Culture have many definitions. Gurito stated
that culture indicates all aspects that members of a group share together.
Children learn ways of doing things, ways of talking, smiling, laughing, liking
and disliking things. Culture determines people’s action, their social
relationship and their morality (Gurito, 2003: p 1).
Meaning of the culture is very diverse. People
ussualy relate culture with traditional dancing, traditional ceremonies, and
arts. Now let us see that there are other kinds of representations of culture
on our daily life. The way we speak to our friends, to our parents, teacher or
even strangers represents of our culture. Take for example the way the western
people ear which uses knife and fork is different from the way we eat, which
uses ouu hands and also different from the way Chinese people eat, which uses
chopstick. Relate to the concept of culture, we have also the concepts of
cultural values and cultural norms.
Let us move to discuss the relation between
culture and language. If we apply Whorf’s ideas about language and culture, we
can see that the way people see things is indeed reflected in their language.
For example, in Indonesia we have many to represent rice. In our culture rice
is very important, that is why we have many words to represent each from of it.
We have the word ‘padi’ for the form of rice in the field, ‘gabah’ for its form
after being harvested, ‘beras’ for the form before being cooked, and finally
‘nasi’ for the form after being cooked. In America, where rice is not
considered as important as in Indonesia, there is only one word for it that is
rice.
Languange
is easiest communication tool to convey cultural differences. Each region has a
different speech culture, different habbit, different celebration and different
religion. All can be conveyed through good language communication. Language is
expression from the culture. Many researchers found that there are many words
or expressions that have strong relation with the culture of the people who use
those words and expressions.
Source : Module 1 PBIS4102 Cross Cultural
Understanding, Universitas Terbuka Publisher
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