Learning a New Language, Taking up a New Culture: Language and Culture Differences between Scottish Highland and Lowland in the 18th Century Reflected in R. L. Stevenson’s Kidnapped

Abstract

<p><em>R. L. Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped takes Scottish Jacobite rebellions as its background and reflects resistance of Scottish people under British rule in the first half of the 18th century. Though within the same Scottish nation, the two heroes, Lowland boy David and Highland rebel Alan, have shown sharp contrasts in languages, political stands, moral standards and cultural values. Their contrasts reveal the binary opposition of Lowland and Highland cultures in the 18th century and can be explained by Fanon’s theory about language and culture differences within the same nation. In Kidnapped, the Lowland characters despise their own native culture, and regard the Highlanders who still keep traditional Scottish culture and language as “savage”. Therefore, they reject their own native culture and language, and have to completely depend on the English language and culture. The main goal of this article is to illustrate that learning a language also means taking up a culture, and it is essential to cultivate cultural awareness for English language teaching and culture teaching for foreign languages learners.</em></p>

The relationship between demographics and the academic achievement of engineering students

“…Home languages are listed alphabetically according to the number of languages identified. Different mother tongues may be used to indicate different and even opposite cultural backgrounds, political stands, values, and moral standards (Niu, 2016). The age brackets of the students are divided into six categories (<21, =21, =22, =23, =24 and >24 years of age) not less than a third of the maximum student number should exist for any age bracket.…”