"Culture or civilisation is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" (Taylor
1871)
Culture is the "set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs". (UNESCO 2002)
“A society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves”. (Goodenough 1964)
Culture is a "set of guidelines (both explicit and implicit) which individuals inherit as members of a particular society, and which tells them how to view the world, how to experience it emotionally, and how to behave in relation to other people, to supernatural forces or gods, and to the natural environment. It provides them with a way of transmitting these guidelines to the next generation – by use of symbols, language, art and ritual." (C.G.Helman 1996 Culture, health and illness, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann)
“Culture consists in patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts, the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values.” (Kluckhohn 1951)
Culture as civilisation
Notion developed in 18th and 19th c. Europe.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) "the best that has been thought and said in the world”
Contrasted with 'nature'. Some countries more 'civilised' than others, some people more cultured.
Tended to be associated with élite, refined pursuits: classical music, high art, serious literature.
Culture as values, norms, and artefacts
Another anthropological way of understanding culture sees it as consisting of three elements:
1. Values comprise ideas about what in life seems important (symbolic culture). They guide the rest of the culture.
2. Norms consist of expectations of how people will behave in different situations. Each culture has different methods, called sanctions, of enforcing its norms. Sanctions vary with the importance of the norm; norms that a society enforces formally have the status of laws.
3. Artefacts — things, or material culture — derive from the culture's values and norms.
1

Culture as behaviours, products, ideas
1. External behaviours language, gestures, customs/habits
2. Products
3. Ideas literature, folklore, art, music, artefacts beliefs, values, institutions
Cultural plurality
Today we tend to talk about 'cultures' in the plural: from 'high' to 'popular' (this change emerging mainly since 1945). We might also use 'mass culture' in a negative sense.
Also about sub-cultures and alternative cultures.
Corporate culture.
Multiculturality.
Culture is a network of 'shared meanings' (semiotics)
The cultural gap
Much behaviour is culturally specific.
What is acceptable in one context offensive in another. Or: how we 'read' what we see will vary according to our cultural background and experience.
- forms of address of younger / older people
- body language e.g. smiling, staring
- notions of politeness e.g. Anglo-Saxon obsession with please / thank you
- when we get up, eat, go to bed
To learn a language need to learn more than grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation - pragmatic, sociolinguistic and cultural norms
Speech acts realised in different ways in different languages (e.g. apologising, thanking, commiserating, congratulating)
To write or translate we need all these, plus familiarity with textual norms and conventions
Which culture do we belong to?
People seem to have an instinctive grasp of what culture is and which culture they belong to.
Katan refers to it as a shared mental model or map of the world: what goes without saying, what is normal
2

Ways of approaching culture
Behaviourist
Generalisations about what particular peoples 'do' or 'don't do', e.g. Belgians eat horses, the
British don't.
People tend to be culture-bound and see their own culture as 'natural', 'standard' or 'right', which stops them seeing other cultures clearly.
Functionalist
Looking for reasons behind behaviour – cultural studies.
Baker (1996: 13) claims that those working in this field tend to see culture in political terms and in terms of good/bad ideologies.
A judgmental frame with preferred values: looking at power relations, gender, cultural domination and so on.
Cognitive
Uses concepts such as modelling, mapping, underlying patterns and ways of categorising experience.
Sometimes the analogy is drawn with computers: mental programs or software of the mind.
Hofstede (1991: 4-5): "Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another."
The mind not like a computer, but each culture has standard software that individuals acquire to a greater or lesser extent.
If this is true, then to learn about another culture you first have to look at how your own mind is programmed and learn to 'see past' your own culture.
Cultures model reality in different ways. A cognitive approach offers generalised models of culture, but they trend to treat culture as frozen.
Kramsch (1993: 228) suggests we can teach about differences and boundaries, but not necessarily how to overcome these. This brings us to the 'symbolic' definition of culture.
Dynamic
Culture is a dynamic process.
Meaning in culture is a habitus (Bourdieu 1990): "a system of durable, transposable dispositions", of "internalised structures, common schemes of perception, conception and action" that is both structured and structuring and directed towards practice.
This may also be called a semiotic approach.
Culture is a process constantly negotiated by those involved. It is influenced but not determined by past meanings and establishes precedents for future meanings.
This does not mean that culture is constantly changing, but rather that there is a dialectic process between internal models and external reality.
3

Models of culture
Modelling simplifies how systems work
Models can be taught and can help us understand how communication works within and across cultures
Trompenaars' Layers the outer layer the middle layer the core artefacts and products, institutions norms and values basic assumptions
The outer layer is the most visible or "explicit"
Norms shape behaviour, values relate to aspirations that may no actually be achieved.
Values can be negative or positive: the latter motivate us
The core is "implicit", unquestioned; it is handed down from one generation to the next; may relate to the past environment
Artefacts and products
Norms and values
Basic assumptions
Trompenaars' Layers
4

Hofstede's Levels practices rituals values heroes symbols
Trompenaars' model is tripartite, while Hofstede's has two main levels: values and practices
(symbols, heroes, rituals).
Symbols are semiotic signs (communicate a meaning) such as words, gestures, pictures, objects, dress. This outer layer can easily be changed. Switching language is easier than switching cultures (we may speak English but not talk like an English person).
Heroes
(Not a usual category in intercultural models.)
Role models in film and TV, how they construct cultural identities, e.g. Rambo vs. James Bond; Dirty Harry vs. Inspector Morse (vs. Wallander ).
Rituals
"technically superfluous… but socially essential" e.g. ice-breaking or rapport building in casual conversation
Communicative interference: using L1 rituals in L2 e.g. shaking hands, smiling, kissing on cheek (how many times?), rubbing noses, bowing, putting hands together
Practices are visible, "their cultural meaning, however, is invisible and lies precisely and only in the way these meanings are interpreted by the insiders. The core of cultures… is formed by values" (Hofstede 1991: 8)
5

The Iceberg Theory
Hall (1952): what is visible culturally is just the tip of the iceberg.
Similar divisions to visible/hidden: explicit/implicit, covert/overt
Laws, customs, rituals, gestures, ways of dressing, food and drink, and methods of greeting and saying goodbye are all part of culture, but are just the tip of the cultural iceberg. The most powerful elements are those that lie below the surface of everyday interaction. These may be referred to as "value orientations" (Brake et al 1995), which are preferences for certain outcomes over others (e.g. action, communication, environment, time, space, power, individualism, competitiveness, structure, thinking)
Hall's triad of culture
 technical culture (above the surface)
 formal culture (just below the surface)
 informal culture or out-of-awareness culture (deeper) technical culture
communication at the level of science, e.g. time as measured in seconds, minutes, etc.
textbooks and manuals are theoretically at this level of culture
the denotative level in linguistics (referential, objective, cognitive)
teaching at this level isolates parts, analyses and recombines, e.g. grammar formal culture
not objective, but an accepted way of doing things
can be taught
we are more aware of conventions when they are flouted, e.g. when a child forgets to say
Thank you
children learn at this level through trial and error
in linguistics, these are genres informal culture
no 'rules' as such
neither taught nor learned, but acquired informally and subconsciously
respond to emotionally and identify with
not what is said but how it is said
in speech act theory, the illocutionary force of a proposition rather than the locution
in terms of meaning connotation: personal and socio-cultural of the sign, that change according to age, class, gender, ethnicity, etc.
6