

My friend, as was typical in the German language, referred to his professor with the formal pronoun Sie but used the informal pronoun Du with his fellow students since they were peers. Other languages still have social norms and rules about who is to be referred to informally and formally.

The following example of such a lesson comes from my friend who studied abroad in Vienna, Austria.Īlthough English used to employ formal ( thou, thee) and informal pronouns ( you), today you can be used when speaking to a professor, a parent, or a casual acquaintance. Studying abroad, for example, brings many challenges that can turn into valuable lessons. One of the best ways to learn about society, culture, and language is to seek out opportunities to go beyond our typical comfort zones. Such a cyclical relationship can be difficult to understand, but many of the examples throughout this chapter and examples from our own lives help illustrate this point. Society and culture influence the words that we speak, and the words that we speak influence society and culture. Discuss cultural bias in relation to specific cultural identities.Explain the role that accommodation and code-switching play in communication.Identify some of the ways in which language varies based on cultural context.Discuss some of the social norms that guide conversational interaction.
