Importance of investigating linguacultural variability in learning foreign languages

Abstract

As both language and culture serve communication process, this correlation helps foreign language learners to express syntactic, semantic and pragmatic meanings in order to communicate. Anyone who wants to communicate successfully through language and culture must know the differences between cultures. In this case, a person develops communication skills which include grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic and strategic skills. As a rule, this or that concept may be unique to one culture and might not exist in other cultures. That is the main reason of investigating cultural variability surrounding language which is the key to success in learning languages. While boundaries between languages are very clearly traced, cultural boundaries only emerge as a result of speakers’ cultural “collision”. Observations allow us to conclude that in many other countries, multiculturalism exists as a form of equal coexistence of different cultures within the same country. Since people belong to various cultures, their cultural values are always different. Lots of values exist simply because they differ from each other. If the values of one group of people collide with the values of another group, the value of the group with greater control will begin to dominate.

Keywords

• variability
• language
• culture
• cultural values
• linguaculture