On Elephants and Blind Men

1
On Elephants and Blind Men

• What do Elephants

2
Blind men?

• and blind men have to do with one another?

3
Many Ways to View Culture

• The Blind Men and the Elephant
• 6 blind men are asked to describe an elephant but
  each describes something different. How can that
  be?
• Numerous theorists and practitioners from many
  disciplines, each with different viewpoints on
  culture, culture learning, and teaching culture.

4
As civilization

• The great achievements!
• Art, architecture, music, literature
• Big C culture!
• Customs, traditions, practices of everyday
  lifeLittle c culture!
• The nation as the reference for culture, French,
  Moroccan, Mexican, Korean

5
Uh oh! Be Careful!

• What do you see, notice immediately?
• What do you NOT see, notice immediately?

Surface Culture
Deep Culture
6
As communication

• All that people of a particular culture use to
  communicate language, verbal/nonverbal, body
  movements, eye contact, time, space, smells,
  touching, use of social situation, and so on.
• Interpreted under concepts of sociolinguistics
  and communicative competence Knowing how to
  communicate accurately and appropriately.

7
As a general concept

• Without reference to any specific culture
• Prevalent in intercultural education and
  training, general components intercultural
  awareness, value orientations, attitudes,
  behaviors.
• Contrasts emphasized, cross-cultural
  conflict/misunderstandings, thru case studies,
  critical incidents, simulated cultural
  experiences and the like.

8
As intercultural communication

• Capacity and ability to enter other cultures,
  establish/maintain relationships, carry out many
  tasks
• Not specific to one culture but to all
• Culture viewed as process, what people go through
  to successfully communicate, Intercultural
  Competence and Intercultural Communicative
  Competence

9
As an arena where groups/communities interact

• Vying for power, influence, authority, or
  dominance
• Insiders/outsiders, have/have-nots,
  privileged/unprivileged, oppressors and oppressed
  seen in ongoing struggle
• Critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, social justice
  issues

10
As dynamic construction between among people

• Consists of values, meanings, beliefs they create
  
• Not static or fixed body, but constantly moving,
  actively constructed
• A mental phenomenon, is relative, a function of a
  particular social situation

11
As evolutionary psychology

• Many aspects universal to all members of
  humankind, derived from the nature and functions
  of the human brain
• Thus shared basis, such as music, facial
  expressions assoc. with emotions
• Not relative or variable but in terms of innate
  biological commonalities

12
In short

• Just as the aspects of the elephant described by
  the 6 blind men are often disputed, the nature of
  culture is also a matter of dispute.
• It is many things to many people it encompasses
  many disciplines anthropology, sociology,
  intercultural communication, ethnic studies,
  ethnography of communication, and so on..

13
So many approaches

• One language, many cultures
• Many contexts of culture learning
• Many outcomes for culture learning
• Many models of culture learning
• Many approaches to teaching culture

14
Too much to teach? Omaggio 93

• Some bemoan the time required to teach culture.
  Curriculum already overcrowdedC comes later,
  after mastery of basic grammar/vocab,
• Teachers are often pushed to get through the
  linguistic material, which is, after all, the
  most important.

15
What do we know?

• Many fear/admit they do now know enough about the
  target culture themselves, dont have all the
  requisite facts or cultural information. What do
  I know? Can we even know it all?

16
As some have pointed out

• Facts are in constant state of flux, especially
  when they relate to current life-styles.
  Specific fact or data may not hold across time,
  location, and social strata
• Is the culture of 2005 the same as that of 1935?

17
Information? Facts? Specifics?

• An information-only approach to culture may
  actually establish stereotypes rather than
  diminish them, because no means of accounting for
  cultural variation is provided

18
Cocktail party chatter that surprises and amazes!
But good for what?

• Amassing discrete facts leaves folks unprepared
  when they face cultural situations not previously
  studied or memorized (dates, monuments, people,
  events).
• Cognitive knowledge alone seems to have little
  effect on an individuals ability to cope or to
  adjust to different patterns of behavior.

19
If not facts, then what? Goal!

• Help others develop and attain skills and outlook
  necessary to make sense out of the facts they
  themselves discover in their study of the target
  culture such that they are less prone to reacting
  negatively, characterizing phenomena as
  strange, weird, wrong, or even stupid,
  and not within the framework of their own culture.