressions people use in their daily lives refer to common

experience, facts, ideas or events that are communicable. They also refer to a stock of shared knowledge about the words that other people use. These words also reflect their authors’

and/or speakers’ beliefs, attitudes, and their points of views which are also shared by others.

The experiences people express are created through the language they use to communicate

with each other. Also, through the use of language, people identify themselves and others;

and regard their language as a symbol of their social identity10. Language, in this sense, as stated by House (2009: 12), “can be seen as a system of signs” that is embedded in culture

and has cultural value, i.e. language encodes the ways different cultures interpret the world.

From another perspective, Hongwei (1999: 121, cited in Salehi, 2012: 79) considers language as “a portrait of culture.” He believes that “language reflects other parts of culture,

supports them, spreads them and helps to develop others.” This distinctive aspect

differentiates language from all other aspects of culture and highlights its importance for the

transfer of culture11. Hongwei also believes that “language is the life-blood of culture and that culture is the track along which language forms and develops.” Therefore, the structure and

improvement of all aspects of a culture and/or a language are closely connected to one

another.

Brown (1994: 165) also views a language as “a part of a culture and a culture is a part

of a language”; both are interwoven in a complicated way so that they cannot be separated

10

http://www.academians.org/Articles/May5.pdf [accessed on 04 Feb. 2010]

without “losing the implication of either language or culture.” Bassnett (2002: 22) illustrates this point saying that “no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture, and

no culture can exist which does not have at its centre, the structure of natural language.”

Therefore, on one hand, as argued by Sherzer (1987: 296), language is cultural in that it is “one form of symbolic organization of the world that reflects and expresses group

memberships and relationships.” On the other hand, culture, in all aspects, influences the

formation and development of language.

Furthermore, many linguists examine the relationship between language and culture.

Nida (1998: 29) states that:

Language and culture are two symbolic systems. Everything we say in language has meanings, designative or associative, denotative or connotative. Every language form we use has meanings, carries meanings that are not in the same sense because it is associated with culture and culture is more extensive than language.

Given the multi-faceted and complex nature of the concept of culture, there is no

commonly agreed upon definition of it. Indeed, some sociologists and anthropologists

consider the term so ambiguous that they refrain from using it in scientific discourse. According to Eagleton (2006: 1), culture is considered to be “one of the most complicated

words in English language.” Williams (1985: 87) also claims that “culture has now come to

be used for important concepts in several distinct intellectual disciplines and in several distinct incompatible systems of thought.” For instance, the recent publication by Baldwin et

al. (2006: 51) has gathered over 300 definitions of culture from publications across various

disciplines. Because of the diversity of the definitions that have been presented, it can be

argued that no definition of culture is or ever will be comprehensive. It might be useful at this

stage to look critically into some definitions which try to conceptualise culture.

Newmark (1988: 94) defined culture as “the way of life and its manifestations that are

another point of view, according to a definition provided by Sapir (1949: 79) culture refers here to “any socially inherited element which is embodied in the life of man, material and

spiritual.” In a similar vein, translation studies scholar Snell-Hornby (1988: 39) insists that

“culture should be studied in a broad sense, as in anthropological study.” She states that

culture is not only looked at as “the advanced intellectual development of mankind as

reflected in the arts, but it refers to all aspects of human life.”

Therefore, culture is a cumulative experience, which is acquired, not inherited. It

includes history, knowledge, belief, morals, art, traditions and the total system of habits and behaviour. It can be regarded as a statistically “measurable set of variables” and a

multifaceted “collection of experiences which condition daily life” (ibid), including modes of

perception and such regular activities as reading or watching movies.

From another point of view, Goodenough (1964: 36) states that “culture, being what

people have to learn as distinct from their biological heritage, must consist of the end product of learning: knowledge, in a most general, if relative, sense of the term.” This means that

cultural knowledge is acquired within a society, for instance, by observing the behaviour and

language use of the other members of the society. Therefore, as Katan (1999: 17) believes, a

given culture forms a collective framework of knowledge which may not, in principle, be

available to the members of other cultures. This is the source of all potential

misunderstanding in such cross-cultural communication processes as translation and

subtitling.

From the discussion above it is made clear that language is a part and product which

plays a very significant role in culture, and reflects its symbolic systems. Some social

scientists claim that “culture would not be possible without language.” Because people rely

on language to express what concerns their society. Language then is not distinct from other

and shaped by culture12.” In the broadest sense, it is also the symbolic identity of a society,

because it reflects its “historical and cultural backgrounds, its approach to life, and ways of

living and thinking” as well. In brief, culture and language are inseparable.