The type of sociolinguistic variation described in the previous chapter is sometimes attributed to cultural differences. It is not unusual to find aspects of language identified as characteristic features of African American culture or Eskimo culture or Japanese culture. This approach to the study of language originates in the work of anthropologists who have used language as a source of information in the general study of ‘culture’.

Culture

We use the term culture to refer to all the ideas and assumptions about the nature of things and people that we learn when we become members of social groups. It can be defined as ‘socially acquired knowledge’. This is the kind of knowledge that, like our first language, we initially acquire without conscious awareness.