“Every culture attempts to create a
‘universe of discourse’ for its members, a way in which people can interpret
their experience and convey it to one another. Without a common system of codifying
sensations, life would be absurd and all efforts to share meaning would be
doomed to failure.”
Dean Barnlund
– “Communication In a Global Village”
The All-Pervading Influence of Culture
It’s a given
that culture powerfully influences thoughts, emotions and behaviors. In fact, culture operates at primary
cognitive, perceptual and motivational levels. Culture is an important part of our
blueprint for operation within our physical and social worlds. We are an insecure species and culture
offers us a reduction of anxiety through its standard rules of thought, emotion
and behavior. Culture offers
predictability in an often unpredictable world. We see things through a cultural
lens that tints, magnifies, shrinks and otherwise shapes our perceptions. Our culture is a mindset that we
developed during childhood socialization. The structural integrity,
coherency and stability of our personalities are rooted in our culture. It is for these and other reasons
that intercultural interactions can cause anxiety and arouse emotions. When people of different cultures meet
there can be uncertainty and confusion about the rules of interaction. Many of our basic assumptions do not
work. Our normally successful
thoughts, emotions and behaviors do not get the verification and feedback we are
accustomed to. Some of our
expectancies regarding the outcome and meaning of social interactions are
disconfirmed. When we are in
a social interaction situation in another culture we may think, feel or behave
in the manner we are normally accustomed to in such a situation and then find
that it just didn’t work. We
expected to be understood and we expected a certain response from other people,
but we either got no response at all or a response that was completely different
from what we expected. We
might have been so misunderstood that we caused hurt feelings, anger or
resentment or felt these ourselves.
And even if we don’t experience these stronger emotions, we most
definitely feel confusion.
The concepts of
low-context and high-context are useful analytical tools here. Context refers to the amount of meaning
which the social situation has on the rules of discourse for an interaction, in
other words, the way in which the social situation influences the structure and
content of the interaction. America
is a low-context culture (more informal) and Pacific island cultures are
high-context (more formal). As an
American from a low-context, individualistic culture, when I meet someone for
the first time my inclination is to be informal and also to tell them a lot
about myself and ask them a lot of questions about themselves in order to get a
maximum amount of information in a minimum amount of time. To a Pacific islander, who
comes from a high-context collectivist culture, I may appear pushy by moving too
fast, self-centered and egotistical by telling them so many things about myself,
and lastly I may appear rude and prying by asking them so many questions about
themselves and putting them on the spot.
Culture also
influences how we learn and how we teach.
Teaching within one’s own culture is an activity where social and
cultural context and the existence of different thinking, learning and
instructional styles interact in a very complex fashion. The classroom is a complex sociocultural
environment even when working within our own culture. The age, sex, gender role expectations,
appearance and dress expectations, numerous other role expectations,
socioeconomic status and many other characteristics of both students and
teachers are all variables affecting the interactions, the effectiveness of
instruction and the amount of learning which takes place in the classroom. The situation becomes even more complex
when students and instructors are from different cultures. Culture and sub-culture affects
the attitudes, assumptions, expectations, style and performance of both
instructors and students. Consider
America where there are differences between rural and urban subcultures as well
as differences within and between European, African-American, Hispanic and Asian
subcultures. In the Pacific we also
encounter cultural and subcultural differences within and between indigenous
people and immigrant populations; and even among indigenous people there are
ethnic and cultural subdivisions such as main islanders and outer islanders with
implications for interaction.
Culture influences norms of verbal and non-verbal interaction within the
classroom. Even within the
United States, subcultural and socioeconomic differences can create vastly
different classroom interaction patterns.
A society’s educational processes normally display a vast array of
thinking styles, learning styles, teaching styles and styles of learning
environment. Culture can contribute to making certain styles more prominent than
others.