Worldviews, Their Development, and How

Worldviews, Their Development, And How They Affect Our Social Networks

A comprehensive world view is the fundamental thinking orientation of a society or individual that encompasses natural philosophy about fundamental normative/existentialist themes, emotions, values, or ethics. This concept is fundamental to German philosophy and refers to a very wide world perception. An individual interprets the world and interacts with it using their personal world view.

World views are particularly related to speech and linguistics. In the past there has been a controversy over whether or not world view is predetermined by language and education. Whichever is the case, the process of our learning and socialization predetermines the way we perceive the world and reality. This predetermination affects the way we behave, experience our world, the way we educate ourselves and how we interact with our social networks.

Connections between language and culture have been documented by some social scientists and anthropologists through the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Language and culture do appear at times to be intrinsically connected. For sociologists and anthropologists, language is a means of expressing cultural reality. Although cultural reality is relative, it provides a gauge by which we measure our environment and our relationship to it. As language changes, it reflects cultural changes. Although some cultural and speech features are hard wired into the brains as genetic heritage, most of the time culture and speech can develop together. For each culture, there is its own preference for directness, indirectness, silence, terms and phrases that refer to certain environmental phenomenon. In addition, there are particular ways of saying things. Each speech community will have its own shared cultural ways of using language to meet member needs. As basic and commonsense as this approach might seem at first, it has its weaknesses. For this reason, this author holds by a weaker version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis A balanced view of linguistic relativity is espoused by most linguists holding that language influences certain kinds of cognitive processes in non-trivial ways but that other processes are better seen as subject to universal factors. Present research is focused on exploring the ways in which language influences thought and determining to what extent (Putz & Verspoor 17).

What is really ironic about all of this is that neither Sapir nor Whorf ever formally wrote the hypothesis that bears their names or supported their ruminations with empirical evidence. However, a thorough study of their writings has dredged up two main ideas. First, there is a theory of linguistic determinism that claims that the language that a person speaks determines the way that he will interpret the world around him. Secondly, a weaker theory of linguistic relativity that was formulated that states that the language merely influences your thoughts about the real world. For more than fifty years after Sapir and Whorf made their statements, scholars have tried to design studies that will refute or support the hypothesis. The second weaker, more popular and controversial version has continued to fascinate readers, especially in the case of George Orwell's anti-utopian classic 1984. In many cases, the two versions of the theory blur together and are not easily differentiated.

For linguistic determinism to be completely correct a problem has to be considered. This is that languages and linguistic concepts are highly translatable. For linguistic determinism to be valid, a concept in one language would not be able to be understood in a different language because the speakers and their world views are bound by different sets of rules. In reality, languages are very translatable and in just a few select cases of poetry, humor and other creative communications are ideas that are lost in translation. The main empirical support (hardly sufficient) is to point out differences in the nuances of languages and then infer a difference in thought and behavior. It is this theory of linguistic relativity that the author will mainly explore in this essay. We know after all that language can limit and shape thought. However, does it necessarily determine thought or do other factors intervene to supplement and communicate in addition to language?

The language barrier affects learners from multicultural backgrounds, especially in with regard to cross-cultural communication strategies. This can be in a variety of areas, including e-learning. In Edmundson, it is pointed out that ignoring cultural factors will inevitably led to frustration and very ultimately ineffective learning experiences. This has very much been the case with cross-cultural e-learning. Many initiatives have failed for the obvious reasons, pedagogical and technological. Dropout rates have been as high as 80% from online courses mainly due to reasons that also include lack of student motivation, terrible content, language barriers, cognitive differences, psychological difficulties and insufficient instruction. This has caused a great amount of research to be done on this subject and it has been found that a fundamental reason for this poor performance is from a poor understanding of how e-learning actually works. This includes the areas of cultural factors. Solutions offered now include how to avoid communication pitfalls and place the primary responsibility on online tutors who online tutors and facilitators that do not encourage and facilitate collaborative work. Many of these tutors and facilitators seem to be absolutely culturally insensitive. Increasingly, there has been a growing body of research that has studied the cultural and cross-cultural dimensions of e-learning. It seeks to move forward by catering to culturally-diverse e-students. It recognizes that the internet is not a "culture-free-zone" and seeks to use these strategies to bridge the gap (Edmundson, 2007 292).

The education of children from very different cultural backgrounds has been a problem for the assimilation or integration of minority groups. In the late 1970's, the question was raised about whether West Indian children have a language barrier. This question was raised by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. West Indian children appeared to have a lower performance rate in school and made up a disproportionate number of educationally subnormal school population. Unlike other minorities in Britain, West Indians did not receive language assistance such as was given to Pakistanis or Indians. What was found was that the problem was not language, but an issue of a multicultural breakdown. Self-esteem, cognitive styles and group independence were critical. Many times struggles and alienation hindered educational efforts (Pederson, 1985, 39).

On the MAEC website, we find culture influences students' language skills and their learning of standard English, the lingua franca of education. The concept of communicative competence comes here, which is based upon your know of the rules of language structure and use within a culture that becomes useful. The major responsibility of teachers is to teach language and communication skills that will be needed for academic success. Since students come from many different cultures which use valid though different systems from what is used in the classroom, our study of sociolinguistics can help bridge the gap in the communication arts. Sociolinguistics examines social and cultural influences upon language behavior. The most important concepts to come from this are the relative relation of the instructor to language standards and dialects. What sociolinguists do is to document the presence of dialects. Dialects are valid subcomponents of language. The term dialect refers to a way of speaking a language, not to an incorrect way of communicating in that language.

While all of the dialects of a language are legitimate, some have more prestige. Of course those with the most formal education have the highest amount of political power. Typically, it is the standard for culture, writing and for education. For this reason, competence in standard English is necessary. This will help combat the performance of nonstandard English speakers ("Culture communication and language").

This brings up the issue of trust, especially in the work place. Education is engaged in all areas, in school and out of school. Overcoming language barriers builds trust between people. In the Asherman, Bing and Laroche article this is a key concept. Without trust there can be no communication. This is the case in many disciplines, including in the pharmaceutical industry where there is ongoing continuing education. This provides a prescient and beautiful quote that really sums up all of cross-cultural communication: "The most productive people are the most trusting people. If this seems to be an astonishing statement, it shows how distorted the concept of trust has become. Trust is one of the most essential qualities of human relationships." Without it, all human interaction, all commerce, all society would disappear. Under conditions of high trust, the problem solving tends to be very creative and reaches heights of productivity. Low trust produces just the opposite. While trust creates a reservoir of goodwill, the lack thereof only creates destructive patterns. The overuse of technology can damage this. The human interaction is precious (Asherman, Bing, & Laroche, 2000).

Contrary to many popular stereotypes, Asian students also have many cross-cultural language issues. (Lin, & Yi, 1997) The Lin and Yi article provides a useful overview of socio-demographic aspects of international students from Asia and their stressors. The importance of the study lies in the identification of the need to develop the needed cultural sensitivity programs and services. It outlines those programs and benefits to be offered on campuses to help service international students more effectively. Japanese students are here identified. Since they speak English as second language, they have more stress, requiring more time to read their textbooks, receiving the abuse from students that are enrolled with them in classes or who are being taught by them when they serve as graduate assistants. This causes miscommunication and a loss of learning comprehension. The fact is that the native born student may feel resentment about being passed over for assignment to the teaching assistantship when it is given to the foreign born student. A series of programs is suggested to provide cultural sensitivity for the foreign student and then a staged program series to help the foreign student adapt (Lin, & Yi, 1997, 473-80).