The definition of Culture and intercultural communication

The definition of Culture and intercultural communication

? The definition of culture:

? As we have seen, culture is ubiquitous, multidimensional, complex, all-pervasive. For our

purposes, we are concerned with those definitions that contain the recurring theme of how culture and communication are linked together. Hoebel and Frost, who see culture in nearly all human activity, define culture as an “integrated system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society and which are not the result of biological inheritance.” ? For them, culture is not genetically predetermined or instinctive. They have two

reasons for taking this position---both of which help us understand the bond between culture and communication. First, as all scholars of culture believe, culture is transmitted and maintained through communication and learning; that is, culture is learned. Second, those who take this view believe each individual is confined at birth to a specific geographic location and thus exposed to certain messages while denied others. All of these messages, whether they be about religion, food, dress, housing, toys, or books, are culturally based; therefore, everything that a person experiences is part of his or her culture. ? From a definition that includes all learned behavior, we can move to a definition that

proposes culture has distinct boundaries. Again, we will see the role of communication in this definition. Bates and Plog propose a descriptive definition: “Culture is a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with onanother, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning.

? This definition includes not only patterns of behavior but also patterns of thought

(shared meanings that the members of a society attach to various phenomena, natural and intellectual, including religion and ideologies), artifacts (tools, pottery, houses, machines, works of art), an the culturally transmitted skills and techniques used to make the artifacts.

? The Bates and Plog definition includes most of the major territory of culture on which

scholars currently agree. Using their description as a starting point, we advance a definition of our own that is more suited to the goals of this book. We define cultureas the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, actions, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relation, concepts of the universe, and artifacts acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. ? Your views on work, immigration, freedom, age, being graded by your teachers,

cleanliness and hygiene, ethics, dress, property rights, etiquette, healing and health, death and mourning, play, law, magic and superstition, modesty, sex, status differentiation, courtship, formality and informality, bodily adornment, and the like are part of your cultural membership.

The characteristics of culture

? 1. Culture is learned;

? 2. We learn our culture through proverbs;

? 3. We learn our culture from folk tales, legends, and myths;

? ? ? ? ? ? ?

4. We learn our culture through art;

5. We learn our culture through mass media;

6. Culture is transmitted from generation to generation; 7. Culture is subject to change; 8. Culture is integrated; 9. Culture is Ethnocentric; 10. Culture is adaptive;

Intercultural communication

? In its most general sense, intercultural communication occurs when a member of one

culture produces a message for consumption by a member of another culture. More precisely, intercultural communication is communication between people whose cultural perceptions and symbol systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event. ? Culture, as we have presented the concept, is a complete pattern of live. It is elaborate,

multidimensional, and all-pervasive. Aspects of culture are acted out each time members of different cultures come together to share ideas and information. Because documenting all of these variables would be an impossible task, we have selected those cultural elements that we believe have the greatest impact on intercultural communication. These elements work in combination. They are like the components of a stereo or computer system: each one is related to and needs the others. ? The interacting elements fall into four general groupings: perception, verbal processes,

nonverbal process, and contextual elements. ? Most communication scholars grant that (a)perceptions are part of every communication

and have evolved a fairly consistent taxonomy(分类学） for perceptual variables that influence intercultural communication. (beliefs, values, and attitudes, world views and social organizations, etc);

? (b) verbal process: It is impossible to separate our use of language from our culture, for

in its most basic sense, language is an organized, generally agreed on, learned symbol system used to represent the experiences within a cultural community. The various ways cultures employ symbols to portray the “things” and experiences that are important to that culture will be examined.

? (c) nonverbal process: All human beings use nonverbal symbols to share their thoughts

and feelings. Although the process of using action to communicate is universal, the meanings for those actions often shift from culture to culture. Hence, nonverbal communication becomes yet another element one must understand if one is going to interact with people from different cultures. There are three categories of nonverbal communication: bodily behavior, time, and space;

? (d) contexturalelements: all communicative interaction takes place within some

physical context, and more important for our purposes, that context influences how we send and respond to messages. Unless both parties to intercultural communication are aware of how their cultures affect the context, they may encounter some surprising communication difficulties. The business, education, and health care settings are the three contexts where we are most likely to encounter people from different cultures, and in all three instances, cultural “rules” come into play. (开始运转；起作用；）

Some concepts of intercultural communication (II)

? Perception:Perception is the means by which we make sense of our physical and social

world. “There is no reality except the one contained within us.” The world inside of us includes symbols, things, people, ideas, events ideologies, and even faith.” ? Our perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensory data in

a way that enables us to make sense of our world.

