The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture presents the first comprehensive survey of research

on the relationship between language and culture. It provides readers with a clear and accessible

introduction to both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary studies of language and culture, and

addresses key issues of language and culturally based linguistic research from a variety of

perspectives and theoretical frameworks.

This Handbook features thirty-three newly commissioned chapters which:

cover key areas such as cognitive psychology, cognitive linguistics, cognitive anthropology,

linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and sociolinguistics

offer insights into the historical development, contemporary theory, research, and practice of

each topic, and explore the potential future directions of the field

show readers how language and culture research can be of practical benefit to applied areas

of research and practice, such as intercultural communication and second language teaching

and learning.

Written by a group of prominent scholars from around the globe, The Routledge Handbook of

Language and Culture provides a vital resource for scholars and students working in this area.

Farzad Sharifian is a Professor within the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and

Linguistics, and the Director of Language and Society Centre at Monash University, Australia.

Routledge Handbooks in Linguistics

Routledge Handbooks in Linguistics provide overviews of a whole subject area or sub-discipline in

linguistics, and survey the state of the discipline, including emerging and cutting-edge areas.

Edited by leading scholars, these volumes include contributions from key academics from

around the world and are essential reading for both advanced undergraduate and postgraduate

students.

The Routledge Handbook of Syntax

Edited by Andrew Carnie, Yosuke Sato and Daniel Siddiqi

The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics

Edited by Claire Bowern and Bethwyn Evans

The Routledge Handbook of Semantics

Edited by Nick Riemer

The Routledge Handbook of Linguistics

Edited by Keith Allan

THE ROUTLEDGE

HANDBOOK OF LANGUAGE

AND CULTURE

Edited by

Farzad Sharifian

First published 2015

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2015 Selection and editorial matter, Farzad Sharifian; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the

authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any

form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval

system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and

are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The Routledge Handbook of language and culture / edited by Farzad Sharifian.

1. Language and culture--Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Linguistics--Handbooks, manuals, etc.

I. Sharifian, Farzad, editor.

P35.R68 2014

306.44--dc23

2014016038

ISBN: 978-0-415-52701-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-79399-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Taylor and Francis Books

