Language and culture

Routledge eBooks 2026 Book chapter

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Authors: Farzad Sharifian, Hans-Georg Wolf, Frank Polzenhagen
DOI: 10.4324/9781003363354-2
Cited by: 0

Abstract

Interest in studying the relationship between language and culture can be traced back at least to the eighteenth century. Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835), Franz Boas (1858–1942), Edward Sapir (1884–1939), and Benjamin Whorf (1897–1941) are prominent scholars who all emphasized the relationship between language, thought, and culture. However, a unified sub-discipline focusing on the relationship between language and culture has never been fully developed. Taking the United States alone, Duranti (2003) distinguishes between three different paradigms in the history of the study of language as culture, which is summarized in Table 1.1 .

Fields of Study & Subjects

Language and Culture Categorization perception and language Language and cultural evolution

Publication details

Journal / source
Routledge eBooks
Pages
3–13
Publication date
11 February 2026
Language
EN
Document type
Book chapter