Language and Culture

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE 1
Language and Culture
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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE 2
Levels of culture
Culture surrounds everyone in the world and must be considered as the main source of
resistance to changes in society. According to Edgar Schein, for individuals to understand
planned changes, societal developments, and organized learning, they must consider culture as
the main contributor to resistance behaviors. Culture is deep installed, universal and
multifaceted. It is divided into three different levels which include artifacts behaviors, norms and
values, and underlying assumptions.
Artifacts and behaviors are the peripheral elements of an organization. The rudiments are
visible in nature and include architecture, logos, clothing, processes and structures that surround
an organization. The basics are not only visible to the employees of an organization but are also
recognized by the external parties in society. These artifacts can be discerned easily and they are
very hard to be understood in the contemporary world (Schobel & Klostermann, 2017).
Espoused values are concerned with morals, principles and conduct rules of an
organization in a societal setting. It emphasizes on how organizations express their stratagems,
objectives, and philosophies. They also clear out on how organizations make their strategies and
objectives public to society. There arise issues that have adverse effects on the organization if
the executive’s ideas are not in line with the basic assumptions of the organization. The values
and objectives are responsive enough to shape the entire needs of the organization.
Underlying assumptions are deeply entrenched in the culture of the organization. They
are known as being undisputable and unconscious comportment. It becomes tough to recognize
these assumptions from within the organization and they cannot be discerned in the entire
society. They provide explanations on why things happen the way they do in the organization.

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE 3
They form deeper scopes of human existence such as human nature, affairs and activities,
veracity and reality.
Language and culture relationship
Both culture and language are entwined where specific language points to a definite
group of people. Interacting with a new language indicates a vibrant contact with a certain
culture that speaks the new language. One cannot understand another culture without accessing
its language. When discussing the two, one must mention that culture is language and language
is culture. They have a homologous relation which tends to be intricate in nature. Both developed
together and continue to influence each other as they advance (Pennycook, 2017).
Culture is a consequence of human connections where communication is the cultural
indicator that revolves a specific community. Young children develop their cognitive abilities
through the process of learning the language of the community they are born in. Use of symbols
that signifies feelings, beliefs and identities are the methods that contribute to the culture and
language context.
Intercultural communication barriers
Communication is hard to even within the same culture. There are misunderstandings in
families, workplaces and in the entire community that is necessitated by communication. In such
a case, the addition of cultural differences in the mix would multiply the problems associated
with the communication. To overcome these problems, one must know the intercultural
communication barriers.
Language difference is the major barrier in communication. For example, in a business, a
client speaking English won’t be able to communicate with a shopkeeper who speaks Japanese.