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A K Y definitions of language have been given: "language is the bearer of M culture," "language is the vehicle of culture," and the like, but all of them point out its social significance. Further analysis is required, however, to grasp the total gamut of relations between language and culture. When we hear the statement that "language is a part of culture," it is in fact meant that utterances are correctly understood only if they are symbols of cultural phenomena. This implies that since experience is communicated by means of language, a person speaking any language participates to some degree in the ways of life represented by that language. These verbal symbols are not loosely joined, but co-ordinated by means of a system that expresses their mutual relations. Language is thus the regular organization of series of symbols, whose meanings have to be learned as any other phenomenon. The implication of this is that as each culture has its own way of looking a t things and a t people and its own way of dealing with them, the enculturation of an individual to a foreign body of customs will only be possible as he learns to speak and understand the foreign language and to respond with new selection and emphasis to the world around him-a selection and emphasis presented to him by this new culture. ' The importance of the role of symbolism in language has led linguists and cultural anthropologists alike to co-operate in problems of mutual concern, the solutions of which are equally valuable for both sciences, and which point to a close relationship between both. An example as to how linguistics can profit from the study of cultural phenomena is had when we consider the contributions that the latter can make in assessing the problem of meaning in language, the problem of cultural definition. Indeed, insofar as the study of the symbolic values of language facilitates our comprehension of these cultural definitions, and the aims and sanctions that direct behavior and ordered convention in any body of custom, it may be said that language reveals itself as "an index to culture.' ' We have already stated that the symbolism of language is integrated, so that the resulting system may express the way in which its units are related. This implies the existence of a structure in language which validates the significance of the linguistic elements as they stand in relation to one another. On the other hand, the concept of structural regularity is basic in ethnological theory, whereby the term "pattern" has become so popular among American cultural anthropologists.Although in this sense cultural anthropology owes much to linguistics, the ' Hloomfieltl, 1945, 1). 625. 446

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