? How we perceive the elderly is tempered by culture. The elderly in Africa:

? “It is believed that the older one gets, the wiser one becomes---life has seasoned the

individual with varied experiences. Hence, in Africa age is an asset. The older the person, the more respect the person receives from the community, and especially from the young. “

? But the situation is quite different in America. “In the United States, we find a culture

that

teaches” the value of youth and rejects growing old. In fact, young people view elderly people as less desirable interaction partners than other young people or middle-aged people. “ ? Culture strongly influences our subjective reality and that there direct links among

culture, perception, and behavior. Behavior ---how we react to our perception of the universe---is largely a result of our learning and cultural conditioning.

? We will look at some differences in cultural beliefs, values, and patterns that might

influences both perception and communication. By understanding these differences, you will be better able to define the communication behavior of other people and to adapt your own behavior to those definitions.

? Being able to adapt to each communication event is one of the hallmarks of a

successful intercultural communicator.

? One of the most important functions of belief systems is that they are the basis of one’s

values. A value may be defined as an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to another.

? Values are “a learned organization of rules for making choices, and for resolving conflicts.”

These “rules” and guideposts are normative (标准的；规范的) and teach us what is useful, good, right, wrong, what to strive for, how to live our life, and even what to die for. As Robert says, a value system “represents what is expected or hoped for, required or forbidden.

? It is not a report of actual conduct but is the system of criteria by which conduct is

judged and sanctions applied.”

? Values can be classified as primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary values are the

most important: they specify what is worth the sacrifice of human life. In the US, democracy and the protection of one’s self and close family are primary values.

? In America, the relief of the pain and suffering of others is a secondary value. The

securing of material possessions is also a secondary value foe most Americans. ? Examples of tertiary values in the USA are hospitality to guests and cleanliness.

? The manner in which we perceive the world rests on much more than beliefs and values.

Cultures are extremely complex and consist of numerous interrelated cultural orientations besides beliefs and values, including attitudes, norms, and material aspects. ? A useful umbrella term that allows us to talk about these orientations collectively instead

of separately is cultural patterns, which refers to both the conditions that contribute to the way in which a people perceive and think about the world, and the manner in which they live in that world .

Intercultural communication concept

? Culture is learnt through media:

? In the United States and in other Western cultures, the mass media do much more than

supply entertainment. As Thompson tells us: “ Few people would deny that the nature of cultural experience in modern societies has been profoundly affected by the development of mass communication. Books, magazines and newspapers, radio, television and cinema, records, tapes and videos: these and other forms of mass communication occupy a central role in our lives.”

? Television, for example, contributes to what Williams calls “mass social learning,” which

has us “taking on the values of the images” we are exposed to on television. Because exposure is five to six hours a day for the average American, it is easy to see how these images affect our attitudes toward sex, leisure time, and people of different ethnic, gender, and \\or age groups. ? Mass media can even shape our views toward violence. In the United States, war

stories, police stories, and many documentaries glorify violence. The language that we use in sports mirrors and sanctions violence. Sitting in front of a television set, one hears words and statements such as “kill,” “head-hunter,”(割头作为战利品：猎头公司；) It’s a war,” and “They destroy the offense.”

? Delgado offers us an excellent summary of the power of mass media by noting that they

“help constitute our daily lives by shaping our experiences and providing the content for much of what we talk about (and how we talk) at the interpersonal level. ? As we have said elsewhere, the messages that are strategic for any culture are repeated,

are reinforces, and come from various sources.

? Think for a moment of the thousands of ways you have been told the importance of

being popular and well liked, or the many messages you have received concerning competition and winning. Our games, sports, toys, movies, and so on all fortify the need to win. A famous tennis player tells us that he “feels like dying when he comes in second.” And the president of a major car company concludes his television pitch by announcing, Although the carriers of culture are nearly the same for all people, the messages they transmit, as we point out throughout this book, are specific to each culture.

? We conclude our description of the first characteristic of culture by reminding you of

how our discussion relates directly to intercultural communication. First,most of the

?

?

? ?

