Culture bumps: overcoming misunderstandings in cross – cultural communication
(the vision of the world of a nation, realia, words without equivalents, the function of language as a tool of culture, the vision of the world, the sociocultural component, the world of language , the world of reality, different speech communities, actual “equivalents” in the full sense of the word, mode of living, the moral code, relations between people, the system of values, determined by socio-historical factors)
Man – Language – World Relationship
The function of language as a tool of culture has been ignored for a long period of time. However, this aspect of language is extremely important for many reasons.
Language reflects the world of its users. The vision of the world of a nation is conveyed by its language, the latter reflecting not only geography, climate, mode of living, but also the moral code, relations between people, the system of values, determined by socio-historical factors. Thus, culture in the broad, anthropological sense of the word is reflected by language.
Language shapes its user, imposing on him/her the vision of the world and the culture of human relations reflected and stored in it.
The first two statements are so obvious, so well investigated, so many papers have been written (and are being written) on the subject. But still it is the focus of attention. As is well-known, language is the main, the most explicit, the most obvious, official and socially acknowledged means of communication. The life and development of any human society is based on communication through language (which does not exclude, of course, other ways of communication).
Developing communicative skills is a difficult problem everywhere but it is particularly complicated in this country where for so many years Foreign Language Teaching was generally oriented on recognition while production was neglected.
And although both recognition and production skills cannot be developed without the background knowledge of the world of the language under study, it is speech production, the actual use of language which makes the importance and inevitability of the sociocultural component so evident. Indeed, it is a great misunderstanding to believe that in order to use language, to produce speech, both written and oral, it is enough to know words as lists of meanings and rules of bringing them together in speech (that is grammar and syntax). The problem is that the idea of meaning as a reference to reality invariably leads one out of the world of language into the world of reality. Consequently, bringing words together means bringing objects of reality together. The real worlds may coincide in some physical features but the visions of the world by different peoples representing different speech communities do not coincide. Thus, words of different languages which seem to refer to the same object or idea can hardly ever be actual “equivalents” in the full sense of the word.
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Shattering the idea of word equivalence at the level of lexical units
Let us now discuss such common everyday words like parts of the day which have “equivalents” in every language but we mean to compare English and Russian: утро – morning, день – day, вечер – evening, ночь – night. At the level of concepts the difference is quite striking. The English morning is much longer than the Russian “утро”: it takes 12 hours and lasts from midnight till noon covering the whole of the Russian ночь (from midnight to 4 a.m.), утро (from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m.) and part of the Russian день (from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.).
The difference between the Russian word день and the English day is even more striking. First of all, there are two English words – day and afternoon covering the piece of the Russian mosaic language picture of the world occupied by the word "day". Then, they vary in usage: Good day! –may be used as a dismissing phrase showing displeasure, irritation, etc. Strangely for Russian students of English the translation of a most common Russian greeting Добрый день! is rather good afternoon than good day. The following English contexts with the word "day" have no correspondence with the word день: I'll go there one day – когда-нибудь (sometime), he began his days in a small town – жизнь (life), in my day – время (time), it made my day – осчастливить (to make happy).
Here is a recent example illustrating the importance of sociocultural background knowledge for understanding such word-equivalents in both languages as lawyer. Lawyer is the general word for someone whose business is law. In England and Wales there are two kinds of lawyer who have different training and perform different jobs. A solicitor advises people on legal matters such as contracts, wills, and the buying and selling of property. Solicitors may represent a person in a Magistrate’s Court, but have only be able to do so in a higher court since 1992. A barrister may represent a person in any court, but usually only does so in the higher courts. A person’s solicitor advises the barrister about the facts of the case, but does not tell the barrister what to say. In the US a lawyer may also be called an attorney, and there are no differences between the two. A lawyer who represents someone during a trial is sometimes called a counselor.
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Let’s consider some more examples. Labor Day – a US national holiday to honour workers, established in 1894. Labor Day is the first Monday in September and is the last big holiday before the school year begins. There are no demonstrations with flags on this day. There is no ideology. There is no Labor Day in Great Britain, but there is May Day. There are still some local customs and celebrations although these may not be held on May Day itself but on the May Day bank holiday, the first Monday in May. In the US young children often dance around a maypole at school, and often leave small baskets of flowers at a friend’s door to be found on May Day morning. May Queen or young woman who is chosen as part of the May Day celebrations, usually because she is judged to be very attractive. She wears crown of flowers and is also called Queen of the May.
At Christmas, British and American people decorate a mistletoe* or a holly*. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant, species of which are found in Europe, Asia, and North America, having evergreen leaves and bearing white berries and small, yellow flowers. Holly – a small tree with dark green shiny prickly leaves and red berries.
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