语言与社会期末问题与答案汇总.docx

1、语言与社会期末问题与答案汇总1. How do you understand the influence of culture on communication?1) Culture is everything and everywhere .Our culture supplies us with the answers to those and countless questions about what the world looks like and how you live and communicate within this world. 2) Culture is the fo

2、undation of communication,and when cultures are diverse,communication practices may be different.Countless aspects of culture help determine and guide communication behavior.3) The world looks,sounds,tastes,and feels the way is dose because our culture has given you the criterion of perception.2. Wh

3、at are the major factors that influence language communication?The three elements that directly influence our perception and communication:(1)cultural values.It inform a member of a culture about what is good and bad,right and wrong,true and false,positive and negative,and the like.Cultural values d

4、efine what is worth dying for,what is worth protecting,what frightens people,what are proper subjects for study and for ridicule,and what types of events lead individuals to group solidarity.Most important,cultural values guide both perception and behavior.(2)worldview(religion).A worldview is a cul

5、tures orientation toward such things as God,nature,life,death,the universe,and other phiosophical issues that are concerned with the meaning of life and with “being”.(3)Social organization.The manner in which a culture arganizes itself is directed to the institutions within that culture.The families

6、 who raise you and the governments with which you associate and hold allegiance to all help determine how you perceive the world and how you behave within the world.3.Discuss the differences between positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies with examples. (1)Positive politene

7、ss strategies: those showing the closeness, intimacy, and rapport between speaker and hearerNagative politeness strategies: those indicating the social distance between speaker and hearer(2) Positive Politeness: is redress directed to the addressees positive face, his desire that his wants should be

8、 thought of as desirable.Redress consists in partially satisfying that desire by communicating that ones own wants are in some respects similar to the addressees wants.The linguistic realizations of Positive Politeness are in many respects representative of the normal linguistic behavior between int

9、imates. Nagative politeness :Redressive action addressed to the addressees negative face.Addressee wants to have his freedom unhindered and his attention unimpeded.Specific and focused to minimize the particular imposition that the FTA effects.Politeness in Western cultures is always considered with

10、 negative politeness behaviour.(3)Categories of Positive Politeness: Claim common ground; Categories of negative politeness: use indirect speech acts;question;hedge (deliberately vague expression);be pessimistic;minimize the FTA;give gifts4.Try to find examples to illustrate the positive and negativ

11、e strategies used in the Chinese cultural context considering the factors of “in-group”vs.”out-group”membership in communication.(1)Positive strategies: Use in- group identity markers；Using any of the innumerable ways to convey in- group membership: address forms, language or dialect, jargon or slan

12、g and ellipses.Examples: “Honey, can you give me the beer?”“Hey brother, whats going on?”“How about a drink?”(2)Negative strategies: Opposing tensions: desire to give hearer an “out“ by being indirect, and the desire to go on record.Solved by the compromise of conventional indirectness, the use of p

13、hrases and sentences that have contextually unambiguous meanings which are different from their literal meaning.Examples:“Can you please shut the door?” “You couldnt possibly tell me the time, please?” 5.What are the distinctions between performatives and constatives according to Austin?(1)Condition

14、s:true or false(constative)-the constatives utterance is verifiable and it is either true or false;felicity conditions(performative)-the performatives require not only “the appropriate circumstances.”but also the appropriate language.(2)grammatical criterion:the performative verb is in the present t

15、ense and each sentence has s first person subject(3)lexical criterion:”state”(constative) “hereby”(performative)6.Please explain the main distinction between the concept of utterance and the concept of sentence with examples.(1)Utterance can succeed as an act of communication even if the speaker doe

16、s not possess the attitude he is expressingOccasionally utterances are both nonliteral and indirect. For example, one might utter I love the sound of your voice to tell someone nonliterally (ironically) that she cant stand the sound of his voice and thereby indirectly to ask him to stop singing. Whe

17、n uttering the sentences, the speaker is actually doing something, instead of stating or describing something(2)There are many sentences whose standard uses are not strictly determined by their meanings but are not implicatures or figurative uses eitherThe sentence does not express a complete propos

18、ition.Sentences used for ethical evaluationSentence meaning is constituted by its literal meaning and reference in context. The meaning is conveyed by the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses (locutionary act) following the syntactic and semantic rules.7.Illustrate the function of context in inte

19、rpreting the meaning of language in communication. 文本一： Context to a certain extent, reduce the barriers of communication, make communication more smooth, so that communication can receive good results. Language environment is essential for understanding language.(1) Context is an important means to

20、 resolve ambiguity: Any language has many words are ambiguous, used in a sentence usually embodies a meaning, it must make a choice based on context. In a language environment, the speaker only people to express a meaning. Polysemy is also very common in English, and some kind of meaning can often b

21、e reflected through the context. However, the existence of polysemy and ambiguity does not cause confusion in communication, because the specific context can make it simple.(2) Context is the basis for understanding the meaning of a sentence: The sentence meaning besides the literal meaning and the

22、implied meaning outside. The conversational implicature is people, because of a discourse meaning does not comply with the principles of conversation. It is the true meaning of words according to the context of, interpretation of discourse implication overtones.文本二：speakers of a language must posses

23、s in order to express their intentions and interpret those of others. In order to investigate how we can “make meaning” by using language it is necessary to bring in the notion of context, that is, the way the various elements are combined, how they relate to the world at large, and the purposes for

24、 which they are used. This side of language study is generally called pragmatics . The central message of pragmatics is that meaning does not come ready-made or packaged in words or sentences, but is constructed by speakers and hearers through processes of interpretation, in the context in which the

25、 language is used.There are three levels (or layers) of context: a) the linguistic context; b) the interactional context, or the ways in which peoples utterances are organized and follow one another in a regular manner; c) the social context, or the ways in which institutional, socio-economic, cultu

26、ral, and political considerations influence and are influenced by the verbal actions of people.Therefore, to use English appropriately, effectively and critically in a wide range of situations, it is very important for learners of English,8.Please explain the differences of cultural context with exa

27、mples.(课本178页划线部分)9.Explain the concepts of “language style”and “register”with your own examples. (1) language style means due to the authors life experience and artistic accomplishment of the creation of the different features, language style is a writer with special style works of creative languag

28、e.For example, Pure and fresh and elegant: li bai,Stall depressed:Du fu, QingJian popular:Bai juyi , The powerful tragic:Qu yuan,Comfort quiet:Tao yuanming,Bold sweep:Cao cao.(2) Register is often an indicator of the formality or official nature of an occasion, or a mark of authority. Linguists make

29、 the distinction that register varies with use, rather than with the user. For example, most peoples speech contains pointers, lexical, syntactical, and phonological, of their class or social status. Such speech changes register when it is altered to fit an occasion, such as appearing in court or sp

30、eaking to a bureaucrat, writing a scientific paper, making a business presentation, or interacting with an older relative or small child.10.Some people argue that gender difference in language use is a kind of subcultural differences between men and women.What is your opinion on the issue?In my opin

31、ion,we do not Pay attention to the differences of gender language differences but also focus on the similarities between men and women in language. In order to fully explain the relationship between language and gender, we should pay more attention to the differences and similarities between men and

32、 women. Although many scholars believe that men and women come from different cultures, this kind of culture is just a different sub culture. The mainstream culture plays a very important role in the process of the socialization of men and women. So whether it is male or female, they will be in the process of socialization to learn the values and behavior of the mainstream culture, but also learn to score the values and behavior of their own sub culture. In this way, their behavior, including language behavior, must have both similarities and differences. So it is not r