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Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018
Lecture Notes
Chapter5: Language as a Barrier
Learning Objectives
5-1: Discuss the relationship between language and culture.
5-2: Critique and apply the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
5-3: Give examples of translation problems that impede intercultural communication.
5-4: Give examples of how humans have communicated in language when there is no
shared language.
5-5: Explain the relationship between language and nationalism.
5-6: Trace the development of English as the most widely spread language around the
world.
I. Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis
A. Development of the Hypothesis (Whorfian thesis) accounting for the differences
in languages across cultures.
1. Benjamin L. Whorf (1897–1941), a fire prevention engineer, and linguistic
anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884–1939) developed through a course Sapir
taught at Yale
2. Language is a set of symbols shared by a Community College of Allegheny
County
3. Steven Pinker--Linguist criticizes the theory as in the case of Idlefonso an
individual without language who was intelligent.
4. Language determining thought would prove Idlefonso could not think. Thus,
this is incorrect.
B. Vocabulary
1. Eskimo has many words to describe snow
3. Australians in Queensland have no word for right or left
4. Things are seen in relation to ourselves
5. Yanomamo tribe of southern Venezuela has only three numbers which are one,
two, and more than two
6. Technology requires language that explain mathematic symbols
7. Japan divides four seasons into 24 subseasons
C. Grammar and Syntax
1. English word order it typically subject–verb–object
2. Second level of Sapir–Whorf
3. Great influence than vocabulary
4. Words such as IF and WHEN used in Eskimo language frequently
5. English may require several words to explain “snow”, that is
6. “I feel lonesome” translates in Japanese to “Samishii” no need for a subject as
this explains the experience
7. 75% of Japanese sentences lack a subject
8. Japanese does not require the specification of a subject
D. Criticisms of the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis
1. Research methods
2. If language determines thought, then at least some concepts would be
understandable only in the language in which they were first “thought.”
E. Linguistic Relativism
2. Steinfatt (1989) argues that linguistic relativism is that the difference between
languages is not what can be said but what is relatively easy to say
3. Westerners favors decontextualization and object emphasis
4. Easterners favor integration and relationships in perception
5. Coordinate bilingual speakers--people who learn a second language later in
life and use it in a limited context
6. Compound bilingual speakers--people who learned a second language early
in life and use the language in several different contexts
7. Mainland and Taiwanese Chinese tested their native language
a. Based on relationships
b. Tested in English they were less likely to group on the basis of
relationships
c. English served a different way of representing the world than Chinese for
this group
F. Case Study: Arabic and the Arab Culture
1. Arabic language is spoken by more than 25 million people
2. The Qur’an is the ultimate standard for the Arabic style and grammar
3. Muslims must use the language to pray (salat)
4. 2 is ithnayn but tween is used in Lebanon, itneen in Egypt, and ithneen in
Kuwait
5. Arabic withstood the Turkish-Ottoman occupation
6. Al-badi (the science of metaphors)
II. Translation Problems
A. Vocabulary Equivalence
1. Specific and descriptive words
2. Japanese term Yamato-damashi or Japanese Spirit
3. “Faceless Fifty” Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, cultural learning related
to the reason 50workers stayed behind to fight the fires
B. Idiomatic Equivalence
1. The English language is particularly replete with idioms.
2. Idioms out to lunch and toss your cookies could cause communication
3. learning the idioms of a language can be an effective way of learning the
culture
C. Grammatical–Syntactical Equivalence
1. Languages don’t necessarily have the same grammar.
2. You need to understand a language’s grammar to understand the meaning of
words.
D. Experiential Equivalence
1. If an object or experience does not exist in your culture, it’s difficult to
translate
2. When a country speaking the same language is divided due to political reasons
words may reflect changing experience.
E. Conceptual Equivalence
1. Abstract ideas that may not exist in the same context in other languages
2. United States meaning of freedom, that is
3. Corruption in the United States is morally wrong in Korea the word “pup’ae”
meaning corruption is not morally wrong.
4. Back translation helps to improve language
5. German and the word “disposable”
F. Human and Machine Translators
1. Dates back to the end of World War II
2. 1949 Warren Weaver developed the logic for today’s computation linguistics
3. Cryptography--codes and math problems
4. Georgetown IBM experiment
a. Google Translate, the most popular machine translation tool
b. VoxOx Universal Messaging Window
5. Twitter@replies to anyone in the world (Li, 2015)
G. Pidgins, Creoles, and Universal Languages
1. Pidgins
a. The mixture of two or more languages to form a new language, originally
from the restrictions on trade
b. Pidgins are used in West Africa
c. 285 tribal languages
d. Melanesian Pidgin English is a pidgin language based on English.
