Communication as Culturally Contexted Practice

This paper will explore the interrelationship between culture, language and communication and examine dimensions of the impact of culture on the act and process of communication. It will argue that instances of language use in communication (linguistic acts) are inseparable from the cultural context in which they are created and in which they are received. Culture impacts on communication at a number of levels. It constitutes a frame in which utterances are conveyed and interpreted: what is communicated depends as much on the cultural context in which the communication occurs as it does on the elements from which the linguistic act is constructed. Culture also influences how the linguistic act itself is constructed, affecting text types and the properties and purposes of textual structures. Aspects of communication such as sequencing, recipient design and impact are read within a framework of cultural understandings about valued and appropriate language use. In addition, culture has an impact on understanding the purpose of a linguistic act in instances of communication. It influences perceptions of the communicative purpose associated with particular types of linguistic acts at particular moments of interaction and also of the interactional and interpersonal value of linguistic acts. Finally culture is a feature of the form of the language which is used to construct linguistic acts. Languages are, at least in part, culturally constructed artefacts which encode conceptual understandings of the world at various levels of embeddedness. The culturally contexted nature of communication therefore imposes a problem of inter-translatability for actual instances of communication across languages and cultures and necessitates a level of particularity for each actual instance of communication.