what are some examples to illustrate the relation between societ and language?
2007-03-18 17:22:30 · 6 answers · asked by helloguy 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Depending upon the demographics of your area, that makes up the language and common slang that everyone speaks. It also depends on the educational level of most of those in that particular community. These things, along with many other factors, make up the language that is spoken in a community.
2007-03-18 17:32:01 · answer #1 · answered by inquiring black beauty 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It sounds kinda weird, but a great deal of the psychology of a culture can be determined by what they deem important enough to name. The Eskimo, for example, have like 200 different words for snow. And English, well, English-speakers love to describe stuff, so about 1/3 of our language is adjectives, and when we hear a good one from another language, we take that too. And some tribe in the Amazon rainforest that I saw on TV places almost no emphasis on counting things, so their language only includes numbers up to 10. They never have figured out how to use money, so they've stayed poor. If a culture doesn't have a word for something, it will not exist in the collective consciousness, and in turn shows the values of that culture.
2007-03-19 00:40:40 · answer #2 · answered by Angela M 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well language is directly affected by how our society evolves, that is obvious. And some of these affected parts of language are:
Dialect: A language is divided into dialects that are separated by geography but originated from the same "main" language. Example: In Italy, there were many Italian dialects derivated from Latin, intelligible amongst themselves, but the Tuscan one was chosen as the official Italian language because of the number of speakers.
Idiolect: A person's way of speaking. We all have different speech characteristics that are deeply related to location and social status.
Register: The type of language that we use to talk to people from different social groups. For instance: The language that you use to talk to a judge and the one you use to talk to a clerk.
There are also two elements in linguistics that are related, and affected by society: Competence (Our knowledge of a language -grammar, vocabulary, etc.-), and Performance (Our ability to use that knowledge).
2007-03-19 00:59:48 · answer #3 · answered by marianixtwim 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
A very striking one is the absence of a word for female genitalia from the Arab dictionary. The many jocular slang expressions for money in German (more than in English), the absence of taboo words for genitalia or excrement in Irish, the very strict adhesion to euphemisms for those in especially American English, the usage of the word "man" for both humans and males as if the male were the "normal" human and the woman the subnormal one, all these are very good indicators of the kind of society the language is spoken in.
2007-03-19 07:18:49 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Language evolves to meet the needs and abilities of society.
2007-03-19 01:02:21 · answer #5 · answered by Fred 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Sounds that animals make is interesting... French dogs, Italian cats, American ducks, Nigerian horses, they all make different sounds interpreted by the local language.
Also human sounds when surprised, laughing, hurt (ouch) or emotionally involved. These show the psychology of language and social expressions.
2007-03-19 00:51:12 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