language and culture
Language and Culture
Since culture is defined succinctly as ―the totality of beliefs and practices of a society,‖ nothing is of greater strategic importance than the language through which its beliefs are expressed and transmitted and by which most interaction of its members takes place.
The relation between language and culture would not constitute such serious difficulties for cross-cultural understanding if it were not for the numerous misconceptions about language and its function within a society. Perhaps the most serious misconception is the idea that each language more or less controls the way people think, sometimes expressed as ―We think the way we think because we talk the way we talk.‖ Some theologians and philosophers used to speak about the intuitive and particularizing mentality of the ―Hebrew mind‖ as portrayed in the Old Testament, and they contrasted this with the logical and generalizing mentality of the Greeks of classical times as revealed in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. But the revived Hebrew language of today is certainly