CONTENTS

List of figures and tables ix

List of contributors x

Acknowledgements xv

PART I

Overview and historical background 1

1 Language and culture: overview 3

Farzad Sharifian

2 Linguistic relativity: precursors and transformations 18

John Leavitt

PART II

Ethnolinguistics 31

3 Ethnosyntax 33

Anna Gladkova

4 Ethnosemantics 51

John Leavitt

5 Ethnopragmatics 66

Cliff Goddard, with Zhengdao Ye

v

PART III

Studies of language and culture 85

6 Linguaculture: the language–culture nexus in transnational

perspective 87

Karen Risager

7 Language, gender, and culture 100

Lidia Tanaka

8 Language, culture, and context 113

Istvan Kecskes

9 Language, culture, and politeness 129

Sara Mills

10 Language, culture, and interaction 141

Peter Eglin

11 Culture and kinship language 154

David B. Kronenfeld

12 Cultural semiotics 170

Peeter Torop

13 Culture and translation 181

Nigel Armstrong

14 Language, culture, and identity 196

Sandra R. Schecter

15 Language and culture history: the contribution of linguistic

prehistory 209

Patrick McConvell

PART IV

Language, culture, and cognition 225

16 Embodiment, culture, and language 227

Ning Yu

17 Culture and language processing 240

Crystal J. Robinson and Jeanette Altarriba

Contents

vi

18 Language, culture, and prototypicality 253

Frank Polzenhagen and Xiaoyan Xia

19 Colour language, thought, and culture 270

Don Dedrick

20 Language, culture, and spatial cognition 294

Penelope Brown

21 Space, time, and space–time: metaphors, maps, and fusions 309

Chris Sinha and Enrique Bernárdez

22 Culture and language development 325

Laura Sterponi and Paul F. Lai

23 Language and cultural scripts 339

Anna Wierzbicka

24 Culture and emotional language 357

Jean-Marc Dewaele

PART V

Research on language and culture in related

disciplines/sub-disciplines 371

25 Language and culture in sociolinguistics 373

Meredith Marra

26 Language and culture in cognitive anthropology 386

Claudia Strauss

PART VI

Language and culture in applied domains 401

27 Language and culture in second language learning 403

Claire Kramsch

28 Writing across cultures: ‘culture’ in second language writing studies 417

Dwight Atkinson

29 Language and culture in second dialect learning 431

Ian G. Malcolm

Contents

vii

30 Language and culture in intercultural communication 445

Hans-Georg Wolf

31 World Englishes and local cultures 460

Andy Kirkpatrick

PART VII

Cultural linguistics: past, present, and future directions 471

32 Cultural Linguistics 473

Farzad Sharifian

33 A future agenda for research on language and culture 493

Roslyn M. Frank

Index 513

Contents

viii

FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures

4.1 Pronominal dimensions 60

8.1 Understanding context 118

8.2 The dynamic model of meaning 120

12.1 Jakobson’s model of communication 171

12.2 Hierarchy of objective and descriptive languages 174

12.3 Metacommunication and intercommunication 177

16.1 The difference between Western and Chinese cultures in the conceptualization

of ‘person’ 234

21.1 An Amondawa speaker spatially maps the seasonal time intervals 318

30.1 The artefactual result of a conceptual blend, with Western eating utensils and

Asian eating utensils as separate input spaces 456

32.1 A diagrammatic representation of Palmer’s (1996) proposal for Cultural

Linguistics 474

32.2 Model of cultural cognition, cultural conceptualizations, and language 478

32.3 Diagrammatic representation of a cultural schema (adapted from Sharifian, 2011) 479

Tables

1.1 Three different paradigms in the history of the study of language

as culture (Duranti, 2003) 4

5.1 Semantic primes (English exponents) 67

5.2 Fifty Anglo English cultural keywords (Wierzbicka 2014) 70

15.1 The terms mana, marna and japi in Walmajarri and Warlpiri 219

17.1 Summary of relevant findings 250

21.1 Space–time correspondences in the genetically unrelated Andean languages

Aymara (Nuñez and Cornejo 2012) and Quechua (e.g. Hurtado de Mendoza

2002; Bernárdez, 2014) 320

32.1 A comparison of Aboriginal and Anglo-Australian meanings for ‘family’ 484

33.1 Traditional view and distributed cognition view (adapted from

Waloszek (2003); Hollan, Hutchins and Kirsh (2000)) 502

ix

CONTRIBUTORS

Jeanette Altarriba is a professor of psychology and Vice Provost and Dean for Undergraduate

Education at the University at Albany, State University of New York, as well as the Director of

the Cognition and Language Laboratory at SUNY-Albany. Her research interests include

psychology of language, psycholinguistics, second language acquisition, bilingualism, knowledge

representation, eye movements and reading, concept and category formation, and cognition and

emotion.

Dwight Atkinson is Associate Professor of English at Purdue University, Indiana, USA. His

primary research interests are second language writing, second language acquisition, qualitative

research methods, theories of culture, and English language education in the lives of first-generation

learners in India. Recent publications include articles in TESOL Quarterly, Language Teaching,

Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition (Routledge), and the edited volume, Alternative

Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (Routledge).

Nigel Armstrong is senior lecturer in French at the University of Leeds, UK. His current

teaching and research focus on two related subject areas: sociolinguistic variation in con￾temporary spoken French; and the study, from a translation perspective, of how language is

used in popular culture. Previous publications include Translation, Linguistics, Culture and (with

Ian Mackenzie) Standardization, Ideology and Linguistics.

Enrique Bernárdez is Professor of Linguistics at the Complutense University, Madrid. His

main areas of research are the relations between language and culture, cognitive linguistics,

Modern Icelandic, and Amerindian languages. He has published several books, among them:

Introducción a la Lingüística del Texto (Madrid, 1982); ¿Qué son las lenguas? (1999, 2004); El lenguaje

como cultura (2008).

Penelope Brown is a linguistic anthropologist affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for

Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. She has worked for many years in the Mexican Tzeltal

Maya community of Tenejapa, focusing on the study of adult language use in its sociocultural

context and on Tzeltal child language acquisition and socialization.

x

Don Dedrick is an associate professor at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, where he

teaches in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Philosophy. He has a Ph.D. in

philosophy from the University of Toronto. He has written about colour and cognition, as well

as the metaphysics of colour.

Jean-Marc Dewaele is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism at Birkbeck,

University of London. His areas of research include individual differences in second language

acquisition and multilingualism. He is editor of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and

Bilingualism, former president of the European Second Language Association, and executive

committee member of the International Association of Multilingualism.

Peter Eglin is Professor of Sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada. His

academic interests are ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, philosophy of social

science, human rights, and the responsibility of intellectuals. He is author of Talk and Taxonomy:

A Methodological Comparison of Ethnosemantics and Ethnomethodology (1980) and Intellectual

Citizenship and the Problem of Incarnation (2013).

Roslyn M. Frank is Professor Emeritus at the University of Iowa, co-editor of Body, Language

and Mind, Vol. 1 Embodiment and Vol. 2 Sociocultural Situatedness (2008). Her research areas are

cognitive linguistics, ethnography, and anthropological linguistics with a special emphasis on the

Basque language and culture.

