Cultural Linguistics, in relation to Aboriginal Australians.

Review of: Sharifian, Farzad, 2017, Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam/PA: John Benjamins.

The above book is freely available for download from here: https://www.academia.edu/31114420/Cultural_Linguistics

Cultural linguistics, a new discipline of which Sharifian identifies himself as a key originator, discovers new problems and solutions. It focuses on cultural conceptualisations. That is; on the fact that words are conceptualised differently according to the cultural use made of them by their community. Cognition here considered is not ‘between the ears’, but also of a community. Language is looked at as containing schemas, categories, and metaphors, all of which are culturally grounded.

Use of the term ‘spirit’ is a strategy used by Aboriginal people in Australia, to try to communicate something about themselves to other Australians, Sharifian tells us. Use of particular words, ‘triggers’ certain ‘schemas’ in people’s thinking. Even should Aboriginal people be very fluent in English, misunderstandings will still arise from others’ engagement with them, because the conceptualisations they carry are so different from those of standard English speakers. For example, that ‘land’ is a living thing, and that ‘medicine’ is something with spiritual power. Saving face under pressure to conform, can have people accept offers that they actually find repugnant, Sharifian tells us.

If indeed body and culture shapes the mind, then Cartesian dualism has been undermined. This has many implications, that I believe should be of interest to missionaries and to bible translators.

A means to test for conceptualisations, is to tell someone a story, then to ask them to recall it from memory. The re-telling will reveal conceptual biases.

In our age, when English is increasingly used intra-culturally, what are the implications of this for its inter-cultural use? World Englishes differ at the level of cultural conceptualisation, Sharifian tells us. Here’s a foundation for dictionary production – to include conceptualisations.

My reflections:

Sharifian articulates many considerations related to language use between Western and majority world people that to many scholars still appear foggy. He is obviously a prolific scholar, many more articles by him are available on academia.edu. His focus on Australian Aboriginals enables him to speak, I believe, very effectively into closely-parallel contexts in the South Pacific, Africa, and beyond, and thus to contexts of minority-language groups with which bible translators tend to be active. Sharifian is endeavouring to encourage broadening of Australian English to incorporate Aboriginal conceptualisations. To me what he is actually doing – is making a very good case for the use of non-Western languages by non-Western people, and those who want to engage with them.