My SOA education has taught me that in order to truly understand and contemplate the intricacies of a given culture, one must be enveloped by it, including its people, politics, laws, economy, religion, literature, art, music, pop-culture, and language. Language represents an ethos of a culture, determining the mode of thought and values of a society and lifestyle. It exposes and highlights individual differences within and between cultures. Language, as a medium of communication based on verbal expressions with shared meanings, affects and is affected by culture. In addition to carrying knowledge, it defines and transmits experi-ence and information.
Language communicates what is meaningful to people as it is defined by a particular culture.
And as students of the discipline know, what is meaningful in one culture, may or may not be meaningful in another. Language, therefore, represents an ethos of a culture, determining the mode of thought and values of a society and lifestyle. It exposes and highlights individual differences within and between cultures. Language limits our options of thought and expression since these notions are composed from it. Language sets the parameters of what can be done with it.