The Linguistic Codification and Verification of Cultural Models

Language is one of the central ways in which humans make sense of the world and as such, plays a fundamental role in cultural model theory. The role of language in cultural models is principally to codify knowledge, rather than being either deterministic or epiphenomenal to it. This is a specifically cognitive vision of cultural models that aims to reveal how language shapes perception, attention, and motivation, not merely cultural content. Several different theoretical frameworks are outlined, across anthropology, linguistics, and allied disciplines, that have potential for linking closely with cultural model theory. Linguistic analysis allows the verification of a richer variety of features of cultural models than do non-linguistic approaches alone, and thus serves a parallel and co-equal role to other analytical techniques.