How to link language and culture into teenagers of today.

The relationship between civilization, culture and language, may sound a little bit crazy but if you analyze the concept you will see that the three of them are related. This is what you are going to read in the next topic. How is it that the construction of a language is basically the cultural base of a society? How this is one of the first steps to the formation of a civilization, how is it that these terminologies are related to our teenagers, and how can them being linked them to education.

The main point here is that when you ask someone about what civilization is? These people usually have no idea, recently I did a questionnaire and many people tended to confuse culture with civilization.To understand the whole context, the first thing that people need to do is to define civilization, which not many people know how to do it. The Cambridge dictionary defines civilization as: “a highly developed culture, including its social organization, government, laws, and arts, or the culture of a social group or country at a particular time” < http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=civilize*1+0&dict=A >. The definition made in the Cambridge dictionary is actually the one that put together all the concepts that I am trying explain. A civilization is in simple words, a group of people who work together and share the same cultural bases.

Now, the subject that comes immediately after civilization is culture, this is because these terms are really close related, culture is everything that a group of people share, like for example religion, customs and special celebrations. It can be said that each family have different culture. The Cambridge English dictionary defines culture as: “the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time”< http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=18888&dict=CALD >. Nowadays, there are some things that can be also called culture; these new sub-cultures that are now among the teenagers, like “Pokemons” and “Visuals”, but I’ll talk about them later.

You must be asking yourself, what civilization and culture have to do with language? Well, it turns out that with out language the simple idea of culture or even civilization is impossible. For example England, which is one of the most powerful countries in the world, was once just a small group of people with no country and land. They arrived to what is now England from near countries, like Germany, Finland, France, etc… and as you can realize by now, English is actually a mix of different languages. But they weren’t a country until they develop their own writing system, which opened a lot of new windows to a developing country. As you can read, language is one of the most important tools in a civilization and culture, it is something that as I said before, a group of people share and exchange.

Consequently, the relationship between civilization, culture and language is always going to be important. These concepts are what keep people unified, in other words you can know what other people like throughout speaking. You realized that you may share some activities, and then with out even noticed you have developed a really important bound like a friendship. The simple terminology of civilization, culture and language can be pertinent in different context and that’s how you can introduce the importance of language to a class.

I think that teenagers nowadays are creating new ways to express themselves, and this is actually something that can be used to teach English or any other language. Young people understand themselves as unique individuals that need to be with a group of people who understand and think like them. Therefore, making them noticed that they are behaving like small societies, with different customs and among them they use special slang that make them unique. Pokemons, Visual, Aggros, etc… are sub-cultures that as a society or cultural group share opinions, ideas and in some cases special ideologies. Throughout all this you can try to introduce the importance of languages in a class, and hopefully kids will feel more in touch with the subject.

Concluding, the relationship between civilization, culture and language is something that interests us all, because believe it or not we are all part of a society that works together for a common goal.