English 311,"Introduction
to Linguistics"
The Influence of Culture on Language
by
Daniel Magilligan
The debate over bilingual education in the United States has
been raging for years. In California, the debate moved off the front pages with
the passage of Proposition 227 in 1998 that eliminated most native-language
instruction. A parental waiver makes it possible for bilingual education to
still take place, but immersion into English speaking classrooms is the general
rule. Given the large number of non-native speakers in California, the impact
and effectiveness of Proposition 227 will likely become the cornerstone of
researchers' and educators' positions for or against bilingual education once
sufficient research results are available. This paper, however, is not about
bilingual education in the traditional sense. Rather, this paper calls into
question the effectiveness of bilingual education programs that are slow to
recognize the importance of culture in the acquisition of a second language. A
major change needs to take place in language instruction: the focus of teaching
language should encompass both language and culture. "The persistence of
the myth of English monolingualism in this country reflects the belief that
English is the only language that counts and the mentality that language
diversity is a problem rather than a resource" (Wiley 1997). Freeman and
Freeman support the "principle that lessons should support students' first
languages and cultures" because many of the immigrant school children being
placed in English speaking classrooms are just beginning to learn their first
language (193). That literacy in the first language may be a matter of social
status underscores the importance of culture as a primary consideration in the
teaching of English to language minority students. Freeman and Freeman argue
that "students learn concepts best in their primary language . . . [that]
programs that support a student's first language and culture help the student
gain self confidence and a positive attitude toward school . . . [and that]
lessons should support students' first languages and cultures so that teachers
can draw on and develop student strengths" (196).
Providing students an understanding of content is at the heart
of all teaching. It's a problem for English only learners as well as
limited-English-proficient (LEP) students. Freeman and Freeman emphasize that
"use of the primary language can help students develop academic concepts
and can also help lead them into English. When students have a good
understanding of a subject area, they can more easily understand a discussion in
English about the subject. Their knowledge of the content helps them make
predictions about the meaning of the English words" (207). Thus, the
transfer of content matter taught in the native language could be transferred to
the second language. The way language is presently being taught, the content
knowledge is not being transferred. Would not a focus on culture as well as
language assist educators with this problem?
"Even if their families have lived in the United States
for generations, language minority students often view themselves as
outsiders. Students who are given no primary language support as they learn
English are often lost in schools. The result is they do not learn and they
feel frustrated. Later they may come to resent the schools or their families
and experience both a language and a culture loss." (Freeman and
Freeman 215)
In the long term, society is better served if we embrace culture
rather than push it aside as current practices tend to do. To counter the
traditional brushing aside of culture, Freeman and Freeman provide an example of
a monolingual teacher who uses an aide to provide first language instruction to
a mixed class of Hmong and Laotian students. In this variation of a pull-out
program, the aide presents a preview of a class the day before the teacher
presents the information to the whole class. It's interesting to note the
behavioral differences in the students when they are in their first language
environment. Because they have a feeling or awareness that their culture is
valued, they are motivated, confident, and show signs of increased self-esteem
(232-233).
This supports the argument that language learning needs to
encompass both language and culture. Michael Agar modifies the term
languaculture, coined by Paul Friedrich, to langua which Agar states represents
the "necessary tie between language and culture" (60). To Agar the two
terms are inseparable, that one must think of the missing term whenever one of
the terms is presented. To Agar "the langua in languaculture is about
discourse, not just about words and sentences. And the culture in languaculture
is about meanings that include, but go well beyond, what the dictionary and the
grammar offer" (96). Agar argues also that "if the concept [of
culture] is to have a chance, it has to be changed" (122). The traditional
concept of culture no longer exists in today's global world. Agar sees culture,
in the context of langua, as "why two people who are different in some way
have trouble communicating (122) . . . [but he notes that] not all differences
are cultural, because people do things differently within the same languaculture"
(125). Ones' socioeconomic status can "sometimes" provide the
explanation for behaving differently, "not [the] languaculture they grew up
with" (125). This is important to recognize, but it does not diminish his
argument about understanding language in its cultural context. To further
support the argument that cultural differences must be considered in the
teaching of a second language, Agar points out that even when there is
commonality in language between two speakers, when "language is stretched
out into languaculture, Spanish in Spain and Spanish in Mexico . . . aren't the
same at all" (212-13). Harklau states it another way: "Language is
inextricably bound up with culture. Cultural values are both reflected by and
carried through language. It is perhaps inevitable , then, that representation
of culture implicitly and explicitly enters into second language teaching"
(109).
Laurie Price's field research of residents of a barrio in Quito,
Ecuador, sheds light on another context that underscores the differences in
language and culture. Illness stories in Ecuador are a natural form of
discourse. Price found evidence that illness stories are remembered in chunks
and that these chunks are likely retold together with other portions of a story
that are somehow related to other chunks, thus becoming 'stories within stories'
(314). "Ecuadorian illness stories contain numerous 'traces' of cognitive
models that bear on the interpretation of illness. Because (tacitly understood)
knowledge shapes natural discourse to such a large degree, important traces are
found not only in what is said, but also in what is left unsaid. In telling
illness stories, narrators take for granted that listeners share many of their
assumptions about how the world works. The missing 'shared knowledge' must be
filled in if outsiders are to understand the logical connections among
utterances , and the cultural models that underlie them" (316).
