Introduction
Communication is a vital part of every human being. For there to be any form of communication, established ways and mechanisms are is required .Language is one of the mechanism through which people pass messages. People create new words in order to satisfy their need of expression which comes as; thoughts, feelings, ideas among others. This paper examines language and communication with regard to how people communicate with each other with review of how language interacts with culture in the socialization and learning processes. The main focus of the paper is the social media as mode of commutation and how it affects language through social media applications such as instagram.
The question of interaction between language and culture is complex and has many aspects. There are currently several opinions concerning this issue. Some scholars consider language and culture different phenomena that do not coincide either in content or in functions. According to Jonathan culler (1986), “culture is seen as achievements of humankind, the result of conscious activity, whereas the language does not result from this activity and cannot be viewed as an achievement” (p.27). Others emphasize the connection of culture and language, stating that it is possible to consider the relationships between culture and language as the relationships between the whole and its part. Language, according to this view is; “the component of culture, and at the same time its tool; moreover, language is autonomous and can be studied separately from culture” (Aimin, 2013, pp. 162-167). Therefore, the topic of language acquisition and culture and how they either act as independent entities or as functions of each other can better be understood using a theoretical framework approach. In the approach, several theories will be examined with regard to how effective they are in demystifying the relationship between language and culture with respect to learning.
Theory 1
The first theory is the Socio-cultural theory. This theory considers language to be an inseparable part of culture. The spiritual human values constitute the basis of people’s existence determines the sense and content of their lives. A linguistic identity is not a simple separate aspect of personality (like legal or economic identity), but rather the development of the notion of identity. Each language is the unique system that produces significant impact on the consciousness of its speakers and forms their linguistic world-image that reflects reality via the cultural world-image (Haghani, 2012, pp. 693-699). The question of relationships between the cultural (conceptual) and linguistic world-images is very complex, and deals with the differences in the way reality is exposed in language and culture.
Therefore, the role of language, according to socio-linguistic view, is not only in communicating messages, but, in the first place, an internal organization of what needs to be communicated, in other words, the knowledge about the world that are included into the language. Linguistic world-view includes the knowledge about the world reflected in phraseology, grammar, lexical system; and it is specific for each culture, reflecting the view on the reality of particular ethnic or national group. The connections between language and culture are projected not only to the linguistic world-image but also the linguistic identity.
Theory 2
Constructivism is yet another theory that continues to demystify the controversy between language and culture with regard to learning. The theory argues that individuals can only generate and acquire knowledge as a result of their daily life experiences and the inborn ideas. The culture one in born in and grow in, whether at home or at school and at all levels of socialization, provides the experiences and the language is the medium through which the ideas are acquired and communicated. Constructivism has developed into being one of the greatest influences on the practice of education in the last two and a half decades (twenty-five years), as more and more teachers have started embracing constructivist-based pedagogy with extreme amounts of enthusiasm, which otherwise is quite rare in today’s fast paced and quick fix approach towards schooling and improvement of education (Araje, 2002). The meaning of constructivism essentially is not the same, as it depends on individual perspective as well as position. In conclusion, constructivism views language and culture as independent units that work together to bring about learning.
There are many theories dealing with learning as well as pedagogy within social constructivism and educational constructivism, and the same have had the most prominent impact on the instructional design and curriculum design as they are considered to possess the highest degree of conduciveness with respect to integration into the contemporary approaches of education and learning.
Theory 3
A different approach is the Stephen Krashen’s hypothesis of input-based learning which is based on the assumptions that people master the language best of all from the messages that are only a little bit higher or further than their current language competencies. Besides, he claimed that the emotional state of the learner can act as a filter that can block the input necessary for language acquisition as demonstrated here,
The best methods [of teaching the language] are therefore those that supply 'comprehensible input' in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are 'ready', recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensive input, and not from forcing and correcting production. (Krashen, 1989, pp. 440-464).
In addition, for the new material in the language to be assimilated quickly and effectively, the complicatedness of the text should be only a little bit higher than the current level of the learner. If all words and constructions in the text are clearly understood, there will be no significant improvement in skills and knowledge. On the other hand, if the text is too complicated, the learner will not be able to comprehend it at all, or its large parts.
Another aspect of Krashen’s hypothesis is emotions which sometimes can facilitate remembering. Being interested in the subject is always useful, but the attention should not be too focused - ideally, it should be distracted, as in this state the new thoughts, ideas, and rules are perceived and remembered much better (Krashen, 1989).
