All cultural and all linguistic behaviors are patterned, manifesting these patterns through distinctions made in a medium (Hoijer, 1954). S.I. Hayakawa (1972) has commented that verbal discourse and communication are instrumental in character and that the informative connotations of words and phrases are their socially agreed-upon "impersonal meanings." Language is, in the view of Hayakawa (1972), positioned firmly within the context of culture and is representative of that culture, its beliefs and value systems, its norms, and forms of expression. Informative uses of language are intimately fused with older and deeper functions of language and often represent a force for social cohesion. This report will consider the effects of culture on spoken discourse, arguing, as does Hayakawa (1978), that what we call social conversation or discourse is largely presymbolic in character.
Speech is embedded in the world of the speaker. Leonard R. Palmer (1972) has argued that symbols which originate in culture form the rungs of a ladder by which thought gradually ascends from the concrete impression to the most abstract juggling with pure ideas. Language seems to provide the grooves of thought in much the same way that cultural patterns constitute the molds or models for more general modes of behavior.
The importance of language has been stressed by two American scholars, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, who proposed what has become known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This hypothesis says that "the real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. It is also based on the assumption that humans dissect nature along lines laid down by their native languages. The world becomes a flux of impressions which has to be organized in the mind, a process undertaken by the linguistic systems which culture preserves and transmits (Palmer, 1972).
Speech is a significant vocal sound whic...