A Sociolonguistic Account of the Gender and Culture Based Language Effect

A Sociolonguistic Account of the Gender and Culture Based Language Effect

HUSEINOVIĆ, Aida
AZAMAT, Akbarov

Key words: Mother tongue, Second language acquisition, language culture, gender differences in languages, politeness in languages, solidarity ABSTRACT There is an old saying among Bosnian people “How many languages you know that much you are worth”. From this old saying we see that knowing a language is a very important thing. It’s not just being able to communicate with other people, it’s showing how well educated a person is. While learning a foreign language it is being impossible not to compare it with your mother tongue and to check if there are any differences or perhaps similarities between the language/s. Do L1 and L2 have similarities in respect of grammar, pronouns, word order in the sentence, gender differences, politeness and etc?! In this case Bosnian is considered as mother tongue and English, Turkish as foreign languages. While acquiring second language the important thing on what a person pays attention is the way how politeness is expressed. Some languages as Bosnian and Turkish have the ways of politeness when having a conversation with someone elder expressed but English doesn’t. Is it a good thing or not? Which language has politeness fully expressed? Learning languages and paying attention if they have words that are focusing on gender differences, as we know nowadays many males and females may have the same occupation. Is it seen as an offense towards a female person referring them with the word that is usually used for males, or vice versa? Do we refer to them as equal or do we pay attention on their gender? How is politeness differentiated in these languages? Those are aspects on which this project is focused on, and they are considered as being of great importance while acquiring second language. Another important aspect is, paying attention on the role of all these named components while acquiring a foreign language. Do they lead to misunderstandings, wrong usage, or perhaps to something else?

Article
PeerReviewed

IBU Publishing

2013-05-03

1706