Therefore, it is critical to note that Language acquisition is an unconscious course; as the people who try acquiring knowledge are normally unaware of the aspect that they are actually learning a new language, but they just know that the new language would be used for acquisition (Krashen, 1989). Even the competence that a learner acquires through language acquisition is subconscious as well. This is because most people are unaware of the rules that are supposed to be followed when acquiring knowledge.
In addition, competence in second language can be obtained through language acquisition and according to a few language theorists, while children acquire language, contrary to this, adults just learn. There is a lot of difference between learning and acquisition. Interestingly, English is possibly the widely studied language based on the natural order hypothesis, and of all structures of English, morphology is the extensively learnt structure (Krashen, 1989).
In conclusion, language and culture cannot therefore be exclusively detached from each other in learning and communication. This is because the two are mutually dependent on each other with regard to having a complete socialization process of a human being. The next section is going to focus on literature review regarding the issue of language and communication. The review will capture the various aspects of computing and social media with reference to how they influence language, learning and communication.
Literature Review:
Computer-mediated Communication (CMC)
Introduction
As mentioned earlier, this section will focus on computing and social media and their resultant implications to language, learning and communication. The current 21st century is dominated by technology and with respect to this paper, the technology has great impact on the socialization process which includes language. All social media platforms and computers require a language as a medium for communication. The language highly and commonly employed is English.
English, as a medium of communication, is possibly the native language of human interface with computers. There was a stage when there was no other language available for communication using computers other than English. Even today, majority of engagements with computer as a medium happens mainly through the usage of English language (R. Joiner, 2006, pp. 67-76).
Today, technology like Google is universally available, which could translate from English to any other language and even vice versa, at a click of a button. English being the native language for computers, has had the first-mover advantage and has possibly the largest tools like dictionaries and thesaurus, among others that are available online as learning aides. This may not be available as extensively in any other language because the number of users could be limited (Beale, 2003, pp. 392-395).
Currently, computers are possibly one of the most extensively available tools for effective utilization as the medium for English language acquisition (Jill M. Aldridge, 2006, pp. 123-147). There are numerous creative approaches through which computers can help students in their language acquisition.
Therefore, this ability that CMC creates for users in helping them in second language acquisition, along with also using few other features of CMC, is having a great hope in various Universities and their language classrooms (Hata, 2003).
Having looked at computer mediated communication, it is clear that it is rather general way of looking at that fact. Therefore, the next section is going to narrow down to the specific and mostly used technological platforms for language and communication which is the social media.
An Overview of Social Media
Mass media is regarded as being one of the numerous factors that has a strong influence upon people. It is largely believed by sociologists worldwide that media has the power to dictate the way people learn about the happenings all over the world, while also directing people about the way to suitably interact with each other (Gould, 2011, pp. 80-85). Several researchers have been carrying out studies for precisely discovering the way users understand and interpret the messages offered by mass media and the way they incorporate them into their day to day activities and peers.
The academic sphere also has a high usage of social media by all the players. Therefore, use of social media in the academic context has been investigated by numerous researchers. A 2010 study conducted by Krishnamurthy and Ashwath centered on understanding the impact of social media upon library services concluded that people who use the library now consider social networking sites more as professional resources, rather than just networking platforms (Yu-Lin Jeng, 2010, pp. 3-10).
Likewise, another survey conducted in the year 2008 by Reuben across 148 educational institutions concluded that all the institutions that were part of the survey use social media platforms for various professional purposes such as recruitment, student-teacher communication as well as for marketing (Reuben, 2008).
In 2015, Mancuso and Stuth suggested that Instagram provides an amazingly effective and resourceful image-based storytelling application that uniquely connects other users. It also has unique aspects like "hashtags, @mentions, geotagging, biography space, follower/following button and photo editing functions" (Stuth, 2015, pp. 16-17).
Instagram's interface was skillfully and cleanly designed since it was founded. The usability of this platform continues to this day, thus it has to let users post their photos simultaneously in various other platforms of social media. This facility of connecting to other social media platforms like Facebook and Foursquare at the same time is believed to essentially facilitate internet users to convey their message to other social media platforms (Linaschke, 2011).
An Overview of Mobile Applications
Mobile devices have become an extremely powerful and highly convenient mode of communication these days as they come with numerous tools for helping people in their daily activities. With the sophistication in the mobile technology, learning using mobile devices has been extensively studied in the field of e-learning. Several researches regard it is a significant aspect that helps integrate pedagogical and technical assets of mobile technology into the modern day learning environments (Yu-Lin Jeng, 2010).