Colonial European plantations
e. Samoa, Fiji, and New Guinea as well as the Solomon Islands and
containing more than 50 languages
2. Creoles
a. Creole is a new language developed from prolonged contact of two or
more languages
b. Slave labor areas that incorporate the dominant language
c. New language of subordinate groups
d. Jamaican, Patois, and French-based Haitian with 5 million speakers
e. Macao--patois is a dialect developed from Portuguese and Cantonese
Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018
f. Compra som to buy groceries, that is
H. Esperanto
1. attempts have been made to construct such a universal language
2. Esperanto, devised in 1887 by Polish oculist and philologist Lazarus
Zamenhof, was moderately successful
3. When Esperanto was devised, English was the language of commerce, French
of diplomacy, and German of science
4. Universal languages are not successful
5. Universal languages are artificial languages; they have no relationship to a
culture
III. Language as Nationalism
A. Central to identity
1. 1846, Jacob Grimm (fairy tales) forerunner of modern comparative and
comparative historical linguistics
2. Yugoslavia-Serbo-Croat with regional differences
3. Nationalist regimes--Muslim, Serbian, Croatian, and parts of Bosnia
4. Cultural dominance--Paulo Freire (1970) used “cultural invasion” a group
imposing its own view of the world on another culture
B. Kiswahili and East Africa
1. Burundi and Rwanda and three countries in language terms, Kenya, Tanzania,
and Uganda (Ojwang, 2008)
2. Niger-Congo languages
3. 5 million people speak Kiswahili
C. Spread of English
1. English did not exist when Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 BCE.
3. Germanic invaders intermarried with the existing population
5. Each time Britain was invaded, the language changed
6. Even before Columbus, English had borrowed words from 50 languages.
a. Today’s estimate is that one-fifth to one-fourth of the world’s population
is familiar with English
b. English is the most widely studied and most borrowed from language in
the world.
7. An Indian author has stated “how easily an ancient civilization can be made to
abase itself completely”
D. India
1. India struggles to maintain a society that values the diverse linguistic, religious,
and historic groups
2. 20 major languages
3. Hindi became the national language in 1965
E. South Africa
1. Dutch settlement
2. Huguenot
3. Afrikaans
4. Developed from 17th-century Dutch
F. Australia and New Zealand
1. The first English speakers to arrive in number in Australia were convicts and
their guards, who put ashore in 1788 at the penal colony of Botany Bay
2. Immigrants borrowed from the Aboriginals developing a unique Australian
English (Stevenson, 1999).
G. Canada
1. Unique languages 200 years ago French settlers defeated by British Army
3. Roman Catholicism
4. Quebec is the world’s 18th largest country in size
H. United States
1. United States has no official language
2. German was the second most common language at the time on independence
3. Since independence, there have been times when some have pressed to make
English the official language of the United States.
1906.
5. Before 1980, only two states had official-English laws: Nebraska in 1920 and
Illinois in 1923.By 2016, the number had grown to 32
6. Courts have shown a tendency to reverse restrictions from official-English
ordinances
a. The Situation in Hawai’i
i. Hawaiians had no written language
ii. Information was passed from generation to generation orally
iii. In 1820, Christian missionaries devised a written language
b. When Hawai’i became a republic, the Hawaiian language was suppressed
c. By 1990, only about 1,000 native Hawaiian speakers remained
d. In 1986, the state legislature lifted the century-old ban on schools teaching
only in Hawaiian
e. At the 1978 constitutional convention, Hawaiian was made an official
language of the state along with English
f. Loss of American Indian Languages
i. Before the arrival of Europeans, it is estimated that 400–600
indigenous languages were spoken in North America
ii. Only about 175 remain
iii. 1860s until about the1950s, federal policy and local practice
combined to discourage and eliminate American Indian languages
from schools and public settings.
iv. During World War II, U.S. Marines used Navajo “code talkers”
v. Of the remaining languages, 155 are considered endangered.
Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018
g. Puerto Rico and Statehood
i. Originally claimed by Spain
ii. Became a U.S. territory as a result of the Spanish-American War in
1898
iii. 1952 Puerto Rico became a commonwealth
iv. Spanish was made the island’s official language in 1991
v. Proponents of statehood were successful in passing a new law in 1993
that made English and Spanish official languages of the territory
