Question on link between language and culture

[Francis Hult]

If you're trying to make a link between language skills and business opportunities, you might this European report useful: "Languages Mean Business: Companies work better with languages"
http://ec.europa.eu/education/languages/pdf/davignon_en.pdf
 
Here's an article about it:
http://www.euractiv.com/en/culture/report-eu-losing-business-due-lack-language-skills/article-174208?Ref=RSS
 
The report addresses aspects of cultural awareness too.
 
FMH
 
--
Francis M. Hult, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies
University of Texas at San Antonio
 
Web: http://faculty.coehd.utsa.edu/fhult/
 
New Book: The Handbook of Educational Linguistics (Edited by Bernard Spolsky & Francis M. Hult)
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=9781405154109

________________________________

From: edling-bounces at lists.sis.utsa.edu on behalf of sicola at dolphin.upenn.edu
Sent: Thu 7/24/2008 1:46 PM
To: edling at lists.sis.utsa.edu
Subject: [Edling] Question on link between language and culture



Hello everyone,

It is pretty commonly understood and documented that there is a need to
understand a given culture in order to speak the relevant language(s) with a
communicative competence that goes beyond syntactic and lexical surface
accuracy. But is there also some good, accessible documentation showing the
reverse? I.e. that you need to study a language in order to more deeply
understand the culture(s) that use it? I presume it's a rather cyclical
relationship betwen language learning and cultural insight. If anyone has some
good references that address the "learning language leads to cultural
understanding" directionality, I'd be very grateful. My intent is to find
supporting evidence for a talk I'm giving to "average business people" who may
otherwise assume they can simply read a book on "doing business in (country)"
and learn all they need to know about living and working in that environment,
and thus don't need to attempt to learn the local language.

Thanks!

Laura

--
Laura Sicola, PhD
University of Pennsylvania
Educational Linguistics
TESOL lecturer




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List Manager: Francis M. Hult