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962 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIESZhongqin Cao was born in Tangshan, China on April 30, 1975. She got his M.A. in linguistics from Xi’an Jiaotsong University,China in 2003.She is currently a lecturer in School of Foreign Languages Teaching, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou, China.Her research interests include corpus linguistics and second lexical chunks.© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER
ISSN 1799-2591Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 3, No. 6, pp. 963-967, June 2013© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.doi:10.4304/tpls.3.6.963-967Discussion on the Relationship betweenLanguage and CultureJunyu ChenHebei United University, Tangshan, ChinaAbstract—This paper discusses three cultural issues about English language teaching and learning and culture.The first issue touches upon the problem of Chinese English learners naming after English ones; the secondprobes into the debate if non-native English learners should use Anglo-American rhetoric structure inacademic writing; the third debate is about if non-verbal language should be taught in English as a second orforeign language classroom. The three debates are important issues in the EFL or ESL context and of positivesignificance in the language education.Index Terms—language and culture, English names, rhetoric structure, non-verbal languageI. INTRODUCTIONLanguage and culture has become a pair which is closely related to each other. The research and study in the field isgaining an increasing momentum all over the world and is playing an important part in language education. This essaywill analyse three debates concerning language and culture that that bears impacts on English teaching and learning.One debate discusses the practice of Chinese learners adopting English names. Another debate talks about if non-nativeEnglish users should adopt the Anglo-American rhetoric structure in academic writing. And the last one is about nonverballanguage and discusses if it should be taught in the micro classroom.II. DEBATE 1 ON THE PRACTICE OF CHINESE LEARNERS ADOPTING ENGLISH NAMESThe phenomenon that Chinese people adopt English names to the extent which any other Asian country has neverreached is not unusual in English or English-related fields (Edwards, 2006). Many English learners within and outsideof China at various levels from kindergarten to tertiary level tend to use English names, and even those Chinesebusiness people like to use English names when doing business with English native speakers. The debate focuses on thedifferent people’s ideas on the phenomenon (if they argue for or against the adoption of English names among Chinesepeople) rather than how their English names were produced.There are those who strongly resist or disagree with the adoption for several major reasons. One reason is that theybelieve that adopting English names means ‘losing their own (Chinese) identity’ (Edwards, 2006). A person’s name isvery much a part of who s/he is. Our names reflect our sense of identity, who we are in relation to the world around us.This identity can be social identity, socio-cultural identity, cultural identity and ethnic identity (Norton, 2000). It can beroughly inferred that to change a Chinese identity seems to change any sort of identity above (Kiang, Harter &Whitesell, 2007). Another reason that they reject English names is that they believe adopting English names is the resultof linguistic imperialism. Linguistic imperialism is defined as ‘ideologies, structures, and practices which are used tolegitimate, effectuate, and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources’ (Kramsch, 1998). The resources canbe both material and symbolic and language and education are typical symbolic resources (Norton, 2000). The fact isthat English, the global language, is being learned by more than 1 billion people in the world as a second language orforeign language. Besides, the scientific and technological resources in English dominantly occupy the world market.China, a country with the largest population learning English as a foreign language, shows a more salient unbalance.With the highly out-of-balance global and national environment, the practice of adopting English names seemsinevitable. This out-of-balance may result in any change in terms of cultural factors including name changing.Therefore, name changing can be the product of linguistic imperialism in the sense.There are others who regard this as a manifestation of social improvement in China because they believe Chinesepeople are becoming more open to the world. One of my friends insists that adopting English names should indicate thatChinese people are seeing the world in a new or international perspective rather than in a ‘pure’ Chinese way. In today’ssociety, a person is expected to take on new identities through life, dropping some, changing others, and take on newones (Gee, 2006). Furthermore, for the Chinese students, the adoption of an English name is undoubtedly ‘investment’in the target language and in a learner’s own identity, an identity which is constantly changing across time and space.The notion of investment conceives of the language learner as having a complex social history and multiple desires. Thenotion presupposes that when language learners speak, they are not only exchanging information with target languagespeakers, but they are constantly organizing and reorganizing a sense of who they are and how they relate to the socialworld (Norton, 2000). Besides, many people argue that name changing can be seen a flexible approach to enter a new© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER
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