CROSS CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

WHAT IS CULTURE

CULTURE. In its most basic sense, culture is that portion or aspect of thought and behavior that is learned and capable of being taught to others. Culture includes customs and worldviews that provide a mental model of reality and a guide for appropriate and moral action. Languages are cultural in that they are learned symbolic information sets and are one of the most important means of encoding ideas and knowledge for memory and communication. All religions are cultural and all forms of spirituality exist within broader traditions or cultures.
• Culture becomes widely communicated and shared in social groups, and it serves as a foundation for general agreement and common acceptance of certain principles and perceptions as valid, normal, and natural. In this way, the influences on culture are often masked and it is not automatically apparent that one's own views and beliefs are not simply accurate apprehensions of reality, but are, in fact, artificial and, to a degree, arbitrary. Because of this characteristic, culture can be difficult to study, either in oneself or in others. Habitual use makes the cultural lenses that one continually wears disappear from awareness, so that what is seen falsely seems to be objective truth.

Culture
• Culture: is a shared, learned, symbolic system of values, beliefs and attitudes that shapes and influences perception and behavior -- an abstract "mental blueprint" or "mental code."
• Must be studied "indirectly" by studying behavior, customs, material culture (artifacts, tools, technology), language, etc.
• 1) Learned. Process of learning one's culture is called enculturation.
• 2) Shared by the members of a society. No "culture of one."
• 3) Patterned. People in a society live and think in ways that form definite patterns.

•4) Mutually constructed through a constant process of social interaction.
•5) Symbolic. Culture, language and thought are based on symbols and symbolic meanings.
•6) Arbitrary. Not based on "natural laws" external to humans, but created by humans according to the "whims" of the society. Example: standards of beauty.
•7) Internalized. Habitual. Taken-for-granted. Perceived as "natural."
What is the relationship between language and culture?

• Language is the verbal expression of culture. A culture's language contains everything its speakers can think about and every way they have of thinking about things. For example, the Latin language has no word for the female friend of a man (the feminine form of amicus is amica, which means mistress, not friend) because the Roman culture could not imagine a male and a female being equals, which they considered necessary for friendship.

The Relationship Between Language and Culture
• What is the relationship between language and culture? What role does culture play with language? In any culture or region, language is much more than semantics, much more than what the written page or the spoken word can contain. This especially becomes clear when studying a foreign language and learning the ways of a particular culture. For example, the use of introductions, salutations, everyday sayings, etc. This area in particular gives more weight to culture then to the words themselves. Anyone studying a foreign language has to be bicultural as well as bilingual to speak the new language in a way that it is not disparaging to the culture and its origin. Language does not end at the meaning or the use of words associated to a culture" words represent beliefs, history, and the culture of their origin and they must be used accordingly.