Syntactic Language Differences Between Cultures

Language is a set of shared symbols or signs that a cooperative group of people has mutually agreed to use to help them create meaning. Language functions by allowing people to express and exchange ideas and thoughts with others.

2. What does this quote mean? “Language is like a house of the people, a spiritual home for them and, for most, their only place of residence” (Duneton)

This quote means a specific language is typically for a certain group of people, in a certain location.

3. How do syntactic rules differ between cultures?

Syntactic rules differ between cultures because for each culture words are arranged in a variety of ways. For instance, in France sentences are structured in order with a subject, a verb, and then an object.

4. What

and Japan by what is considered to be appropriate conversation. Topics to talk about in Japan include the weather, names, universities, ages, club activities, music, college life, arrangements to meet again, recent movies, and travel. Topics that are not to be discussed are personal savings, religion, sex lives, drugs, authors read/politics, marriage, boy/girl-friend, life goals, telephone numbers, gossip, personalities, and after graduation plans. In the U.S. people tend to be very direct, rarely reserved, they avoid vagueness and ambiguity and get to the point, they use explicit words, and they express opinions openly when they communicate. Communication in the U.S., sometimes blurs the lines between what is okay to talk about and what isn’t in comparison to

Examples include, pickpockets, murderers, pedophiles, drug dealers, and prostitutes. Argot is a private vocabulary particular to many nonprofessional groups such as truck drivers, ham radio operators, military personnel, and circus/carni workers. Jargon is a technical language of a professional class, like “NPO” in medical uses stands for a patient who should not take anything by mouth. Slang derives from cant and argot that is understood by most people but not often used in normal society or in formal written communication. An example of slang is stating something is a “piece of cake,” which is a metaphor used to describe something that is easy.

8. Name one co-culture and cultural differences in verbal communication.

In African American culture some of the different verbal communications they use are as follows. They shorten 3rd person present tense (he walk, she go). The use of the verb “to be” is used to indicate continuous action (he be gone). The deletion of the verb “to be” is in present indicative (he tired).

9. Construction of a simple sentence in English is Subject-Verb-Object and in Japanese, the construction is Subject-Object-Verb. What kind of problems might this present for simultaneous