This returns us to the dilemma brought about by bilingual
education that fails to recognize culture as a necessary component. According to
Nunan, "increasingly, it is being recognized that pedagogical action needs
to be sensitive to the cultural and environmental contexts in which teaching
takes place" ( 4-5). Nunan conducted a study in the 1980's that "found
that background knowledge was a more important factor than grammatical
complexity in the ability of readers to comprehend the cohesive relationships in
the texts" (260). In the face of mounting evidence, for educators to not
recognize the importance of culture to a student's ability to learn a second
language is a disservice.
One method for teaching language and culture is through
literature. McKay argues that teaching "literature presents language in
discourse in which the parameters of the setting and role of relationship are
defined. Language that illustrates a particular register or dialect is embedded
within a social context, and thus there is a basis for why a particular form is
used" (191-192). McKay suggests that "an examination of a foreign
culture through literature may increase [a student's] understanding of that
culture" and further suggests that it may motivate them to write (193).
Second language research shows that writing is more difficult for second
language learners than is reading and speaking. Language training can also be
made more effective by incorporating cultural studies into curriculums.
According to Byram, cultural studies "plays a role in language teaching in
the sense that words in the foreign language refer to meanings in a particular
culture creating a semantic relationship which the learner needs to
comprehend" (4).
How are language, thought and reality related? "Learners'
ways of understanding and acting in the world may differ radically from those of
the mainstream population. Educators respect and honor their learners' ways of
knowing when they create and work from curricula that emerge from issues
important to them" (Quintero 1994). This requires educators to recognize
the importance of pragmatics and to understand how one's culture impacts
language learning. In some cases both language and cultural differences are at
play. For example, Eastman explains that in the Hopi language "transitive
verbs require shape of objects of verbs to be encoded," so a different form
of a word such as "hit" would be used each time the shape of an object
used to hit something changes (Eastman 103). Thus, in the Hopi culture the
action of hitting takes on an additional element that an American would not have
to interpret when engaged in a conversation about hitting. The difference may
not be a cultural one, but the difference is brought about by virtue of being
reared in the Hopi culture. The cultural difference itself is seen in the Hopi
concept of God. To many, "the sky is where the God of the Anglo
lives," and God is thought of as a person; but the concept of God to a
ten-year-old Hopi girl is very different: "God is the sky, and lives
wherever the sky is. Our God is the sun and the moon, too; and our God is
people, if we remember to stay here. This is we're we are supposed to be, and if
we leave, we lose God" (Quintero 1994) The unwillingness or inability to
adapt the teaching of English to divergent cultures runs counter to providing 2L
learners access to America and its opportunities:
"When learners' ways of understanding the world are not
heard and accepted, everyone loses. The learners, who bring this knowledge
with them to schools; the parents, who want to pass on cultural traditions
but find themselves fighting both the school information and their
children's perceptions of the value of their own cultural beliefs; and the
teachers, who could be opening new worlds of exploration to children and
themselves while providing a bridge between the culture of the school and
the culture of the home." (Qunitero 1994)
The United States must come to the realization that the
acceptance of monolingualism as a national policy is counterproductive. The
world we live in today is vastly different and one can not escape the global
changes coming about. The United States would be better served if we looked at
necessary changes in the sociocultural context of schooling such as enhancing
bilingual education so that all students gain from language and cultural
instruction. Agar states that "you can't make a conversation sparkle until
you know what a conversation is, whom your talking with , and what the
conversation is about. To get to that point , you [must] learn the social facts
first" (235). Making culture a part of language teaching will help make the
conversation sparkle.
Works Cited
Agar, Michael. Language Shock Understanding the Culture of
Conversation.
New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1994.
Byram, Michael. Introduction. Cultural Studies in Foreign
Language Education.
Multilingual Matters 46. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
1988
Freeman, Yvonne S., and Freeman, David E. ESL/EFL Teaching
Principles for
Success. Portsmouth: Heinemann. 1998
Harklau, Linda. "Representing Culture in the ESL Writing
Classroom." Culture in
Second Language Teaching and Learning. The Cambridge
Applied
Linguistics Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999.
109-130.
Lantolf, James P. "Second Culture Acquisition, Cognitive
Considerations." Culture in
Second Language Teaching and Learning Ed. Eli Hinkel.
The Cambridge
Applied Linguistics Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999.
28-46.
McKay, Sandra. "Literature in the ESL Classroom." Literature
and Language Teaching
Eds. Brumfit, C.J., and Carter, R.A. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986.
191-198.
Nunan, David Second Language Teaching and Learning
Boston: Heinkle and Heinkle,
1999.
Price, Laurie. "Ecuadorian Illness Stories: Cultural
Knowledge in Natural Discourse."
Cultural Models in Language and Thought Eds. Holland,
Dorothy, and Quinn, Naomi.
Cambridge: UP, 1987. 313-342.
Quintero, Elizabeth. (1994). Valuing Diversity in the
Multicultural Classroom [On-line].
Available: http://www.cal.org/ncle
Wiley, Terrence. (1997). Myths about Language Diversity and
Literacy in the United
States [On-line] Available: http://www.cal.org/ncle.
