Lakhasly

Context and culture

For its users, instances of language are never abstracted, they
always happen in specific situations.In a similar way, it is an oversimplification to equate culture
with nationality, using terms such as 'Brazilian culture' and
"Turkish culture'. Such labels overlook the cultural variation
within nations of social class, ethnicity, age, education, and
individual preference. In modern societies, cultural identity is
often multivalent, an intersection of many different loyalties and
influences of which nationality is only one. In addition, increased
migration means that a growing number of people have links to
two or more nations, although-precisely because a dominant
factor in their lives is this dual or multiple identity-they cease to
be typical representatives of either, maintaining in their own
person the diversity of their origins. An opposite tendency in the contemporary world is towards
larger homogenous groupings. Thus labels such as 'Western
culture', 'Islamic culture', and 'South-East Asian culture' seem
more viable than they once did. Perhaps there is even an
emerging 'world culture'. There is evidence, for example, from
very different languages and places, that service encounters
increasingly follow a similar script. This is something along the
lines of 'My name is x. How may I help you?' as a greeting, and
'Have a nice day' on parting. In an unpredictable world it would
be foolish to forecast whether it is the forces for diversity or for
homogeneity which will prove the stronger. In applied linguistics
these complex influences and variations are factors which must
be kept at the forefront of investigation. Whatever our definition of culture, or our views about its
universality, there can be little doubt that a real danger in the
many activities which involve cross-cultural communication is
misunderstanding. Consequently, in a wide range of personal and professional contexts, practical decisions must be made about how to avoid it.

Translation, culture, and context
Nowhere is this more apparent than in translation, where at
every step decisions must be taken about when to provide
explanation and extra detail, and how far to depart from the
original. Even in the translation of a relatively simple business
letter for example, there will be valid reasons not to use a literal
translation but to mould what is said in one language to the
conventions of another. 'Respected Gentleman Smith' may be the
word-for-word translation of the Russian 'Uvazhayemy Gospodin
Smith', but 'Dear Mr Smith' is more appropriate in the context. The study of translation-now commonly referred to as
translation studies-has a far longer history than applied
linguistics. Theories and practices of translation have changed
but at their heart is a recurring debate, going back to classical
times, about the degree to which a translator should attempt to
render exactly what is said, or intervene to make the new text
flow more smoothly, or achieve a similar effect as the original. This is by no means a simple matter. Word-for-word translation
is impossible if the aim is to make sense. This is clear even when
translating the most straightforward utterances between closely
related languages. Take, for example, the French 'Ca me
plait.Translated word for word into English it is 'That me
pleases'. At the very least, this demands reordering to "That
pleases me' to become a possible English sentence.Decisions have to be made
about whether to gloss emotive words such as 'martyrdom',
which has quite different connotations from the Arabic
'shahaada', or simply to give up in difficult cases and import the
original word, as in the case of 'jihad' and 'sharia', thus assuming
in the reader a relevant background knowledge which they may
not have.To demonstrate this, applied linguistics has drawn upon,
and also developed, discourse analysis-the study of how stretches
of language in context are perceived as meaningful and unified by
their users.At a time when
new technologies mix writing and visual effects in ways which
may be altering fundamentally the nature and process of
communication, there is a pressing need to integrate findings
from these disparate areas.New technologies
make the paralanguage of writing increasingly more significant,
for whereas, in the past, resources were limited to handwriting,
typing, or printing, the computer has brought powerful new
tools for document design within many people's reach.Yet, curiously,
considering this inextricable involvement in communication,
paralanguage has not been extensively studied by applied
linguists.In
linguistics, however, language is very obviously abstracted from
experience in order to be better understood as a system, enabling
grammatical regularities to be seen more clearly, even perhaps
providing an insight into the representation of language in the
mind.The study of visual communication and
Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) are growing areas in
applied linguistics, and likely to be increasingly important in the
future.Yet, as even a simple example
will show, translation cannot be conducted at a purely linguistic
level but must incorporate cultural and contextual factors too.In this chapter we consider how context, and in particular cultural context, can be analysed and understood, and in general terms how it is relevant to all the areas of applied linguistics.It is not the case, as some
linguists have claimed, that the meaning of language in context is
so messy and subjective that it is beyond the reach of systematic
enquiry.Written words can be scribbled,
printed, or painted, and their meaning can be amplified or altered
by layout, accompanying pictures, and diagrams. Take, for example, the translation of the English pronoun 'you' into a language which has a distinction between an informal
second-person pronoun and a formal one (tu versus vous in
French for example).For applied linguistics, such analyses of language are
relevant to understanding the experience of language in use, but
they must be combined with another kind of analysis too.Collectively, such factors are known as context, and
they are all relevant to whether a particular action or utterance
is, to use Hymes' term, appropriate.Systematizing context: discourse analysis