Furthermore, a majority of the earlier studies regarding mobile technologies has concentrated more on its varied strength in stressing upon the assistance in mobile learning. However, the study of Yu-Lin Jeng, adopts a highly practical perspective for describing the way mobile technologies enable and assist mobile learning activity (Yu-Lin Jeng, 2010). The current day highly sophisticated mobile technology offers users with two vital features in the contemporary mobile learning research, namely the “situated context and ubiquitous mobility” (Beale, 2003, pp. 392-395).
It can therefore be concluded that, with ubiquitous mobility, the learning activity of the students can be facilitated in the internal environment and external environment beyond the school, and eventually connect to other peers through network connectivity. Mobile technologies offer varying degrees of content that are related to mobile learning while also delivering information in an effective manner for students during several of their learning activities (Yu-Lin Jeng, 2010). Moreover, mobility also enables mobile learning to become highly distributed. All the interaction with mobile devices has been seen so to be meticulously and effectively crafted around mobile applications. One of the applications that is widely used is instagram as mentioned in this section. Therefore, the application is going to evaluate the application in details with respect to language communication and learning.
Introduction
Instagram is an interactive multi-user website whose context is created by the users. The primary content of Instagram is photographs. They often containing short descriptions in the form of hashtags, and sometimes accompanied with texts. There is an option to comment on posts, which makes the texts in Instagram rather different. Therefore, Instagram, apart from being the digital tool for exchanging information (photographs and opinions about them), but also the communicative platform for its users. Browsing this platform, it is clear that Instagram's influence on its audience should not be underestimated.
Life can be reflected and revitalized with the posts on Instagram especially if users utilize the features. Even linguistic identities of other users can also be affected and changed. In accordance with socio-cultural theory, linguistic identity is considered as the identity revealing itself in the language. The characteristics of linguistic identity in Instagram affect the following characteristics of the texts they create: complexity (as in structure and language); comprehensiveness; purpose; grammatical and lexical correctness. It can be stated with certainty that use of social, media has greatly revolutionised the informal communication modes and language. Users are seen to exhibit and identify themselves with different forms linguistic identities depending on who they are communicating with. Therefore, English as discussed in the next section has acquired different dimension of expression within the social media sphere, the Englishes.
World Englishes
The local forms of English that developed because of the local language blended with English, which eventually turns into the standard language of a particular society or a religion, are defined as World Englishes. World Englishes vary significantly from the Standard English language – the world’s highly popular form of English (Saraceni, 2006, pp. 5-6). Standard English possesses specific grammar and terminology. Standard English is the global language that is extensively used in education, business, aviation, entertainment and many other industries that have global establishments (Melchers, 2010, pp. 485-506)
This Standard English is also known by the name EIL (English as International Language). EIL typically is based upon the either the American Standard English or the British Standard English. The primary objective of EIL is to learn and teach English with various intelligible forms – rather than relying or following one standard form and this form of teaching is believed to equip learners with the necessary accommodative ability that would further enable them to communicate globally (Ecclestone, 2008)
The contemporary concept of EIL is not a new one that has emerged overnight, but is rather a subject that has evolved in a progressive manner in the history of the English language (Elyas, 2014, p. 128).This form of English is predominant in English speaking countries. However, there are other countries whose native language is not English but due to globalization and free trade and political shifts, these countries have been pushed to adopt English even if it is at least as second language. As a result, English has also been modified on social media platforms. An example is Saudi Arabia that has the social conceive what is currently termed as Saudi English as discussed in the next section.
Saudi English
The local language in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) as an Arab nation is predominantly Arabic and English is not a commonly spoken language here. Using English as a communication medium is a highly debated topic in KSA as it is loaded with a lot of political, religious, and economic implications. While the influences that globalization as well as the modernization has had on the region with its adoption of globalized policies, there has been a considerable increase in English usage. On the other hand, there are various processes of resistance to the language, resulting in a shift in the language to suit the local culture, beliefs as well as practices (Elyas, 2014, pp. 128-142).
We have set the cornerstone to what types of English exists. We also have explored another means to expression ourselves all the name of expounding language to its fullest potential. Now, it is time to take an in-depth look into language, multi-media.
Conclusion
This review has explored the aspects of communication, language, culture and social media. The theories of learning and pedagogy have been analyzed with regard to language and culture. It has been seen that although language and culture are mutually exclusive entities they are also mutually dependent entities and one cannot function effectively without the other one. Computing and social media have been seen to affect the way people communicate. Social media platforms and their application like instagram have had a negative effect on English command in general which has conceived lateral English jargons like Englishes and Saudi English. Though it may seem as a bad thing, computer mediated communication and social media applications have enhanced learning and socialization globally.
References
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