Culture and Thought

7/30/2019 Culture and Thought

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Philippine Normal University

College of Languages, Linguistics, and LiteratureMLE 501 (Foundations of MLE and Language Acquisition)

alyssaMIJARES

cultureandthought

by


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culturalthoughtpatterns


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culturalthoughtpatterns In the recent years, the debates that link culture,

language and cognition have been ascontroversial as other issues in the field oflanguage teaching and learning.

ESL teachers of composition and reading havebeen greatly challenged by the diverse thoughtpatterns among their foreign students. These

differences in thought patterns have greatlyaffected the learners rhetoric supply which is fardifferent from the thought organization of nativespeakers of the English language.


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culturalthoughtpatterns Gardiner and Kosmitzki (2002) mentioned

that the argument on language-cognition-

culture link surrounds the question Do

people who speak different languages

think about and experience the world

differently? If so, then it is possible that

the structural and lexical differences inlanguage is due to a groups thinking and

logical pattern.


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culturalthoughtpatterns To sustain the notion that the difference in structure resultsfrom a groups thinking and logical pattern, Elgin (2000)

provided an example. The example is illustrated below:

I was riding a horse in English.

She asserts that the Navajo translation would result in:

The horse and I were moving about.

Elgin (2000) explained that the English version portrays therider (the subject) as the doer of the action and the horseas the object that endures being ridden while in Navajo, theact of riding is a joint endeavor without expressed subject-object relation.


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culturalthoughtpatterns In the example, it is easy to conclude that

the syntactic structure of speakers varydepending on how they think andexperience the world. Gardiner andKosmitzki (2002) also noted that ifpeoples thinking is really relative to theirlanguage, perhaps we could explain thecultural differences in the languagesspoken in different cultures.


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culturalthoughtpatterns Vygotsky coined the phrase, Talking to

Learn which means that as children

verbally interact with others, they

internalize language and use it to organizetheir thoughts (Gardiner & Kosmitzki,

2002). This explains further that language

becomes socialized and patterned on aset of cultural values and beliefs

(Greenfield & Cocking, 1994).


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culturalthoughtpatterns These cultural values and beliefs are clear

in Elgins (2000) example. The difference

between Navajo and English syntax is not

merely structural. The speaker of eitherlanguage employs a thought pattern

shaped by what he thinks is acceptable in

his society.


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culturalthoughtpatterns As illustrated in the previous example, the

syntactic structure is just a result of the

speakers thought pattern. It is also

important to note that thought pattern andcognition are shaped by the values and

beliefs of a certain culture. Therefore, the

sentence The horse and I were movingabout may reveal how Navajo-speaking

people perceive and value the things

around them.


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culturalthoughtpatterns In the book titled Lives Across Cultures, Gardiner and

Kosmitzki (2002) cited a good example of languagesocialization. A linguistic study by Brooks, Jia, Braineand Da Gracia Dias (1998) examined the ages at which

Portuguese-, English- and Mandarin-speaking childrenlearn to distinguish between quantifiers such as all andeach in their respective languages. Results showedthat Portuguese and Mandarin speakers learned todistinguish between all and each conceptually and

linguistically by the time they were five years old. Englishspeakers, on the other hand, were less discriminating intheir use of these quantifiers.


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culturalthoughtpatterns Cultural differences maybe due to differences in

cognitive development (Gardiner and Kosmitzki, 2002).This gives weight to the idea that cultural context andexperience contribute largely to cognition and language

learning. In the study cited above, China andPortuguese can be considered as cultures with morecollectivist belief systems (macrosystem) than the UnitedStates. Through learning language and using languagein social interaction, Portuguese and Chinese children

also learn about social relationship that are consideredimportant in their collectivist societies (Gardiner andKosmitzki, 2002).


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culturalthoughtpatterns So if language is patterned on a set of values and beliefs

unique in a particular culture, it is safe to say that therhetoric of the first language would undoubtedly interferein the second language. This statement strengthens the

link among language, culture and the reason foreignstudents fail to meet the standard rhetoric of written andoral communication in English.

The full proficiency in the English language does not only

depend on the learners mastery of syntactic structureand grammar. The learners rhetoric supply is an equallyimportant factor toward language acquisition.


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culturalthoughtpatterns Kaplan (1966) said that logic, which is the basis

of rhetoric, is evolved out of a culture; it is not

universal. Moreover, Kaplan explains that

rhetoric is not universal either and varies fromculture to culture. And because English

language follows a logical pattern and rhetoric of

its own, these differences resulted to the foreign

students inability to achieve a thoughtarrangement accepted by the native listeners

and readers of English.


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culturalthoughtpatterns The difference of logical patterns among foreign students

is evident in paragraphs they write. A paragraph isgenerally defined as a group of sentences that developslogically one subject. However, Rooks (1999)

emphasized that different languages have differentlogical patterns. These logical patterns are drawn fromthe writer or the speakers cultural thought patterns.Asians have different logical patterns from Europeans.What follows is an illustration ofKaplans various logical

patterns. The figure appears in Rooks (1999) secondedition ofParagraphPower.


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REFERENCES:

Brooks, P. J., Braine, M. D. S., & Da Graca Diaz, M. (1998). A cross-linguistic study of childrens comprehension of universal quantifiers:

A comparison of Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese and English. FirstLanguage, 18, 33-79.

Elgin, S. H. (2000). The language imperative. Cambridge, MA:Perseus Books.

Gardiner, H.W. and Kosmitzki, C. (2002). Lives across cultures: Cross-Cultural human development. Boston, MA: A Pearson EducationCompany.

Greenfield, P. M. & Cocking, R. R. (1994). Cross-cultural roots ofminority child development. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in interculturaleducation. Language Learning 16, 1-2.

Rooks, G. M. (1999). Paragraph power 2nd edition: Communicatingideas ihrough paragraphs. New York: Pearson Education.

Culture and Thought

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