Systematic description of context is notoriously difficult.It
threatens to introduce enormous amounts of new material, and
categories which are inherently slippery and vague.Three areas of study which contribute to this field are
paralanguage, pragmatics, and genre studies.A good deal is conveyed by tone of voice-whether we shout or
whisper for example, and by the use of our bodies-whether we
smile, wave our hands, touch people, make eye contact, and so
on. Such communicative behaviour, used alongside language, is
paralanguage.Convincing research suggests that paralinguistic
messages can outweigh linguistic ones, especially in establishing
and maintaining relationships.All of the following, for
example, might be involved in interpreting a real encounter: tone
of voice and facial expression; the relationship between speakers;
their age, sex, and social status; the time and place; and the
degree to which speakers do-or do not-share the same cultural
background.For this reason, understanding of
paralanguage is relevant in any professional activity involved
with effective communication, or developing effective com-
munication in others, such as media training, speech therapy, and
language teaching.Pragmatics is the discipline which studies the knowledge and
procedures which enable people to understand each other's
words.Indeed, they beg the question of the relationship between
language and culture, for translation, as conventionally defined,
is between languages not cultures.Communicative competence, as observed at the end of Chapter 5,
is also in its way an abstraction.Yet it is a different
kind of abstraction from descriptions of the formal systems of
grammar and sound, and it views language from a different
perspective.It points the way towards the analysis of language in
use, enabling us to take into account many relevant factors other
than the words themselves.As applied linguistics
necessarily engages with the use of language, they must be central to any analysis.Of necessity, translators and interpreters
must make such judgements all the time.The
difficulties of translating news stories between Arabic and
English provide many examples.In the actual experience of
language its four parameters are neither as discrete nor as static
as the model is sometimes taken to suggest.Indeed, whether written, spoken, or a mixture of the two,
language cannot be used for communication without paralanguage.In many cases translation decisions can be a major factor in
cross-cultural understanding and international affairs.In the latter part of the chapter we focus, in particular,
upon the practice of translation.These are
reasons for caution, but not for retreat.51
We must use some facial expression when we speak or make
some choice of script or font when we write.Its role in speech has been left to psychology, and in
writing to typography and information design.Its main concern is not the literal meaning, but what
speakers intend to do with their words and what it is which
makes this intention clear.Grammatically, it is an
interrogative English sentence; taken literally, it is a question
about someone's health.These may seem to be linguistic rather than cultural matters.In every instance a decision must be made
about which to choose, and it cannot be based upon linguistic
equivalence alone.The importance of such decisions, playing as they do a
role in each community's view of the other, cannot be
underestimated.They belong to particular
people and are used to realize those people's purposes.These other factors are many.Let us deal, briefly,
with each of these in turn.When we speak we do not only communicate through words.Writing has paralanguage too.Consider, for example, a simple and
familiar utterance such as 'How are you?'Yet, in most
circumstances, a more appropriate rendering would be 'I like it'.The issue therefore is not whether one should depart from the
original but how much