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Language and Culture
by Rhiannon Griffiths
 Being Welsh I have great intuition on the subject of language and how important it can be in the identity of a culture, or indeed an individual, through interaction with my family and the first-hand perceptions of the society and culture they live in. "The exact nature of the relationship between language and culture has fascinated, and continues to fascinate, people from a wide variety of backgrounds. That there should be some kind of relationship between the sounds, words and syntax of a language and the ways in which speakers of that language experience the world and behave in it seems so obvious as to be a truism. It would appear that the only problem is deciding the nature of the relationship and finding subtle ways to demonstrate it." (1) This extract illustrates the theory known as the Whorfian Hypothesis, and clearly shows the importance of language upon defining cultural identity, the strongest aspect of it shapes the way the people within the culture interact with the world around them, how they think, how they perceive, how they express themselves, what is important to them, and who they are; this is a monumental statement to make and may suggest that the role played by a language in defining and expressing identity is paramount.
Culture is interpreted as "the conscious and unconscious ways of life of a people, including attitudes, values, beliefs, behaviour, and material things" (2). Whereas identity is defined by Bo Lonnqvist, Professor of Finland's folklore, "as a feeling of argument between self and the community, the environment. Identity on a personal level is created by name, age, language; and identity on the public level by native country, feeling of nationality, ideologies, culture, which all married together form, a collective identity. Thus identity has a social dimension that must be communicated, inherited, practised and symbolised." (3) These two statements, more so the latter one illustrates the full extent over which language has a bearing; for example, the native country will speak a language, or have one main, national language which is perceived to be the 'mother-tongue' this defines the identity of the country, and allows the identity to be expressed through the arbitrary sounds, grammar and meanings. Without the Welsh language, the group would not have developed the traditions, ideologies or feelings of loyalty to the nationality, which comprise cultural identity and enable the people to express it to the rest of the world. The culture would have no way of defining themselves in relation to others, as in the theory of perception; "Perceiving is an active searching process, so we look for attitudes in others. We need to evaluate their position in relation to ourselves before we feel confident about talking with them." (4) Language can not only aid the communication process with the encoder and decoder speaking the same language, but the language enables the identity of the person to be defined before the act of communication takes place.
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