The part played by variations within a language in differentiating social and occupational groups in a society has already been referred to above. In language transmission this tends to be self-perpetuating unless deliberately interfered with. Children are in general brought up within the social group to which their parents and immediate family circle belong, and they learn the dialect and communication styles of that group along with the rest of the subculture and behavioral traits and attitudes that are characteristic of it. This is a largely unconscious and involuntary process of acculturation, but the importance of the linguistic manifestations of social status and of social hierarchies is not lost on aspirants for personal advancement in stratified societies. The deliberate cultivation of an appropriate dialect, in its lexical, grammatical, and phonological features, has been the self-imposed task of many persons wishing “to better themselves” and the butt of unkind ridicule on the part of persons already feeling themselves secure in their social status or unwilling to attempt any change in it. Much of the comedy in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (first performed in 1913, with subsequent film adaptations) turns on Eliza Doolittle’s need to unlearn her native Cockney if she is to rise in the social scale. Culturally and subculturally determined taboos play a part in all this, and persons desirous of moving up or down in the social scale have to learn what words to use and what words to avoid if they are to be accepted and to “belong” in their new position.
The same considerations apply to changing one’s language as to changing one’s dialect. Language changing is harder for the individual and is generally a rarer occurrence, but it is likely to be widespread in any mass immigration movement. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the eagerness with which immigrants and the children of immigrants from continental Europe living in the United States learned and insisted on speaking English is an illustration of their realization that English was the linguistic badge of full membership in their new homeland at the time when the country was proud to consider itself the melting pot in which people of diverse linguistic and cultural origins would become citizens of a unified community. A reverse movement, typically by third-generation immigrants, manifests a concern to be in contact again with the ancestral language.
The same sort of self-perpetuation, in the absence of deliberate rejection, operates in the special languages of sports and games and of trades and professions (these are in the main concerned with special vocabularies). Game learners, apprentices, and professional students learn the locutions together with the rest of the game or the job. The specific words and phrases occur in the teaching process and are observed in use, and novices are only too eager to display an easy competence with such phraseology as a mark of their full membership of the group.
Languages and variations within languages play both a unifying and a diversifying role in human society as a whole. Language is a part of culture, but culture is a complex totality containing many different features, and the boundaries between cultural features are not clear-cut, nor do they all coincide. Physical barriers such as oceans, high mountains, and wide rivers constitute impediments to human intercourse and to culture contacts, though modern technology in the fields of travel and communications makes such geographical factors of less and less account. More potent for much of the 20th century were political restrictions on the movement of people and of ideas, such as divided western Europe from formerly communist eastern Europe; the frontiers between these two political blocs represented much more of a cultural dividing line than any other European frontiers.
The distribution of the various components of cultures differs, and the distribution of languages may differ from that of nonlinguistic cultural features. This results from the varying ease and rapidity with which changes may be acquired or enforced and from the historical circumstances responsible for these changes. From the end of World War II until 1990, for example, the division between East and West Germany represented a major political and cultural split in an area of relative linguistic unity. It is significant that differences of vocabulary and usage were noticeable on each side of that division, overlying earlier differences attributed to regional dialects. The control of language for cultural ends Second-language learning
Language, no less than other aspects of human behaviour, is subject to purposive interference. When people with different languages need to communicate, various expedients are open to them, the most obvious being second-language learning and teaching. This takes time, effort, and organization, and, when more than two languages are involved, the time and effort are that much greater. Other expedients may also be applied. Ad hoc pidgins for the restricted purposes of trade and administration are mentioned above. Tacit or deliberate agreements have been reached whereby one language is chosen for international purposes when users of several different languages are involved. In the Roman Empire, broadly, the western half used Latin as a lingua franca, and the eastern half used Greek. In western Europe during the Middle Ages, Latin continued as the international language of educated people, and Latin was the second language taught in schools. Later the cultural, diplomatic, and military reputation of France made French the language of European diplomacy. This use of French as the language of international relations persisted until the 20th century. At important conferences among representatives of different nations, it is usually agreed which languages shall be officially recognized for registering the decisions reached, and the provisions of treaties are interpreted in the light of texts in a limited number of languages, those of the major participants.
After World War II the dominant use of English in science and technology and in international commerce led to the recognition of that language as the major international language in the world of practical affairs, with more and more countries making English the first foreign language to be taught and thus producing a vast expansion of English-language-teaching programs all over the world. Those whose native language is English do not sufficiently realize the amount of effort, by teacher and learner alike, that is put into the acquisition of a working knowledge of English by educated first speakers of other languages.
