Transcript for:
Understanding Culture and Communication

let me ask you a couple of important questions if i were to ask you what do you call a carbonated sugary beverage that sometimes comes in a can and what would you call a beverage like that just in general not a specific product or or brand but what would you call something like that i mean hopefully you said pop which is the american answer if you said soda you may be a communist something to examine about yourself but hopefully you said pop but we know that there are different variations of that right across the across the country in different places what about this what if somebody sneezes what do you say in response to somebody who sneezes do you say god bless you do you say kazoon tight you say salute do you say you know don't sneeze on me ever again what is it that you say to that person that again will vary from person to person and and depending on what they learned growing up right what about this one another key question here have you ever been to a tractor pull or you know where you've known somebody who pulled in a tractor pull or you know participated in a tractor pull in any way that's another kind of regional um variation in some ways right there there are some areas where you're like well yeah of course i've been to a tractor pull and maybe even pulled in a tractor pull and there others are like what is a tractor pull and why would you do that so these are all examples though of just different things that may seem totally normal to one person but totally abnormal to another person that really are identifiers of a culture and ways that we can look at culture just examples of culture and culture impacts and influences every aspect of our life and and certainly in intersects and influences our communication and that's really what we want to look at in this brief little mini lecture is defining culture and then examining where it kind of intersects with communication how it impacts and influences communication so let's start off by getting on the same page with what we mean by culture because sometimes there's some misunderstandings or misnomers about culture and what how it comes about and what it means so let's get on the same page here and let's define culture culture is the learned and shared set of symbols language values and norms used to distinguish one group of people from another that's all culture is really not all it is it's a lot there's a lot of complicating factors in here but it's the learned and shared set of symbols language values and norms used to distinguish one group of people from another so let's take a look at this in pieces and examine what this means what implications this has for us so first of all we need to understand that culture is learned and shared it's not something that's genetically predisposed it's not something that we're born with or born into depending on our our nationality or where we're born or anything culture is quite simply learned and shared the things we pick up from our family from our community from our peers that establish what is normal what is expected what is appropriate for us and what is not you know what is considered none of those things but those are things that we learn over time they're not again not a genetic predisposition it's not something we're born with culture is learned and shared by definition so what is it that we are learning and sharing well we're learning and sharing these four different components of culture that we identified in that that that definition but let's take a look at each of those then individually here the first is symbols every culture is going to be made up of different symbols that are important to that culture and have specific meaning for that culture so if we just take for example the culture of the united states the culture of america the symbols that are that are present in american culture include things like the flag right the flag is an important symbol now in reality the flag is a piece of fabric of specific colors and and in different patent on a specific pattern um so it's just really a piece of cloth and or pieces of cloth that are put together but the symbolism behind that what it represents uh for for us as individuals for us as a country is really really powerful so the american flag is a powerful symbol that we hold here in the united states another is baseball for example you could throw a football in here too if you wanted to but these these national pastimes these sports you know um baseball is considered america's past time right although that you know again could be changing i don't know but but still to you know as far as right now baseball is still considered america's past time so baseball is a very american thing it's a sim symbol of america apple pie and when you throw all these together right because american is apple pie but also how much more american can you get than an apple pie sitting with a baseball and baseball bat on an american flag right i mean those are things that are that are prototypically american they symbolize america they have meaning they represent things for us and and and and for our culture so they're symbolic of american culture and the things that we hold important so a culture is made up first of all of symbols every culture is made up of these different symbols different types of symbols things that represent specific ideas and have particular meaning for that culture every culture is also represented then by a language by a particular language you know again sticking with the american theme our language not technically officially you know we don't have an official language in the united states but predominantly in the united states we speak english right um there are lots of languages that are spoken here but english is kind of the predominant one the common language that most people speak here in the united states so we share that language but in any culture whether it's your place of business or your group of friends you're going to have a specific language that goes along with that even if it's all english everybody in your organization where you work or where you go to school may speak english but there's a particular shorthand at times right or abbreviations