Language, Culture, and Context

Abstract

This entry deals with a number of central aspects of the ongoing discussions of the complex relationships between language, culture, and context in the field of language studies. It starts with some proposals concerning the relationships of language to culture, and goes on to describe the concept of linguaculture (or languaculture), or, in other words, culture in language, the culturality of language, or the cultural dimensions of language. Three cultural dimensions are mentioned, which all correspond to well‐established fields in language studies: the semantic and pragmatic dimension, the poetic dimension, and the identity dimension. The importance of the concept of discourse in language studies and in applied linguistics is also dealt with: Discourses may be both intralingual, circulating within one language community, and translingual, in which case they are translated from one language to another. Finally the concept of context is discussed, including the basic distinction between cognitive/biographical contexts and social contexts. Social context may range from the immediate context of situation to wider social contexts up to the global level. The wider social context of a communicative event may be analyzed according to a number of theoretical approaches, and four such approaches are illustrated: national studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and transnational studies.