Culture as a noun, Culture as a verb, National culture or Individual culture, which Approach?, Donna Humphrey

(This article was published in Killick, D. & M. Parry (eds.). (1993) Languages for Cross-cultural Capability, Promoting the Discipline: Marking Boundaries Crossing Borders, Leeds Metropolitan University, December 1993.)

This paper explores current approaches to the teaching of cross-cultural and intercultural communication by investigating notions of culture from three perspectives:

· Culture as a national phenomenon;

· Culture as a social phenomenon;

· Culture as an individual phenomenon.

The three perspective will be presented in turn and the notions inherent in each of them explored. The purpose of these explorations is to raise awareness of how our notions of culture affect not only our attitude and views of others but subsequently the methods and approaches we adopt to teach cross-cultural and intercultural communication.

Culture as a national phenomenon

It is important to explore our notions of culture in order to clarify what exactly we mean by 'culture' when we use the term. In its most common usage 'culture' often refers to national culture and is related to notions of national, ethnic and international entities and the differences that are inherent in them. The term is often used by academics and non-academics to refer to 'large' entities such as British, French, Asian and European, Western or Eastern.

However, I see the term 'culture' in this sense as problematic as it conjures up vague notions about nations, races and sometimes whole continents, which, I feel, are overgeneralised and therefore too distorted to be useful. As Holliday argues:

although there is something recognisably 'British' about the British and 'Japanese' about the Japanese, this is more akin to the stereotyping all nations do about each other than the more scientific distinctions we need to make for professional purposes. Its subjectivity is evident in the disdain people often hold for the stereotypes held by others of themselves, which are associated with prejudice'
(Holliday 1994: 126)

It is often easy to talk about 'Arab' culture, 'Japanese' culture or 'African' culture but such cultures, if they are truly identifiable, are so complex and vast that one needs to ask the question to what degree this is a useful device for investigating the interaction between people at the level of communication.

Culture as an ethnic, national or international phenomenon, in its pure sense, sees cultures as fixed, stable, homogeneous entities. Whilst the term culture may also refer to the social and subcultural variations within a culture, these variations are still essentially a part of the national culture concept as they imply something both within and subservient to a particular ethnic, national and international culture...

The Experiential Learning Cycle - Culture Bump and Beyond

Sample Task

Describe a personal encounter that was less than satisfactory. This encounter could be with someone from your own culture or with someone from another culture (remember the model of the 'communication process' and the possible causes for 'communication breakdown' could describe both interpersonal and intercultural communication). Use the examples given below to guide you.

I remember once I was in a post office once and there was a queue of people. The next person to be served in the queue was a young woman with blond hair. The young women went up to the counter an in a loud voice said 'give me three stamps.

What happened?

I can remember the situation so clearly. There was a gasp of horror from the people in the queue and suddenly you could almost feel the hostility in the atmosphere. As we say in England you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. People in the queue were so angry.

List the behaviour of the other person

· The person loudly demanded her stamps using the imperative voice and intonation. There was no please or thank you.

· appreciated they will continue to do a good job A person who treats another badly is a bully and is not well regarded.

What were the causes of the unsatisfactory result? Is it possible that the communication breakdown was due to factors other than language?

Based on C A Archer (1986). 'Culture Bump and Beyond in culture Bound: Bridging the cultural gap in language teaching'. J Merril Valdes (ed.), 170 -178, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1044