Behaviors may be folkways in one situation and mores or laws in another, with gradually more serious consequences. For example, nudity or various stages of near nudity may be only mildly questionable in some social settings (the beach or certain fraternity parties) but would be offensive in others (a four-star restaurant or a house of worship) and against the law in some situations, incurring a penalty or sanction.
Sanctions reinforce norms through rewards and penalties. Sanctions vary with the importance of the norm and can range from a parent frowning at a child who fails to use proper table manners to a prison term or death sentence. Formal sanctions are rewards or punishments conferred by recognized officials. Fines for parking illegally, failing grades for plagiarism, and expulsion for bringing drugs or weapons to school are formal negative sanctions your school might impose. Positive sanctions include honors and awards.
Informal sanctions are unofficial rewards or punishments such as smiles, frowns, gossip, or ignoring someone. A private word of praise by your professor after class about how well you did on your exam would be an informal positive sanction; gossip or ostracism by other students because of the clothes you wear would be an informal negative sanction. Most often, adherence to norms is ingrained so deeply that our reward is simply “fitting in.”
Language is the foundation of every culture. It conveys verbal, written, and nonverbal messages among members of society. The mini-drama between infant and adult is played out every day around the world as millions of infants learn the language of the adults who care for them. In the process, they acquire an important part of culture, which is learned. Although many animals can communicate with a limited repertoire of sounds, the ability to speak a language is unique to humans (Phillips 2013). Transport a baby from France to the Arapesh tribe in New Guinea and another baby from New Guinea to France, and each will learn to speak the language and adhere to the culture in which it is brought up. Language conveys verbal, written, and nonverbal messages among members of society. Simply put, without language there would be little, if any, culture. Through the use of language, members of a culture can pass on essential knowledge to children and can share ideas with other members of their society. Work can be organized, and the society can build on its experiences and plan its future. Through language, members express their ideas, values, beliefs, and knowledge, a key ingredient in the ability of humans to sustain social life.
Language takes three primary forms: spoken, written, and nonverbal. There are over 7,100 languages spoken in the world. About 3,700 language groups are small, with fewer than 10,000 native speakers. The most common first languages are shown in Figure 3.4. English is the top Internet language around the world with 1.05 billion users. Chinese is next with 804 million users, Spanish with 516 million, and Arabic with 436 million users (Internet World Stats 2017).
▼ Figure 3.4 The World’s Most Spoken Languages (in Millions)
Source: From “The World’s Most Spoken Languages,” Niall McCarthy, February 12, 2018, Statista. https://www.statista.com/chart/12868/the-worlds-most-spoken-languages.
Note: Each language also includes associated member languages and varieties.
Written language enables humans to store ideas for future generations, accelerating the accumulation of ideas on which to build. It also makes possible communication over distances. Members of a society learn to read these shared symbols.
Nonverbal language consists of gestures, facial expressions, and body postures. Communications scholars say this mode carries 93% of the message—55% in the facial expressions and 38% in the voice (vocal elements and intonation). That leaves 7% of the message coming from the actual words said (Debenham 2014; Fields 2015; Mehrabian 1972). Every culture uses nonverbal language to communicate, and just like verbal language, those cues may differ widely among cultures.
The power to communicate nonverbally is illustrated in American Sign Language, designed for the hearing challenged and the mute. Complex ideas can be transmitted without vocalizing a word. Indeed, one can argue that the deaf have a distinctive culture of their own rooted in large part in the unique sign language that serves them (discussed in Sociology in Our Social World on page 82). In addition, technology has aided communication among the hearing impaired through text messaging.
Thinking Sociologically
Think about a time when you were trying to understand what someone was saying and you could not hear the words (at a concert, a bar, or a loud party). Did you rely on the other person’s nonverbal communication to interpret what he or she was trying to convey? Explain.
Our language also plays a critical role in our perceptions of our world and organization of our thoughts, according to many linguists. The linguistic relativity theory posits that the people who speak a specific language make interpretations of their reality based on the language—they notice certain things and may fail to notice certain other things. Language is influenced by history and sociopolitical factors, and the structure of the language affects how people conceptualize their world (Sapir 1929, 1949; Whorf 1956). Think about this: “A person’s ‘picture of the universe’ or ‘view of the world’ differs as a function of the particular language or languages that person knows” (Kodish 2003:384). Most current linguistic scholars agree that, although language does not totally determine thinking, it does influence thinking (Casasanto 2008; Levinson 2000; Wolff and Holmes 2011). For example, recent research confirms that in some Native Alaskan cultures where life depends on the elements, there are more than 50 words for snow, each giving members of the group a description that could mean life or death—wet snow, dry snow, heavy snow, melting snow, and so forth (Krupnik et al. 2010; Robson 2013). The Inuit also have 17 words for various types of ice, for they must be able to distinguish types of solidified water (Ice 2015). Children in different cultures will learn about the world within the framework provided by their language.
In the English language people tend to associate colors with certain qualities in a way that may add to the problem of racist attitudes (Levinson 2000). The definition of the word black includes “dismal,” “boding ill,” “hostile,” “harmful,” “inexcusable,” “without goodness,” “evil,” “wicked,” “disgrace,” and “without moral light.” The word white, on the other hand, is defined as “honest,” “dependable,” “morally pure,” “innocent,” and “without malice” (Merriam-Webster 2014; Webster’s Unabridged English Dictionary 1989). If the linguistic relativity thesis is correct, it is more than a coincidence that bad things are associated with the black sheep of the family, the blacklist, or Black Tuesday (when the U.S. stock market dropped dramatically and crashed in 1929).
This association of blackness with negative images and meanings is not true of all languages. The societies that have negative images for black and positive images for white are the same societies that associate negative qualities with people of darker skin. Blackness associated with something evil is not true of many African languages (Jordan 2012). The use of white as a synonym for good or innocent—as in reference to a white noise machine or a white lie—may contribute to a cultural climate that devalues people of color. In essence, the language may influence our perception of color in a manner that contributes to racism. Interestingly, there is empirical evidence supporting this claim of color symbolism. Athletic teams that wear black uniforms have more penalties called on them than teams with lighter-colored uniforms (De los Santos 2017; Frank and Gilovich 1988).