that you might use acronyms that you might have um so there's a language that is specific to that culture as well and so that's part of a shared component of culture is that they have these symbols that are representative but also the shared language that is that is shared and learned throughout the members of that culture then you also have this idea of values every culture shares a set of values all the members of that culture share those values theoretically right so again if we go back to the united states what are some of the important values of the culture of the united states and of america here um well you know liberty freedom independence those are all things that our country was really founded on the idea of liberty and freedom and independence of of the individual and so so those are important values for people in the united states that we hear a lot about um this value of justice this fair and equitable justice and that justice is blind and in the united states again theoretically or or aspirationally i should say that justice would be blind and that it would be fair and equitable and that's something we strive toward and something we we purport to be working toward and hope to equality society of equality that every person has an equal opportunity here in the united states or at least an equitable opportunity theoretically to to to be successful to have the life they wish and the at least the opportunity to work toward that as much as possible um without discrimination based on religion and race and color and those types of things but equality is a value that we espouse here in america so we have those different values that we share as part of our culture now we also have norms things that are you know considered a quote unquote normal for a particular society and in the united states we have those as well that vary from other cultures around the world maybe for example we are prolific meat eaters in the united states right now of course there are vegetarians and vegans and so forth but for the most part we eat meat and specifically we eat meat from typically from cows and pigs and uh as opposed to other animals you know or or you know what we hunt deer rabbit those types of things but we're big on uh hot dogs and burgers off the grill so we're big meat eaters here in the united states that's a norm here that we would eat those types of foods here it's a norm for us to drive on the right hand side of the road and not the left-hand side of the road right the weed that we that's typically where we find ourselves driving hopefully ideally is on the right hand side of the road um we we live in usually single-family dwellings these homes that are intended for for one family maybe an extended family but and have larger yards as opposed to other parts of the world where they you know an apartment or a flat would be more typical for even a family of of any size um as opposed to a single-family dwelling with a larger yard um just in terms of space constraints and things the united states we tend to have more space so we have these different types of dwellings so that's the norm here in the united states so you know again these four things make up every culture and it's not just based on you know countries we'll talk about but um any culture i can think about the the school where you attend or the business where you work or um or any you know group of friends that you have and i bet you can identify symbols that are important to that to that culture and a language that is shared amongst that culture even again going beyond just uh you know whether you're all speaking english or all speaking spanish or whatever there's a language uh that will be kind of a shorthand or an acronym that you know may apply to that specific culture there are different values that you spouse and norms that you would have for any culture that you're going to be a part of so a culture is a learned and shared set of these four things symbols language values and norms in addition to the components of culture one of the things that the definition we looked at identified was that culture is a way that we distinguish one group of people from another that cultures use to distinguish one group of people from another through these different components but um and so this creates what we call then co cultures right uh and co cultures are we all have multiple co-cultures in essence right we think of ourselves as one person and we are you know as part of one culture maybe the culture of the united states or the culture of our community whatever but the truth is we have multiple co-cultures within us as to other people everybody else has multiple co-cultures that we belong to we i spouse all those four things for so if we think about it for example in a broadest context we think about the united states in the place of the world right and our place in the world and we think well the united states is different and we are we have different as we talked about different symbols language values and norms maybe than than other parts of the world so we think okay well america is a culture then right the united states is representative of a culture and it is the united states has its own sort of culture but then we know that within the united states even though there are various regional differences right that the people from the midwest say things differently than people from the south or the west or the east coast or something so for example just to reach back to the very beginning we talked about you call it a pop or a soda and hopefully again hopefully you're saying pop but i tell you somebody from the midwest we say pop or i say pop at least in my community that we said pop and people who say soda are weird to us um but or that you know that i grew up growing to tractor pools and doing different things like that so because i'm a very small town and that was a part of our world and so people who didn't grow up doing that um doing other things that would be a part of their culture that's different so even within the united states we have multiple cultures just regionally right and you can keep going down to where different states have different cultures and different different cultures exist within different communities