Unit 1: Essay and Powtoon presentation

“Do we teach language using culture or do we teach culture using language”. 

There have been many debates around the theme of culture and language; The linguist Sapir had already said “Language is life” and we should try to understand that life cannot only be understood in biological terms but also, in humanistic, social and political terms, that is, in terms of culture The language, although it is not the most important foundation of the construction of the culture, yes, at least, it helps to define it, because, the base of the relations has been gestated through the development of the language, and this, in turn , of the comunication. In some way we can affirm that the function of language, the cultural sphere, is precisely that of enabling the apprehension of the phenomena of the community through words and the relationship that is formed on them and in them. The most important institutional phenomena in the history of humanity have been developed on the basis of language, as an example of this, we have religion, education and politics. All the different human groups that congregated did so around a common factor that managed to identify them: language, and this, through the linguistic signs that gave rise to languages. This is how we see, in ancient Mesopotamia a way of writing that allowed the organization of society, then, the Egyptian hieroglyphs, which served as a catapult of the Pharaonic dynasties, the Greeks, who defined democracy, the State and development of thought, and the Romans, with the creation of law, the concept of republic and empire. All this was possible through the use of language.

To better understand the relationship between one element and another (language and culture) it is good to reflect, first, on what defines culture, and, secondly, what defines language. In the first case, culture, in my opinion, should be considered as the whole set of legitimations from the perspective of the artistic, political, state and also, everything that represents the idiosyncrasies of the communities, and that It manifests itself in the particular uses of a language to express emotions, feelings, and common factors that occur in the interaction. On the other hand, we have that language is defined from two perspectives: from a purely linguistic perspective, that is, everything related to the linguistic codification of conventional signs and symbols to communicate ideas verbally or in writing (in this respect we might be interested to know linguists' views), and a second perspective, very typical of philology, helps us define language as a compendium of community experiences throughout history, which have transcended thanks to the use of the written word. It is the communicative action that defines in the end, all the definitive and connotative frameworks between language and culture.

We can say who teaches a foreign language that, it is possible to use language to show a culture but that that same culture also allows us to use language as a source and guarantor of the communicative act, because it is through its signs and conventions that the convention of the cultural construct of humanity. History has taught us that it is not feasible to separate language from culture and that only through the mutual recognition of both institutions of knowledge, it is possible to build and deconstruct the bland imaginary of its separation, then, all arts, letters, Science and thought are based on the imperative need to communicate but communicate experience: communication is made by language, and experience is made by culture.