LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND WORLDVIEW: A STUDY IN SEMIOTICS AND SOCIETY

Abstract

Through language we create and share with others our ways of doing things and ways of being in the world, our culture. Language is a tremendous tool for the organization of particular realities, including a wide variety of social relationships and social systems. Through language we are continually socialized, we build or resist authority, we worship, argue, and imagine. We name and give meaning to aspects of experience from particular perspectives. For example, members of different cultures can have quite different and local notions of self and strategies of interpretation, including who are authorized speakers and hearers. Language and culture are linked in the transmission of knowledge, in the construction of social life, and ideologies about language use and its relation to human behavior