Conceptualizing Culture
 A Kind of Definition
 A Checklist
 A Set of Skills
Cecile Andrews,
The Circle of Simplicity
“The longer I’ve been an educator, the more I strongly feel that we must resist giving power
over our lives to experts. Experts and authorities silence us, make us quit thinking for ourselves.
And when we are silenced, we become passive and lose hope. Only when we all participate, will
we be able to solve problems that face us. Only as we all join the conversation, will we begin to
participate.”
Stolen from:
Richard Brislin’s Understanding Culture’s Influence on Behavior; and
H. Ned Seelye’s Teaching Culture: Strategies for Intercultural Communication
What Is Culture?
“Culture is activity of thought and sensitiveness to beauty and human feeling. Mere scraps of
information have nothing to do with it. The merely well-informed man is the most useless boor
on God’s green earth.” ~~ Alfred North Whitehead (1929) -- Mathematics/Physics
What is Culture?
“Culture [is] those deep, common, unstated experiences which members of a given culture
share, which they communicate without knowing, and which form the backdrop against which
all other events are judged.” ~~ Edward T. Hall (1966) -- Anthropologist
What is Culture?
“Culture [is] the total communication framework: words, actions, postures, gestures, tones of
voice, facial expressions, the [handling of] time, space and materials, and the way he[/she]
works, plays makes love, and defends himself [/herself]. All these things and more are complete
communication systems with meaning that can be read correctly only if one is familiar with the
behavior in its historical, social and cultural context.” ~~ Edward T. Hall (1976)
A consensus
 Culture is everything human’s have learned!
 Culture involves patterns of everyday life that enable individuals to relate to their place
under the sun
Language and Culture
The Sapir Whorf Hypothesis:
That the reality categorized by a language group is an indication of how that group
views the world; and how that group views the world is determined by the language
that they speak
Linguistic Relativity
“… is the degree to which language influences human thought and meanings.”
Rogers & Steinfatt – Intercultural Communication, 1999
Metacommunication
 Communication about communication
 Recognizing when your “response” has been pre-determined
 “Do you need help finding anything?” From the cashier when you’re in the middle of
checking out!
Language and Culture
 Language and culture – so intertwined, how can you expect to really learn one without the
other?
 Learning a language in isolation of its cultural roots prevents one from becoming socialized
into its contextual use.
Language and Culture
 Knowledge of linguistic structure alone does not carry with it any special insight into the
political, social, religious or economic system.
 Or even insight into when you should shut your mouth.
Influence of culture
A major difficulty in discussions of culture is that people rarely have the opportunity to examine
the influence of their own cultural background on their behavior
Culture: an Amorphous Concept
Often, the concepts culture and cultural differences are used in ways that may not be very
helpful. The danger in the frequent use of the term “culture” is that it contains so much
information about values, ideals, concepts, and expected behaviors that the term is not terribly
useful in analyzing any one specific aspect.
Culture: an Amorphous Concept
It is the specific aspects of culture that are helpful in analyzing human behavior.
A 12 pt. Checklist from Brislin
Because it’s so hard to define culture, it’s perhaps more helpful to use a checklist to help make a
decision about whether something is part of one’s culture or not.
1. Assumptions About Life
 Culture consists of ideals, values and assumptions about life that are widely shared among
people and that guide specific behaviors.
 Assumptions and values are stored in people’s minds and can be called upon when
necessary for their usefulness in guiding specific behaviors.
2. The Person-Made Part of the Environment
 Another key aspect of culture is that it is created by people.
 People’s responses to the environment that surrounds them are part of their culture.
3. Transmission Generation to Generation
 Cultural values exist for long periods of time in a society. They cannot be introduced
quickly.

If there are values considered central to a society that have existed for many years, they
must be transmitted from one generation to another.
3. Transmission from Generation to Generation
Children must learn the values from various elders who have the responsibility to make sure
that the children grow up to be acceptable members of the community.
4. Experiences during Childhood
 So, there will be childhood experiences that lead to the learning and eventual internalization
of the values.
 In other words, if a value is cultural, people should be able to think of experiences during
childhood that helped them to learn that value.
5. Culture Is Not Widely Discussed
 Aspects of one’s culture are not frequently discussed by adults in the same culture.
 Since culture is widely shared and accepted, there is little reason to discuss it frequently.
 Thus, people have very little practice discussing culture.
6. Well-Meaning Clashes
 Culture can become clearest in well-meaning clashes.
 This term describes encounters in which people are behaving properly and in a socially
skilled manner according to the norms in their own culture.
 No one is trying to be difficult or unpleasant.
7. Fill in the Blanks
 Culture allows people to “fill in the blanks” when presented with a basic sketch of familiar
behaviors.
 Jokes are difficult because they often include 2 categories coming together and getting
“twisted” into one another.
 Jay Leno – an Ooooold Joke
“There was a rat discovered living in the basement of the United States Senate.
However, the senators won’t be bringing in an exterminator because they always look
after their own.”
8. Cultural Values Remain
 Cultural values remain despite compromises and slip-ups.
 Even though people can list exceptions, the cultural value is seen as a constant that
continues to guide specific behaviors.
9. Emotional Reactions
There are emotional reactions when cultural values are violated or when a culture’s expected
behaviors are ignored.
10. Acceptance and Rejection
 There can be acceptance and rejection of a culture’s values at different times in a person’s
life.

Common examples involve rebellious adolescents and young adults who accept a culture’s
expectation after having children of their own.
11. Difficulty of Fast Change
 When changes in cultural values are contemplated, the reaction that “this will be difficult
and time consuming” is likely.
 This reaction will apply both to existing cultural values that might be changed or existing
values that we may want to become part of our culture.
12. Summarizable in Sharp Contrasts
 When comparing proper and expected behavior across cultures, some observations are
summarizable in sharp contrasts.
 Examples are the treatment of time, spatial orientations people adopt, and the clarity of the
rules and norms for certain complex behaviors. (low vs. high context )
Seelye’s 6 Skills
 These skills nurture and support intercultural communication
 You get “data” and these skills help you to deal with it
 Underpinning all the skills is one basic act: personal interaction with someone from a
different culture.
#1 Interest
Cultivating curiosity about another culture (or another segment or subculture of one’s own
culture) and empathy toward its members
#2 Who
Recognizing that role expectations and other social variables such as age, sex, social class,
religion, ethnicity, and place of residence affect the way people speak and behave
#3 What
Realizing that effective communication requires discovering the culturally conditioned images
that are evoked in the minds of people when they think, act, and react to the world around
them
#4 Where and When
Recognizing that situational variables and convention shape behavior in important ways
#5 Why
Understanding that people generally act the way they do because they are using options that
their society allows for satisfying basic physical and psychological needs, and that cultural
patterns are interrelated and tend to support need satisfaction mutually
#6 Exploration
Developing the ability to evaluate the strength of a generalization about the target culture (from
the evidence substantiating it), and to locate and organize information about the target culture
from the library, the mass media, people and personal observation