Anna Gladkova is an adjunct lecturer in linguistics at the School of Behavioural, Cognitive

and Social Sciences, University of New England, Australia. Her research interests are in the areas

of semantics, ethnopragmatics, linguistic anthropology, and intercultural communication.

Cliff Goddard is Professor of Linguistics at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. He is a

leading proponent of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to semantics and its sister

theory, the cultural scripts approach to pragmatics. His major publications include the edited

volumes Ethnopragmatics (2006), Cross-Linguistic Semantics (2008), and Semantics and/in Social

Cognition (2013, special issue of Australian Journal of Linguistics), the textbook Semantic

Analysis (2nd edn, 2011), and Words and Meanings: Lexical Semantics across Domains, Languages and

Cultures (co-authored with Anna Wierzbicka, 2014).

Istvan Kecskes is Professor of Linguistics and Education at the State University of New York,

Albany, USA where he teaches graduate courses in pragmatics, second language acquisition and

bilingualism, and directs the English as a Second Language Ph.D. and MA programmes. Pro￾fessor Kecskes is the President of the American Pragmatics Association, and the founding editor

of several international journals, including Intercultural Pragmatics.

Andy Kirkpatrick is Professor in the Department of Languages and Linguistics at Griffith

University, Brisbane Australia. He is the author of World Englishes: Implications for International

Communication and English Language Teaching (2007), and the editor of The Routledge Handbook of

World Englishes. His most recent book is English as an International Language in Asia: Implications

for Language Education (2012, co-edited with Roly Sussex).

Claire Kramsch is Professor of German and Affiliate Professor of Education at the University

of California at Berkeley, US. Her research interests are foreign language learning and teaching,

Contributors

xi

discourse analysis and the relation of language and culture. Her recent books include Language

and Culture (1998) and The Multilingual Subject (2009). She is guest editor of a 2014 special issue

of the Modern Language Journal (on teaching foreign languages in an era of globalization), and is

currently editing with Ulrike Jessner Multilingualism: The Challenges, to be published in 2015.

David B. Kronenfeld is Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Anthropology at the University of

California/Riverside. He has published several books on kinship, semantics, and pragmatics, as well

as articles addressing social organization, agent-based simulation, ethnicity, and the relationship

among language, culture, and thought.

Paul F. Lai teaches Issues in English Teaching and Language Study for Educators at the

University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Education. His areas of research include

language, learning, and civic socialization among diverse youth. He has conducted practitioner

inquiry, discourse analysis, and case study research projects on US immigrant youth, foreign

language classes, and youth action research.

John Leavitt is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal,

Canada, specializing in linguistic anthropology. His areas of research include comparative

mythology, spirit possession and its relation to language, and the history of ideas about language

diversity, with field research in the Central Himalayan region of northern India. He is the author

of Linguistic Relativities: Language Diversity and Modern Thought (2011).

Ian G. Malcolm is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at Edith Cowan University in

Perth, Western Australia. He has carried out research and published extensively on Aboriginal

English and, with the help of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal colleagues, has contributed to the

development of the ‘two-way bidialectal education’ approach which is widely recognized and

practised in Australia.

Meredith Marra is a senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, where

she teaches sociolinguistics at all levels. Meredith’s core research interest is workplace discourse,

especially the language of business meetings and the role of humour, gender, and most recently

ethnicity at work.

Patrick McConvell is a Discovery Outstanding Research Award (DORA) Fellow of the

Australian Research Council at the Australian National University, working on the AustKin

kinship project, and on linguistic evidence for prehistoric groupings and migrations in Australia.

Sara Mills is Research Professor in Linguistics at Sheffield Hallam University. She researches

feminist linguistics and politeness theory. She has published books, including Gender and Politeness

(2003), Language and Sexism (2009), and is currently working on a book on gender and repre￾sentation with Abolaji, and a book on indirectness with Grainger. She is also working on a

project aiming to challenge the status of what we think we know about English politeness.

Frank Polzenhagen teaches English linguistics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. The

main concern of his work has been to develop a synthesis of cognitive linguistics and variationist

sociolinguistics, with a focus on second-language varieties of English. His publications in this

field include Cultural Conceptualisations in West African English (2007) and World Englishes: A

Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach (2009, co-authored with Hans-Georg Wolf).

Contributors

xii

Karen Risager is Professor Emerita in Cultural Encounters, Roskilde University, Denmark.

Her main research area is the structure of the relationship between language and culture in a

global and transnational perspective, including the concept of linguaculture, especially related to

the educational field and to the field of research itself (the multilingual research process). Her

books include Language and Culture: Global Flows and Local Complexity (2006) and Language and

Culture Pedagogy: From a National to a Transnational Paradigm (2007).

Crystal J. Robinson is a member of the Cognition and Language Laboratory at the University

at Albany, State University of New York. Her research includes investigating a potential adaptive

component in bilingual memory. She is also working on a collaborative project investigating

creative perception and production across cultures.

