Linguistic and Cultural Change

Culture, to employ Tylor's well known definition,2 is 'that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.' It is clear that language is a part of culture: it is one of the many 'capabilities acquired by man as a member of society.' Despite this obvious inclusion of language in the total fabric of culture, we often find the two contrasted in such a way as to imply that there is little in common between them. Thus, anthropologists frequently make the point that peoples sharing substantially the same culture speak languages belonging to disparate stocks, and, contrariwise, that peoples whose languages are related may have very different cultures. In the American Southwest, for example, the cultures of the several Pueblo groups, from Hopi in the west to Taos in the east, are remarkably alike. Puebloan languages, however, belong to four distinct stocks: Shoshonean, Zunian, Keresan, and Tanoan. The reverse situationpeoples speaking related languages but belonging to different culture areas-is illustrated by the Athapaskan-speaking groups in North America. Here we find languages clearly and unmistakably related, spoken by peoples of the Mackenzie area, the California area, and the area of the Southwest, three very different cultural regions. The fact that linguistic and culture areas do not often coincide in no way denies the proposition that language is part and parcel of the cultural tradition. Culture areas result from the fact that some traits of culture are easily borrowed by one group from neighboring groups. In essence, then, the similarities in culture which mark societies in the same culture area result from contact and borrowing, and are limited to those features of culture which are easily transmitted from one group to another. Language areas, on the other hand, are regions occupied by peoples speaking cognate languages. The similarities in language between such peoples are due, not to contact and borrowing, but to a common linguistic tradition. Traits of language are not readily borrowed and we should not expect to find linguistic traits among those cultural features shared by peoples in the same culture area. If whole cultures could be grouped genetically as we now group languages into stocks and families, the culture areas so formed would be essentially coincident with language areas. This is difficult to do, since much of culture does not lend itself to the precise comparison necessary to the establishment of genetic relations. Among the Apachean-speaking peoples of the American Southwest, however, it is notable that groups so widely divergent in some of their more overt cultural