?

behaviors we label as cultural are not only automatic and invisible, but also engaged in without our being aware of them. For example, in American culture, women smile more often than men, a behavior learned unconsciously and performed almost habitually. And to this day, Jews, while reading from the Torah, (上帝给人类的）教导；）sway backward and forward like camel riders, having inherited this behavior unconsciously from centuries ago.

Because Jews then were prohibited from riding camels, this imitation of riding was developed as a form of compensation. Although the motive for the behavior is gone, the action has been passed on to each new generation by means of the silent, invisible power of culture. Such cultural behaviors, and there are thousands of them, tend to be unconscious in both acquisition and expression.

Second, common experiences produce common behaviors. The sharing of experience and behavior binds members and makes a culture unique. The Polish poet Stanislaw said it far more eloquently:” All of our separate fictions add up to a joint reality.” Discovering those realities is what this book is all about. We learn our culture through art:

A trip to any museum in the world quickly reveals how the art of cultures is yet another method of passing on that culture. The anthropologist Nanda points out the link between art and culture:

Art is a symbolic way of communicating. One of the most important functions of art is to communicate, display, and reinforce important cultural themes and values. The arts thus have an integrative function in society.

? One of the functions that Nanda is referring to is how the individual, through art, learns

about himself or herself. ? In Asian cultures, most art depicts objects, animals, and landscapes, seldom focusing on

people.

? American and European art, however, often emphasizes people. This difference reflects

a difference in views: Asians believe that nature is more powerful and important than a single individual, whereas Americans and Europeans consider people as the center of the universe. ? In addition, in Western art, the artist tries to create a personal message. This is not the

case with most Eastern artists. As Campbell notes, “Such ego-oriented thinking is alien completely to the Eastern life, thought, and religiosity.” The rule of the Eastern artist is not to “innovate or invent.”

? As we already indicated, art is a relevant symbol, a forceful teacher, and an avenue for

cultural values.

? Two more examples will further illustrate this point. We need only look at the art on

totem poles to see what matters to Native Americans. The carvings on these poles tell us the story of a people who are concerned about their lineage and their identity. Hence, we see carvings that show relationships “between humans and animals, plants, and inanimate objects.”

? For many African cultures, art is use to call attention to the importance of such things

as animals and “ancestor worship and reverence of royalty.”

Culture is Based on Symbols

? The anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn once wrote, “Human culture without language is

unthinkable.” The emergence of language was the giant step that made possible the remarkable and intricate system we call culture. Our cerebral cortex (大脑皮层；) and all the neurological structures associated with it have developed in a way that enables us to use symbols at a level of sophistication not shared by any other creature. Not only can we transmit knowledge from person to person, we also can pass ideas from generation to generation---a characteristic of culture we just examined. ? At our disposal are the speculation, observations, facts, experiments, and wisdom

accumulated over thousands of years---what the linguist Weinberg called “the grant insights of geniuses which, transmitted throughsymbols enable us to span the learning of centuries.” Through language---be it verbal, nonverbal, or iconic---it is, as Goodenough says, “possible to learn from cumulative, shared experience.” An excellent summary of the importance of language to culture is offered by Bates and Plog: ? the importance of language to culture:

? Language thus enables people to communicate what they would do if such-and-such

happened, to organize their experiences into abstract categories (“a happy occasion,” for instance, or an “evil omen”), and to express thoughts never spoken before. Morality, religion, philosophy, literature, science, economics, technology, and numerous other areas of human knowledge and belief---along with the ability to learn about and manipulate them---all depend on this type of higher-level communication.

? As we have already indicated, the symbols any culture employs take a variety of forms.

Cultures can use the spoken word as a symbol and tell people about the importance of freedom. They can use nonverbal actions, such as shaking hands or bowing, as symbols to greet one another. They can use flags as symbols to claim territory or demonstrate loyalty. They have the means to use automobiles or jewelry as symbols of success and status. They can use a cross, crescent, (新月旗;) or six-pointed star to show the love of God.

? The portability of symbols allows us to package and store them as well as transmit them.

The mind, books, pictures, films, videos, computer disks, and the like enable a culture to preserve what it deems to be important and worthy of transmission. This makes each individual, regardless of his or her generation, heir to a massive repository (存放处；) of information that has been gathered an maintained in anticipation of his or her entry into the culture. Culture is therefore accumulative, historical, and preservable. As the French novelist Marcel Proust wrote, “The past remains the present.”