ch2-2. On Cultures
Lecturer: Prof. I-wen Su
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Taiwan 3.0 License of “BY-NC-SA”.
What is culture?
- the cumulative deposit of
-
knowledge,
experience,
beliefs, values, attitudes,
meanings, concepts of the universe,
hierarchies, roles
religion,
notions of time,
spatial relations
material objects and possessions acquired
- by a group of people
- in the course of generations
- through individual and group striving
Culture is shared knowledge
Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by
a relatively large group of people.
cultivated behavior:
- the totality of a person's learned, accumulated
experience which is socially transmitted
- behavior through social learning
Culture is communication;
Communication is culture.
Culture is symbolic communication.
Some of its symbols include a group's skills,
knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The
meanings of the symbols are learned and
deliberately perpetuated in a society through its
institutions.
Symbolic communication
Icon
Symbol
Index
<Peirce’s categories of sign-types>
The essential core of culture
traditional ideas and especially their attached
values;
Culture systems
- as products of action
- as conditioning influences upon further action
Culture is
a collective programming of the mind
that distinguishes the members of one group or
category of people from another
Culture is the sum of total of the learned
behavior of a group of people that are generally
considered to be the tradition of that people and
are transmitted from generation to
generation.
Manifestations of Culture
Cultural differences manifest themselves in
different ways and differing levels of depth.
the most superficial: Symbols
heroes and rituals
the deepest:
values
Manifestation of Culture at Different Levels of
DepthHofstede, Geert. 1997
Symbols
Heroes
Rituals
Values
Practices
Symbols
• Symbols are words, gestures, pictures, or objects
that carry a particular meaning recognizable only
by those who share a particular culture
• New symbols easily develop, and old ones
disappear
• Symbols from one particular group are regularly
copied by others
• the outermost layer of a culture
Symbols
Heros
• Heroes are persons, past or present, real or
fictitious, who possess characteristics that are
highly prized in a culture.
• They also serve as models for behavior.
Hero
Wiki Frantogian
Flickr Zeelandia
Rituals
• Rituals are collective activities, sometimes
superfluous in reaching desired objectives, but
are considered socially essential.
• They are carried out most of the times for their
own sake
▫ ways of greetings,
▫ paying respect to others,
▫ religious and social ceremonies, etc.
Rituals
Flickr shone
Values
• broad tendencies for preferences of certain state
of affairs to others (good-evil, right-wrong, naturalunnatural).
• many unconscious to those who hold them –
often cannot be discussed, nor can they be
directly observed
• can only be inferred from the way people act
under different circumstances
• The core of a culture
The tangible and the intangible
• The practices of a culture is tangible or visual in:
▫ symbols
▫ heroes
▫ rituals
• The true cultural meaning of the practices is
intangible:
▫ revealed only when the practices are interpreted
by the insiders
Levels of Culture:
layers of mental programming
• The national level
• The regional level: asso w/ ethnic, linguistic, or
religious differences within a nation
• The gender level: female vs. male
• The generation level
• The social class level: asso w/ educational
opportunities and differences in occupation
• The corporate level: organizational culture
Male Gender Translator
Poking fun at what verse what the translation really means.
Female Gender Translator
Poking fun at what women say verse what the translation
really means.
Measuring Cultural Differences
Hofstede (1997)
• Power distance index: inequality in a society
• Uncertainty avoidance index: the extent to which a
society feels threatened by uncertain/ambiguous situations
• Individualism index:
▫ Individualistic
▫ Collectivistic
• Masculinity index:
▫ Achievement: assertiveness, money and thing as
dominant values; not caring for others or quality of life
▫ Relationship: femininity
Individualism vs. Collectivism
• Individualism: a loosely knit social framework
in a society in which people take care of
themselves and their immediate families only.
• Collectivism: a tight social framework in which
people distinguish between in-groups and outgroups; they expect their in-groups (relatives,
clans, organizations) to look after them in
exchange for absolute loyalty.
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Peirce’s categories of sign-types.
John Fiske, Introduction to Communication Studies,
p.47. (1982)
and used subject to the fair use doctrine of the Taiwan
Copyright Act Article 50 by GET
Manifestation of Culture at Different Levels of Depth.
Hofstede, Geert. 1997. Cultures and organizations:
Software of the mind. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
and used subject to the fair use doctrine of the Taiwan
Copyright Act Article 50 by GET
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p.21
Hofstede, Geert. 1997. Cultures and organizations:
Software of the mind. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
and used subject to the fair use doctrine of the Taiwan
Copyright Act Article 50 by NTU OCW