How are language and culture related?

Answer 1

There are many ways in which the phenomena of language and culture are intimately related. Both phenomena are unique to humans and have therefore been the subject of a great deal of anthropological, sociological, and even memetic study. Language, of course, is determined by culture, though the extent to which this is true is now under debate. The converse is also true to some degree: culture is determined by language - or rather, by the replicators that created both, memes.

Actually, the above is now slightly out of date. Culture is NOT a uniquely human trait - it has now been show to exist in several other primate species, and there is active debate as to whether several other species (bottlenose dolphins and orca, for example) exhibit enough group distinctiveness to be labeled a "culture".

Culture is a set of related behaviors and taboos, which, in effect, describe how a group of individuals relate to their environment. Language is a communications medium, which allows individuals to pass ideas between them. Sharing a language does not necessarily mean sharing a culture, and vice versa.

Originally, culture and language were both heavily influenced (and, to a certain extent, were defined) by the local population's interaction with their environment. Ideas and concepts not directly mapped to some local environmental feature or action were unknown (and, if introduced by an outsider, discarded), and thus, had no corresponding language component, and no part of the culture. It can be said that back when humans were still hunter-gatherers, culture and language were intimately bound to both each other, and the environment.

However, after the discovery of agriculture and the consequent development of complex sedentary societies, language and culture became increasingly decoupled. Languages now expressed ideas and concepts NOT existing (or, not native) to the local culture or environment, as languages tend to heavily import from other languages they are in close contact with. Cultures are less adaptable, at least in the short run. They change much more slowly (unless there is a all-consuming emergency, in which a culture will generally radically change, or die out). Cultures are generally made up of a set of "beneficial" memes or ideas (that is, the local population has decided they are beneficial), and change in those ideas is more closely tied to their perceived benefit than influence by language.

The best description of how language and culture are related over the past 5,000 years (since the development of complex societies) is thus: languages are a rapidly-evolving communications media, readily absorbing and mutating when in contact with new languages or ideas. They are increasingly detached from their "originating" culture - that is, the culture which spawned them no longer defines the language, but rather now generally acts as a reservoir of creative interpretation of the language. Cultures are generally slow to evolve and change, and are primarily impacted not by a specific language's ability to communicate, but by behavioral change by their members, which is in turn almost always a behavior imported from another culture.

The increasing level of connectivity and interaction between cultures as human civilization has grown has led to the decoupling of language and culture. While both still have some impact on their "originating" partner, the primary influence and modus for change is from other cultures and languages (that is, languages are by far most heavily influenced by other langues, with the same going for cultures).