Internationalisation in an Italian speaking academic context: an analysis of foreign students' perceptions

It is commonly accepted that language is a part of culture, and that it plays a very important role in it. We all know that understanding a language involves not only knowledge of grammar, phonology and lexis, but also certain features and characteristics of the culture.
Language simultaneously reflects culture, and is influenced and shaped by it. In the broadest sense, it is also the symbolic representation of people, since it comprises their historical and cultural backgrounds, as well as their approach to life and their ways of living and thinking.
The relationship between language and culture could be viewed in both philosophical and practical terms. In philosophical terms, language provides a screen or filter to reality, it determines how speakers perceive and organize the world around them, both the natural world and the social world. In practical terms, language has been simply described as a code that people share to communicate messages.
Many linguists and social scientists consider that without language, culture would not be possible. According to Wei (2005), language has a dual character: both as a means of communication and a carrier of culture. Language without culture is unthinkable, so is human culture without language. Wei uses the metaphor of the mirror, stating that language is the mirror of culture, in the sense that people can see a culture through its language.
But how do we represent things we see? When we think of an object, we think of the concept of that object. The process of seeing passes through language. In the end representation is the meaning of concept through language in our culture because it connects meaning and language to culture. But each system of representation follows different ways of seeing and decoding messages. The relation between language and representation is linked to the effort of interpreting the signs of a language, that is the symbolic domain of different cultures. In this sense the study and representation of cultures can be better understood through the comparison of many different cultures.
According to Brown (1994), ‘a language is a part of a culture and a culture is a part of a language; the two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture.’ In other words, culture and language are inseparable.
But as a matter of fact what is culture?
Culture may mean different things to different people. Culture is a very complicated word, partly because of its intricate historical development and partly because it is used in many different fields and in distinct systems of thought. [...]
In a word, culture is a way of life (Brown 1994). It is the context within which we exist, think, feel, relate to others. It is the “glue” that binds a group of people together.
Thus, we can say that culture is something people have in common within a community. If people belong to the same culture they usually share beliefs, concepts and values which enable them to see the world more or less in a common way. When we speak of culture, we speak of ‘shared meanings’. But people within a community can share meanings only if they speak or understand the same language. Generally speaking, language is therefore considered as the main medium to convey and express culture, in other words a ‘key repository’ of cultural values and meanings. In fact, language is able to reconstruct meanings because it operates as a representational system. [...]