Language and Culture in Intercultural Communication

Abstract

Language is probably the best way of conveying a culture, both oral and written, in human societies. Language, written or oral, plays an essential role in developing a form of social knowledge, which is common sense thought, socially developed and shared by members of the same social or cultural characteristics. This common knowledge is sometimes called a social representation. Through language, man assimilates culture, perpetuates it or transforms it. Nevertheless, like every language, each culture implements a specific apparatus of symbols with which each society identifies. Culture is defined as the body of knowledge and behavior that characterizes a human society or a human group within a society. Different languages are necessary in order to preserve things such as culture; heritage and getting people from different cultures to dialogue may require intercultural mediation. These intercultural communications can be regarded as translation. Therefore, the relationship between language and culture is rather complex. Our article will discuss the relation between language and culture in intercultural communication which is translation in our case. Many ideas will be presented with examples to prove that language and culture are two faces to one coin. This research shows that language and culture are not competitors and not interdependent but complete each other.