Language and Culture

Language and Culture

By: Amaliah

Language and culture are the two words that often appear together. Language is the verbal expression of culture. Culture is a specific set of ideas, practices, customs and beliefs which make up a functioning society as distinct. Language is heavily influenced by culture.

As stated in the National Education Ministry Rule no. 22/ 2006 about content standard on the 23rd of May 2006 that language has a central role in the students’ intellectual, social and emotional development, and also it is a success supporting factor in learning all the subjects. The language learning process is expected to help the students know themselves, their culture, and other’s culture.

Additionally, not all the teachers know that there are three main purposes of English learning at both Junior and Senior High School. They are:

1.Develop the competence of communicating in the form of both spoken and written to reach the functional literary level.

2.Having awareness about the essence and the importance of English to improve the competitive power in the global society.

3.Develop the students’ understanding about the relationship between language and culture.

English teachers usually focus on the purpose number one by teaching listening, speaking, reading and writing to improve students’ competence. They sometimes motivate students to learn English and make them realize that English is very important for the future. But now let’s read number three. It’s seldom to develop, perhaps because there is no explanation either in the English textbook or in the framework. Purpose number three is the purpose that elementary school hasn’t got. However, Junior and senior high school teachers should understand and then develop it to students.

Language has a close relationship with culture. The language reflects its culture. Culture can be observed from the language. Observe how Bahasa Indonesia reflects the simplicity of Indonesian culture, or Javanese with its complexity of culture. How about English? Here are some English culture examples that students should know:

1.Time is very important in their culture. It can be seen from their tenses. As we know English has twelve different tenses! Those tenses all relate to and indicate the different time. Each tense has its own meaning. They also have a proverb ‘Time is money’.

2.They are very direct. They sometimes call their parents by their names directly instead of ‘mom’ or ‘dad’. It doesn’t make any senses for parents. On the contrary, it’s not polite of course from Indonesian’s culture view.

3.All the people are equal in their perspective. They use the word ‘you’ which mean both for older or younger person. Usually they feel more comfortable if you call them by their names too. They consider it’s weird if someone calls with: “Mister, mister” which is the translation from the Indonesian ‘Pak’ without the name.

Now, compare it with us, our students often get confused to translate ‘kakak’ and ‘adik’, because it is little bit different from the words ‘brother and sister’. Then our students often mix cousins with siblings too. It is caused by the influence of Javanese culture.

4.‘I’ is always written with capital letter, even in the middle of the sentence. It has a sense of the respect of the speaker himself, the first person.

5.Privacy is really significant. When trying to speak with them, we must think first whether they are still having their private time or not. Sometimes in that moment, they don’t want to be disturbed.