and all you have to do is walk into the lunchroom of any high school across the country to see that there are cultures that exist in there right there's a table over here at lunchtime of of the jocks and the table of the theater people on the table with the band people and so forth that are really representative of different co-cultures and the truth is if you think of any hobby that you have whatever hobby that you have for example just pick you know any hobby that hobby or that interest or you know that has a it's really a co-culture it's representative of a co-culture um whatever it is that you're into is representative of a co-culture and presumably you're interested in more than one thing each of those things then has a different co-culture or represents a different co-culture so you can see we're all made up of these different co-cultures individually as well as a society so it goes from the very broadest sense of being you know the culture of the united states for example down to the culture of that specific individual and whatever hobbies and interests that they might have and again culture the point of co-culture is this is how we distinguish one group of people from another it's how we kind of separate and and not in a bad way we're not we're not um separating necessarily in terms of culture in terms of right or wrong or good or bad we're just identifying differences and so within that we any culture that we would belong to or co-culture that we belong to we call an in-group and others that we don't belong to are called out groups and we identify simply as in groups and outgroups and in-group is anything where we would say us and an out-group would be any group or any you know interest or activity where we would say them that doesn't involve us right that's an out group so for us our in groups are anything where we would say us anything that we are involved in interested in where we would count ourselves as part of that and say us that's an n group all the others are out groups what we call out groups so we would refer to them as them for example now that we have a sense of what culture is the learned and shared set of symbols language values and norms used to distinguish one group people from another let's identify a little bit what culture then is not and clarify a little more based on what culture is not so culture undefined for example is that culture is not the same as ethnicity race or nationality those things are not components of cultures we've talked about they're not those are all things that you are genetically born into or that are passed down through your dna or as a circumstance of where you're born but those are not things that are learned and shared and as culture is something that is learned and shared we know that they are different so culture is not the same as ethnicity race or nationality however culture does oftentimes follow along with those things just as a matter of circumstance right as a matter of uh human nature so for example just to give you an idea what i mean by this again i'm from in indiana that's my home state and so indiana is an interesting kind of uh area because it's really almost two different states it's real it's really kind of very different the northern part you could almost draw a line from through the kind of lower third of the state and it almost it's really like a different state the accent is different the um the the interests are different the the kind of values i mean it really is a separate culture from the rest of the state almost and and not in a good or bad way just it just is different and interestingly a few years ago there was a study done an ethnographic study of you know what is it that makes up indiana and and they identified you know if we look at the topographic map here of indiana you can identify i mean that blue line there's a river right it really kind of divides right where that line runs and you can see below that very hilly i wouldn't say mountainous because you know they're not mountains but it's very much a hilly area as opposed to the northern two thirds of indiana which is more flat a lot a lot of farmland a lot of corn and grazing pastures and things the southern part of indiana is very hilly and very different topographically and really has a lot in common with the topography in the in the kind of the geological area of of kentucky if we look at where indiana rests in the rest of the united states we can see that it's right near kentucky has a lot in common with the the the area of kentucky um the accent's very similar the because the topography is very similar and this ethnographic study showed that i'm really that part of the the country really meaning the appalachian area of the country was heavily founded by or heavily inhabited by um immigrants from the for example scotland from the highlands because it reminded them of their home country that the topography the hills and the things like that reminded them of their home countries it was heavily um immigrated to by people of scottish descent and and so you have a lot of similarities a lot of cultural values that is carried over from the highlands with that whereas opposed the to the northern two-thirds of the of the state was really largely inhabited in in terms of immigration um and had been inhabited by people from heavily german descents and uh and scandinavian sense so really just kind of a different philosophy in different cultures and and so you have really this kind of split personality almost between the northern two-thirds of indiana and the southern two-thirds because culture tends to follow people who are of a similar you know people when you grow up again culture is learned and shared so people who grew up in the same type of area tend to congregate with one another even when they come to a new country which is why for example like if we look at a map of of new york city here and specifically that area identified at the bottom there we blow that up a little bit we can see that that's why you end up with areas of a city like new york called chinatown called little italy called little india because people who come from those those areas tend to congregate because they find comfort in being around people who share their cultural