Sandra R. Schecter is Professor of Education and Applied and Theoretical Linguistics at York

University, Ontario, Canada. Her research and publications focus on language policy and

planning, language socialization, language and cultural identity, and bilingual and multilingual

language acquisition and learning.

Farzad Sharifian is Professor and the Director of Language and Society Centre at Monash

University, Australia. He is the author of Cultural Conceptualisations and Language (2011), the

founding editor of the International Journal of Language and Culture, and editor (with Ning Yu) of

the book series Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts.

Chris Sinha is Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science at Hunan University. He is Past

President (2005–7) of the UK Cognitive Linguistics Association, Past President (2011–13) of the

International Cognitive Linguistics Association, and General Editor of the journal Language and

Cognition. Chris’s central research interest is in the relations between language, cognition, and

culture. A main aim of his research is to integrate cognitive linguistic with sociocultural

approaches to language, communication, and human development. He has published widely in

disciplines including anthropology, linguistics, education, evolutionary biology, connection science,

as well as developmental and cultural psychology.

Laura Sterponi is Associate Professor of Language Literacy and Culture at the University of

California, Berkeley Graduate School of Education. Merging her training in developmental

psychology (Ph.D., 2002) and applied linguistics (Ph.D., 2004), she has developed a research

programme that is centrally concerned with the role of language and literacy practices in children’s

development and education. Her studies have examined communicative practices in both

typical and atypical children (specifically children with autism). Her work has been published

in Human Development, Discourse Studies, Linguistics & Education, and Journal of Child Language.

Claudia Strauss is Professor of Anthropology at Pitzer College, California. She is the author of

Making Sense of Public Opinion: American Discourses about Immigration and Social Programs,

co-author (with Naomi Quinn) of A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning, and co-editor (with

Roy D’Andrade) of Human Motives and Cultural Models. Her current research examines personal

narratives of unemployed Americans.

Lidia Tanaka is a senior lecturer in the Japanese and Asian Studies Program at La Trobe

University. Her research interests are in language and gender, and language in communicative

interactions. Her publications include a number of journal articles and the book Gender,

Contributors

xiii

Language and Culture: A Study of Japanese Television Interview Discourse (2004). She is currently

involved in a collaborative project looking at language changes in the speech of working-class

women in the Kobe area from 1989 to 2000.

Peeter Torop is Professor of Cultural Semiotics at the Department of Semiotics and the head

of the Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He is also

co-editor of the journal of Sign Systems Studies and a co-editor of the book series Tartu Semiotics

Library. His latest books are: La traduzione totale. Tipi di processo traduttivo nella cultura (2010);

Tõlge ja kultuur [Translation and culture] (2011); (as co-editor, with Katalin Kroó) Text within

Text – Culture within Culture (2014).

Anna Wierzbicka is a professor of linguistics at the Australian National University. She is the

author of more than twenty books, spanning many disciplines across the humanities, all

underpinned by the conviction that an innate ‘alphabet of human thoughts’ is the key to all

human understanding and to the diversity of languages and cultures. She is originator of the

Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to language, thought, and culture. Her latest books

are Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language (2013) and Words and

Meanings: Lexical Semantics across Domains, Languages, and Cultures (co-authored with Cliff

Goddard, 2013).

Hans-Georg Wolf is Chair Professor for the Development and Variation of the English Language

at Potsdam University, Germany. His research interests include world Englishes, cognitive linguistics

(including cognitive sociolinguistics and cultural linguistics), corpus linguistics, pragmatics, colonial

language policy, and lexicography. His most recent books are A Dictionary of Hong Kong English:

Words from the Fragrant Harbor (2011, with Patrick J. Cummings), and World Englishes: A Cognitive

Sociolinguistic Approach (2009, with Frank Polzenhagen).

Xiaoyan Xia is a lecturer at the School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Beijing Normal

University, Beijing, China. Her research interest is in applied cognitive linguistics, second language

acquisition and foreign language teaching. Current research topics include cognitive approaches

to second language acquisition, cognitive approaches to contrastive written discourse analysis,

and the influence of differences in thinking modes on foreign language writing.

Zhengdao Ye is a Lecturer in Linguistics and Translation Studies at the School of Literature,

Languages, and Linguistics, The Australian National University. Her teaching and research

interests intersect meaning, culture, and translation. She has lectured and published extensively

in these areas.

Ning Yu is Professor of Applied Linguistics and co-director of the Confucius Institute at

Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the relationship between language, culture,

and cognition. His publications include two monographs, The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor: A

Perspective from Chinese (1998) and The Chinese HEART in a Cognitive Perspective: Culture, Body, and

Language (2009).

Contributors

xiv