Language, Culture and Politics E-Book

Costanza Cucchi

• Herausgeber: EDUCatt
• Kategorie: Fremdsprachen
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Language, Culture and Politic. First chapter illustrates how culture affects language use. Nowadays, English is used all over the world by people whose cultures differ widely. Their culture inevitably affects the way they behave and use other languages. In order to avoid misunderstandings, speakers of English need to be able to appreciate cultural differences. To this end the chapter presents the concept of culture and tools for the analysis of cultural differences. In the second chapter some key aspects of the language of politics are explored and exemplified, with the aim of offering an insight into possible research paths. In fact, as highlighted by Beard in The language of politics (2000: 1), nowadays it is easy to find “good contemporary data”. Students, however, “sometimes find [it] difficult [to] know [...] what to do with the data” (ibidem). After stressing the link between language and politics, the chapter examines the role of cohesive devices and of thematic progression in political speeches. The centrality of orality and of culture in politics and diplomacy is then underlined. The third chapter provides an example of a study focused on the “influence of cultural values on human interaction and communication at a linguistic micro-level”, an aspect to which “little attention has been paid so far” (Guillén-Nieto 2009: 36). It is here shown that the extent to which native speakers of British English and of Italian use the informal expressions ‘and so on’ and ‘etcetera’ and their Italian equivalents ‘e così via’ and ‘eccetera’ may be related to cultural differences, notably to Hofstede’s (2003) power distance and uncertainty avoidance.

Leseprobe

Costanza Cucchi

LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND POLITICS

Milano 2011

© 2011EDUCatt - Ente per il Diritto allo Studio Universitario dell’Università Cattolica

Largo Gemelli 1, 20123 Milano - tel. [phone] - fax [phone]

e-mail: [email protected] (produzione); [email protected] (distribuzione)

web: www.educatt.it/libri

isbn edizione cartacea: 978-88-8311-849-4

isbn edizione ePub: 978-88-6780-903-5

copertina: progetto grafico Studio Editoriale EDUCatt

Table of contents

Chapter 1Language and Culture

1.1Culture

1.2Culture and thought

1.3The cultural context

1.4Components of culture

1.5Models of culture

Chapter 2Features of the language of politics and diplomacy

2.1Politics, diplomacy and language

2.2Cohesive devices and thematic progression in political language

2.3Orality in politics and diplomacy

2.4Culture in politics and diplomacy

Chapter 3Vague Expressions in the European Parliament:a Marker of Cultural Identity?

3.1Introduction

3.2Vague expressions in English

3.3Relevant cultural dimensions

3.4The corpus of EU parliamentary debates

3.5English and Italian general extenders

3.6English vs Italian general extenders in parliamentary discourse

3.7Conclusion

Chapter 1 Language and Culture[*]

This chapter illustrates how culture affects language use. Nowadays, English is used all over the world by people whose cultures differ widely. Their culture inevitably affects the way they behave and use other languages. In order to avoid misunderstandings, speakers of English need to be able to appreciate cultural differences. To this end the chapter presents the concept of culture and tools for the analysis of cultural differences.

1.1 Culture

It has been stated that “there is very little agreement on what people mean by the idea of culture” (Scollon and Scollon 2001: 138). The very word ‘culture’ is in fact problematic since there are many definitions of it, as shown in 1954 in Kroeber’s and Kluckhohn’s study