Language and culture: are they inextricably interlinked?
February 21st, 2007 | 
Author: I participated in quite an extended debate on an excellent English language website written by a French expat living in America recently.
Along the way a number of issues were raised which I never really thought a great deal about before and it was interesting to see a French view expressed on many of them. One in particular was their view that you just couldn’t separate language from culture. From a French perspective the two are indivisible: you can’t have French culture without it being in the French language.
In the English speaking world the two are quite separate. India clearly isn’t an Anglo-saxon culture yet they speak English and even Hong-Kong remained very much a Chinese culture even when it was a British colony. Yet, the French would seemingly argue that both India and Hong-Kong are Anglo-Saxon.
Even the French world has examples of the separation these days. France24 put out a full English-language news service yet it is still quite clearly a French channel. Perhaps the most interesting example though is of the TV series Nikita which although based on the French film of the same name was made entirely in English yet still came across as a French series.
The other thing that I found odd was that they seemingly considered all English speakers to be Anglo-Saxon which I suppose is reasonable if you start with the premise that language and culture aren’t separable.
It was also a little strange to come across a group of people from a fairly major language grouping who were so defensive about their language. You’dt from a group speaking very much a minority language, not from speakers of one of the top 15 world languages. For instance, they have a law that says all government services must of be offered in French. OK, it’s France so you would expect them to be in French but why should that require a law?
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There’s a roaring debate in some parts of the US as to the importance that Spanish has in their area and its resulting role in government transactions. So, a law requiring all French government entities to transact business in French makes perfectly good sense to me.
It’s interesting that America is largely going the opposite direction as Europe with the language thing. Over here, it’s increasingly the case that businesses operate in English throughout Europe and the only real exception to that is in France where the companies normally operate in French.
The reason behind the move to English is simple though. We’ve just too many languages to translate between over here and English is the one common denominator. With just English & Spanish it would be viable but not when you’re talking about a dozen or more different languages and goodness knows how many combinations of translation possibilities.
The reason behind mandating French as the language of the country is more down to protectionism than practicality. It’s held France back in many aspects eg even tourist information is normally only in French despite the fact that the majority of tourists coming here don’t read or speak it well.
I don’t really think that it’s either in the best interests of America nor practical to mandate the use of English. That brings with it all kinds of associated organisations that have existed for French for centuries. As it is, English just takes words from any language yet the Academie Francaise exists to invent new French words for any new terms arising eg France is the only place where it’s not “a walkman” but is instead a “baladeur”.
Great thinkers have already explored the narrow relationships between language/mental structures and culture/thought. Before focusing on modern details, one should read works on the topic by Emile Benveniste, Ernst Cassirer or Ignace Meyerson. It wouldn’t be a waste of time…