The connection between language and culture. A response to Stuart Hall.

By Jason Beale, Monash University, 2001

Stuart Hall defines culture as a set of shared meanings which enable people to understand and communicate with one another. In his view these meanings are not static things - for example, objects of high culture with eternal value - nor are they simply a collection of particular behaviours or values that charatcterize a social group.

Instead cultural meanings are produced and exchanged. Culture, according to Hall is "a process, a set of practices." (Hall: 2) This emphasis on social practices is important. It refers to the way cultural meanings structure and control social interaction across every area of experience, from the most public to the most personal.

Hall sees meaning as being produced and exchanged in various ways: 1. group identity and group differences 2. personal and social interaction 3. mass media and global communications 4. everyday rituals and practices of daily life 5. narratives, stories and fantasies 6. rules, norms and conventions These different aspects of culture are of course intimately connected - mutually interacting in the construction and transmission of social meanings.

As if examining an onion, Hall peels away culture to reveal shared meanings and the different ways they are produced in a society. He peels away another layer to reveal the centrality of language in this whole process. As Hall sees it, meaning relies on representation through language. What this implies is that words and images are not the things they symbolize. Representation is a process of constructing reality - different

across cultures and historical periods. Of course such a view is quite alien to most traditional cultures not based on the Western philosophical tradition. For the majority of humankind, images and words are intimately connected on a spiritual level with the things they symbolize.

The centrality of language for Hall's argument is derived from Continental philosophy of the last century. The focus on language as a system structured independently from the world of things is seen quite clearly in Saussure's work in linguistics - language terms do not correspond directly with the things they refer to, instead it is the differences between terms that structures the whole field of meaning.

As Hall points out, Saussure effectively gave birth to a constructionist view of language, developed later in the work of philosophers such as Barthes and Foucault. This is in contrast to either (1.) reflective or (2.) intentional views in which language conveys meaning directly from (1.) an objective source (the world out there) or (2.) a subjective source (inner feeling states).

The constructionist approach to language explains why meaning is so difficult to pin down, why it shifts across cultures and different times. Take for example the artwork by Damien Hirst (Hall: 20). In what way is a sheep preserved in a see-through tank a "work of art"? What people forget is that "art" is not a natural concept. It is clearly an institutionalised practice with different meanings shaped by its social context (for example, religion, aristocracy, political regime, or bohemian avant-garde).

The shifting nature of meaning has important implications, especially regarding the hallowed notion of truth. As quoted by Hall, Foucault argued that, "Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true" (Hall: 49). The term "regime of truth" makes clear

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the status of knowledge as power. In this view the educator's role is simply to transmit the kinds of discourse that the society find acceptable.

The connection between language and culture was extremely important to me during the two and a half years I lived and worked in Japan as an English Language teacher. In order to limit the scope of my discussion, I will focus my comments on the place of English language education as I experienced it.

English conversation schools are extremely popular in Japan. The main ones are marketed as providing the experience of being in an English speaking culture (Nova's slogan is "Study overseas, near the station"). This "foreign" culture of English is of course an artificial construct shaped to meet the expectations of the students, and bears only a passing resemblance to the actual social make-up of English-speaking countries.

According to Hall, "Things don't mean: we construct meaning using representational systems - concepts and signs." (Hall:25) If we apply this to the experience of teaching in a foreign country, it is not clear who is teaching whom. The way foreign teachers are inducted to conversation schools simply assumes they have no need to negotiate meaning with their students. Influenced by Western methods of education, most foreign English language teachers in Japan rely on eliciting individual differences from students, and encouraging alternative opinions on controversial topics. Many of their students just as strongly resist being put into an adversarial position, preferring to communicate in ways that respect the status of the various interlocutors and strengthen the communal bonds.

On the other hand there were many times when students felt free to temporarily become "the other". Speaking English gave them freedom to act differently, to try another role. I realised that students will resist taking a role that is not consonant with their idealised self-image. Unfortunately many students were also incapable of directly questioning the

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teacher's actions. The position of the teacher or "sensei" is a priveliged one in Japan, and any criticism will be directed through a third party.

In order to have a feel for the cultural difference, the EFL teacher needs some grasp of the student's first language. Knowing that certain distinctions do or do not exist, helps the process of sequencing and focusing on distinctions in English. The concept maps of teacher and student will of necessity interact and influence one another.

The ideas presented by Stuart Hall show that communication is not a spontaneous and natural occurance even when the interlocutors share exactly the same concept map. A mutual process of teaching and learning is involved whenever any two people attempt to communicate - and much more so when those people come from different cultural backgrounds.

Reference: Hall, S (1997) The work of representation in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (Sage Publications & Open University)

Jason Beale