THE LANGUAGE IS A MIRROR METAPHOR AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING A. Effendi Kadarisman Universitas Negeri Malang A definition of language is always, implicitly or explicitly, a definition of human beings in the world. Raymond Williams 1. INTRODUCTION What is language? A rough-and-ready answer to this question is: language is a means of communication, or more precisely (setting aside sign language used among the deaf) language is a means of verbal communication . While this functional definition of language may satisfy the general public, linguists want to know more about language. An integrative view combining aspects and functions of language in the definitions given by Sapir (1921), Francis (1958), and Finochiaro (1974) would lead to the following technical definition: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal and visual symbols used by people in a given culture to carry on their daily affairs. This definition covers three important components: (a) internal structure, (b) speech community in a given culture, and (c) communicative function of language. The internal structure of language is expressed by the phrase a system of arbitrary vocal and visual symbols . The modifier arbitrary was first introduced by the father of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure (1916 [1959]), suggesting that in general there is no logical connection between form and meaning. Therefore, the same object is called differently across languages: a building where people live is called rumah in Indonesian, house in English, and bait in Arabic. The term vocal symbols refers to the verbal language used by the hearing people, in contrast with the term visual symbols which refers to sign language used by the deaf people. In addition, these two different terms may also be used to refer to the spoken form and the written form of language respectively. The term speech community in a given culture is the major concern of both Sociolinguistics and Ethnolinguistics. Sociolinguistically, a speech community refers to a group of people speaking the same language different from another language spoken by a different speech community (Gumperz 1972: 218). This definition is meant to serve as a theoretical construct, not a portrait of the real sociolinguistic situation. The real picture in the society is a lot more complex, since most people all over the world speak more than one language. Bilingualism or multilingualism is often the norm rather than the exception. Instead of finding an ideal monolingual speech community in our sociolinguistic environments, we usually find bilingual or even multilingual speech communities. Ethnolinguistically, the relationship between culture and language is expressed in the well-known saying language exists in culture, and culture exists in language . In effect, there is always mutual influence between culture and language (see Becker 1995). The communicative function of language is most obvious in the use of language to convey a message. This is known as the referential function, that is, the use of language to refer to a particular object, whether concrete or abstract (Jakobson 1960; Hymes 1974). However, people also use language simply to maintain good social relations, because