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...Recent research revealed that language is also closely related to cognition and the cultural settings. Consequently, it is believed that the process of child language acquisition is also the process of his cognition and understanding of the world and the process of the development of his cultural competence. Every society has its own culture, which is recorded, reflected and symbolized by its language. Language and culture evolved and developed together, and therefore have been interwoven and mutually dependent throughout their history. Neither of them can exist or develop without the other. Culture consists of the products or civilizations of human society, including language, which is deeply embedded in culture. Culture, to a great extent, manifests itself in patterns of language. Language, as part of culture, probably the most important and essential aspect of culture, plays a very important role in it. Language reflects or mirrors almost all the contents of culture, and hence in a broad sense serves culture as the symbolic representation, for all the knowledge and beliefs that constitute a people's culture are habitually encoded and transmitted in the language of the people. So without language, culture would not be possible. On the other hand, language is influenced and even shaped by culture. It is well recognized that language is not only a scientific system of linguistic symbols, but also a sociocultural activity. This view can account for the statement that language is culturally transmitted. Cultural transmission is one of the important characteristics of human language. A particular language is acquired in a particular cultural setting. Without such a cultural environment, language acquisition is out of the question. We say language is culturally loaded or independent, we mean culture exerts a strong influence on language, particularly on its semantic structure and its actual use in social communication. This is why a language reflects the total way of life of its people. It is well recognized that word meaning id directly related to man's social and cultural experiences which are unique to the members of a particular cultural group. As members of a cultural group have had similar social and cultural experiences, the meaning of a word is shared by them all, but it may be different in certain aspects from the meaning this word has for people of other cultural groups, that is, word meaning, particularly the meaning of culturally loaded words, may vary in certain aspects from culture to culture. The interrelationship between language and culture results in the fact that one-to-one equivalence can rarely be established between words in two languages. Words seem to correspond in denotative meaning, but may considerably vary in connotative meaning, emotional meaning and various sociocultural associations they may arouse in different cultural setting. The word dog, for example, may suggest different associations in different cultures...
Essay Empire
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