III Match the key terms on the left with the correct definition on the right

 

1. cultural universal	a) preferences and standards of world
2. culture	b) when similar behaviours occur in almost all societies
3. culture lag	c) an observable or detectable physical characteristic of a person
4. phenotype	d) phenomenon that occurs when new features of a culture appear and create new social conditions that contradict older values
5. social biology	e) the theory that genetic makeup transmitted through biology explains aspects of human society and culture
6. values	f) socially learned knowledge and values people use to interpret experience and generate behavior, including the production of material objects and the creation of new ideas

 

IV Translate from Russian into English

 

В современной социологии принято считать, что общество это люди, взаимодействующие на определенной территории и имеющие общую культуру.

1. Под культурой понимается комплекс символов, норм, ценностей, характерных определенной социальной группе и передаваемых из поколения в поколение.
2. Научный термин «культура» появился в Древнем Риме. Слово «культура» обозначало «восприятие», «образование».
3. Социологический словарь дает следующее определение понятию «культура»: «Культура – это способ организации и развития человеческой деятельности, представленный в продуктах материального и духовного труда, в системе социальных норм и учреждений, в духовных ценностях…»
4. Джордж Мердок выделил общие черты, свойственные всем культурам (культурные универсалии). К ним относят:

1) совместный труд,

2) спорт,

3) образование,

4) наличие ритуалов,

5) системы родства,

6) правила взаимодействия полов,

7) язык

Возникновение этих универсалий связано с потребностями человека и человеческих общностей. Культурные универсалии предстают в многообразии конкретных вариантов культуры.

 

V Communicative practice

 

1. What is the role of culture in modern society?
2. How do you understand the notion “elite” culture?
3. How do you understand the notion “folk” culture?
4. How does mass culture (internet, pop music, fashion, cinema) influence people?
5. How do you judge the influence of your generation upon modern culture?

Unit IV

Language and culture

 

Text 1

 

All societies have culture and all culture has, and can not exist without, language. This uniquely human capacity enables us to access our history through written documents and oral tradition and to create technology, worldviews, rituals, legal sistem, propoganda, lies, jokes, and gossip. Much of culture depends wholly upon language for its transmittion. People in a society are culturally united through their language. A person’s integration into a culture demands mastery of a language. Without complete mastery we can not experience the symbolic richness of human existence, awareness of our environment for survival. While language is indisputably used for the transmittion of information, often it conveys little of general importance, as in polite chatter and small talk. Language at its most simple and generalised level can be thought of as the universal primary vehicle for meaning and communication. Meaning refers to the experiance people have when they share a common usage for a cultural symbol. The meaning of a symbol refers to its usage in a culture. For example, if your instructor holds before you a piece of chalk and you have never observed its use, the word “chalk” would signify very little. If the instructor demonstrates its use and explains that this is “chalk”, the symbol “chalk” would now have some meaning. Both of you are now using the same symbol -“chalk”- in the same way.

 

Language

 

The most tangible indication of our thinking power is language – our spoken, written, or gestured words and how we combine them as we think and communicate. Humans have long and proudly proclaimed that language sets us above all other animals. ”When we study human language,” asserted linguist Noam Chomsky (1972),” we are approaching what some might call the ‘human essense,’the distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique” to humans.To cognitive scientist Steven Pinker (1990), language is “the jewel in the crown of cognition.” Whether spoken, written, or signed, language enables us to communicate complex ideas from person to person and to transmit civilization’s accumulated knowledge from generation to generation. The origin of language is a heavily debated topic. Just when and how our ancestors first began to use language and how that early protolanguage evolved into a more complex system will probably never be understood. Additional insights come from the study of how children acquire language. Many have called the acquisition of a language by a child the most difficult intellectual achievement in life. In all parts of the world, children begin to learn language at about the same age and in the same general stages. During the years between 2 and 5, a child learns approximately ten thousands words a day.Children need only a comparatively small stimulus to grow linguisticaly.The universality of children’s remarkable acquisition of language despite the “poverty of stimulus” leads to one of the central theories in the field of linguistics: the argument for mental grammar, which states that the expressive variety of language use implies that a language user’s brain contains unconscious grammatical principles (Jackendoff 1994,). The next logical question then is how we acquire these mental grammer? The argument for innate knowledge implies that the human brain contains a genetically determined specialization for language. There are several clues that point to the fact that children have a genetic head start, so to speak, on language acquisition. One clue is the universal stages of language acquisition all children exposed to language go through. This also may explain how children learn at such a rapid rate despite the “poverty of stimulus.” Errows demonstrate that children use more than immitation to constract massages. Frequently a child comes up with a sentence that would not have been learnd from any teacher. They are creating their own sentences without ever having a parent explain the purpose of a noun or a verb or other rules. The famous examples of feral children, raised without socialisation and therefore having permanently stunted language skilles, suggest there is a “critical period,” or a window of time, in which the brain’s language system is activated and preprogrammed for the acquisition of a language.This is also the language paradox. Toddlers can learn a language with greater ease than a professional linguist! All of these reasons point to the possibility of a biologically innate universal grammar that allows to construct mental grammars of any language in all cultures (Jackendoff 1994).

 

I Vocabulary

 

1. language – язык
2. capacity – способность
3. to enable – 1) давать возможность, право, 2) облегчать
4. to access – иметь (получить) доступ
5. transmission – трансмиссия, переход, передача
6. mastery – мастерство
7. to convey – передавать, выражать (идею)
8. ancestor(s) – наследник(и)
9. to evolve into – эволюционировать, развиваться в…
10. to acquire – усваивать
11. acquisition – освоение
12. to achieve – достигать
13. achievment – достижение
14. tangible – заметный, реальный
15. to assert – 1) утверждать, заявлять, 2) доказывать, отстаивать, защищать
16. vehicle – транспортное средство
17. cognitive – когнитивный, пригодный для адекватного понимания
18. cognition – 1) познавательная способность, 2) знание, познания
19. to imply – применять
20. innate – врожденный, природный
21. feral – дикий, неприрученный
22. toddler – ребенок, начинающий ходить

 

II Comprehension check

 

1. What are people in a society culturally united through?
2. What does a person’s integration into a culture demand?
3. What is language used for?
4. What is language?
5. Why is the origin of language a heavily dedated topic?
6. Why is the acqusition of a language by a child called the most difficult intellectual achievment in life?
7. What does the argument for mental grammar state?
8. What clues point to the fact that children have a genetic head start on language acquisition?
9. What do the famous examples of feral children suggest?
10. What does the possibility of a biologically innate universal grammer allow?