Interconnectedness of Language and Culture: The Case of Non-Native Speakers of English in Estonia

Abstract

It goes without saying that the notion of cognition has always performed the function of the bridge, erecting pathways for multicultural and multilingual society to interact, interpret and perceive information within innumerable communities. Every community consists of the arrays of long-established behavioural patterns, cultural paradigms and social norms that undergo constant alterations due to the swift pace of socio-cultural, global shifts within society. The rapports between culture and cognition have been observed, processed and analysed by many scientists and scholars. Anthony Marsella (1998) holds that we need a drastic rethinking of the fundamental paradigms of psychology, cultural perception and prejudices. [1] Bartlett (1932) discusses the extent of the ways in which cultural knowledge and incarnated schemas can affect the pattern and process of memory restructurisation [2]. J. Tanaka-Matsumi (2002) stresses the crucial necessity of attending to cultural variables in order to understand mental processes of an interlocutor [3], i.e., a particular view that is rooted in a specific cognitive model is able to distort the received information and deviate further cognition and interpretation in accordance to a preliminary entrenched paradigm. Cognition itself is embodied in multiple ways and, as a notion, it might be too subjective, fragile and resilient. Any individual can perceive and interpret one or another event with his or her own approaches, deducing and drawing conclusion basing on various factors, which are not always stable, but on the contrary, are swayed according to certain trends, superstitions, the range of one’s knowledge, academic integrity and the inconspicuous and subconscious volition either to accept or deny the provided piece of information. The proposed study explores the interconnectedness of language and culture in the context of English acquisition by non-native speakers in Estonia. It delves into the process of language learning within a multilingual and multicultural society. The data collected through a questionnaire, developed as part of the PhD thesis Cognitive Discourse: Cognitive Cultural Models in the Use of Language, serves as the basis for analysing cognitive shifts, alterations and the expansion of mental spaces, event interpretation, and perception of utterances by Estonian non-native speakers of English.