68CHAPTER 3 Culture attuned to the importance of the role of symbols and language in human interaction. For example, through intensive interviews with clinically depressed adults, sociologist David Karp (1996) found that the specifi c language that they use helps defi ne their reality. This self-defi nition in turn shapes the actions people with depression can envision, and ultimately, initiate. Early in their experiences, respondents often did not have an adequate vocabulary for naming their trouble. By eventually coming to name their condition as “depression,” they began to see it in a new light. In naming their experience depression, Karp’s respondents developed a new sense of S P O T L I G H T self, which shaped their response to their pain. Their illness identity also infl uenced how they interacted with family and friends, and helped break the social isolation that is at the center of the depression experience. They also had to grapple with the exact meaning of this new label, however. One of Karp’s interviewees says: “I think of it less as an illness and more something that society defi nes. That’s part of it, but then, it is physical. Doesn’t that make it an illness? That’s a question I ask myself a lot. Depression is a special case because everyone gets depressed. . . . I think that I defi ne it as not an illness. It’s a condition. . . . It’s something that I can deal with. It’s something that I can live with. I don’t have to defi ne it as a problem” (Karp 1996, 53). In contrast, other interviewees were comfortable with the defi nition of depression as “mental illness” and worked to fi nd a “cure”—both distinctly medical ways to defi ne and interpret the situation. Karp alludes repeatedly to the importance of language throughout his study. He points out that the ideas of “anxiety” and “depression” do not exist in many languages and, therefore, that people who speak those languages cannot use them to defi ne their reality. Even the title of Karp’s study— Speaking of Sadness—alludes to the importance of language. Reproducing Culture : Behav i o r In the context of culture, behaviors are the actions associated with a group that help reproduce a distinct way of life. When parents remind their children to tuck in their shirt, greet people with a fi rm handshake, and say “thank you” in response to a gift or an act of kindness, they are helping encourage a particular set of behaviors considered worthwhile in U.S. culture. These are small matters, but the accumulation of people’s many small, everyday actions—at home, at work, at play, at worship—helps distinguish one culture from another. Behavior also calls attention to the difference between ideal culture, what the members of a culture report to be their example, members of two Indian nations in Long Island, New York—Shinnecock and Unkechaug—are working with linguists at a local university to document and teach languages last spoken 200 years ago (Cohen 2010). Sharing a language, however, does not necessarily mean sharing a culture. English, for example, is spoken in many countries worldwide, in some as a fi rst language and in many others as a nearly universal second language, but the people of these countries do not all share a common culture. They usually do, however, speak a particular dialect of English. A dialect is a variant of a language with its own distinctive accent, vocabulary, and in some cases grammatical characteristics. For example, what Americans call a “stove,” the English call a “cooker.” Further, a “truck” and an “elevator” in the United States would be called a “lorry” and a “lift” in England. THE SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS The principle of linguistic relativity, developed by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf and popularly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, suggests that because of their different cultural content and structure, languages affect how their speakers think and behave. For example, researchers have found that people more easily identify color differences when they have a language to describe different shades of similar colors (Kay and Kempton 1984). That is, having words to differentiate distinct colors in the red spectrum (including scarlet, crimson, rose, magenta, and maroon) helps us see those different colors. This hypothesis is controversial, however. Many scholars believe it overstates the infl uence of language on thought (Pinker 2007). They point out that, like other aspects of culture, languages adapt to changing circumstances and that speakers absorb or invent new vocabulary for things as they become culturally important. Nonetheless, language refl ects the broader cultural contexts in which it evolved. As a result, every culture tends to develop unique words, phrases, and expressions that are diffi cult, if not impossible, to translate into another language. In that sense, language helps shape how we see the world. For example, the Mandarin word guanxi (pronounced “gwan-shee”) translates literally as something like “connection,” but it refers to a sort of social currency in traditional Chinese society. People can accumulate guanxi by doing good deeds for others or by giving them gifts, and they can “spend” their guanxi by asking for favors owed. In a society in which bonds of obligation form a crucial part of social life, such a word has a signifi cant cultural meaning that cannot be translated easily into English (Moore 2004). LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL INTERACTION As we saw in Chapter 1, the symbolic interactionist perspective emphasizes micro-level interactions—people’s everyday behaviors— as the building blocks of society. Rather than focusing on large-scale institutions and processes, symbolic interactionists look at how people make sense of the world through the meanings they attach to their own and others’ actions. As a result, sociologists working in this tradition are particularly on social theory Consider the experience of the people Karp interviewed. How have you reached a greater understanding of some situation by finding the right name for it, or finding the best way to describe it? How does this relate to the role of language as emphasized by symbolic interactionists?
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