values share their language share their um their their symbology right and so they congregate in these specific areas of a city or of a country and and so their culture then tends to follow them there and so culture is not the same as ethnicity race or nationality however people of the same ethnicity race and nationality tend to obviously be around each other more so who do you learn and share these things from people who are of a similar ethnicity race and nationality oftentimes right um so while they're not directly connected to culture they do oftentimes share that common sort of dna so to speak of a culture tends to follow those groups in some ways so so culture is not the same as those things because it is learned and shared however it does tend to be learned and shared in those very similar areas culture culture is not also not the same as ethnocentrism right there's there's nothing wrong with being having a national pride and and being proud of your culture and those types of things but ethnocentrism by definition is the belief that your culture is inherently superior to another culture or cultures right that yours is the best and sometimes in the united states just like anywhere else we tend to follow we can fall into this trap of ethnocentrism where we start to look at the world based on well the united states is the center of everything obviously and everything else is supplementary or or just you know secondary to the united states and and so they ought to fall in line and and why don't they want to be more like us and we see ethnocentrism a lot for example in maps um but because people who control things tend to do that so this is a map you're probably familiar with it's the map of the world right that most of us grew up with in our classrooms it's called the mercator projection map um the the problem with this map is that it's wrong proportionately speaking it's wrong things are not where they seem to be here this map is a couple hundred years old and and was developed at a time when europe was the center of the world so to speak and so europe is placed directly in the center of this map and it's given a larger proportion than it than it actually has in real life obviously now we have access to satellites and different things and we can accurately measure these things in proportion so it may shock you to find that this is an inaccurate map that has a very much an ethnocentric uh european slant to it making europe and to some extent north america bigger and in a more predominant position than other parts of the world which were seen as secondary or less important so just to break yourself i'm going to show you what is and actually an accurate projection this is called the gall peters projection map and it really is an updated and more accurate map of the world so this is what we see now this is the actual size of things in proportion you can see that europe is much smaller than it was in the mercator projection map africa and south america much larger than they were so things were just you know put in their accurate proportions and just for comparison sake here you see the difference the blue is the gall peters projection map and the yellow is the the older mercator projection map and you can see the big differences and uh and the yellow isn't is not really accurate and represents an ethnocentric view of the world placing europe in a central position placing europe in a larger position than it than it actually inhabits um at least you know geographically speaking um so and there's some case to be made that uh that even by virtue of being on top of the map gives this impression that europe and north america and places like that are superior and everybody else is at the bottom um so some people say well we ought to turn it upside down so here you have the world turned upside down and the in the inverted gulp here's projection map which will really blow your mind a little bit right but that's a topic for another day but you can see that ethnocentrism really can be represented in a variety of different ways so we need to be cautious of the idea that when we talk about culture we're talking about different than not better than or worse than but just different than different other cultures are different than ours and that's okay doesn't make them inherently better or worse than our own culture so how does culture then influence communication well there are a variety of things that you know we can get into here but just in the briefest sense to give you an idea of some ways that culture influences and intersects specifically with communication first of all the idea of individualism versus collectivism or this individual versus group mentality should we be looking out for number one as an individual or should we be looking out for our group as a whole our society as a whole in the united states we tend to be very individualistic we're we're really kind of looking out for ourselves as much as anybody and and the idea of individual success is is trumpeted and and individual achievement is placed over a group um cohesion and group um you know equilibrium i guess you would say um so this individual versus a group mentality is something that's different from culture to culture across the world we call individualism versus collectivism also the idea of attention to context in communication you have what we call low context cultures and high context cultures the united states is very low context culture where we take people literally we take them at their word and and so we we just accept things that's a word as opposed to other cultures where they read more into different aspects of communication they they look more at context overall they look more at some of the nonverbal communication or what that person has going on in their life right now and so forth and so they you know yes it's not necessarily yes and no is not necessarily no as opposed to the united states where they literally are yes and no that's what we expect we don't expect beating around the bush right so this attention to context as a part of communication is greater in other in some cultures than others i get advantages and disadvantages to both sides of that so just something to be aware of uh we also have this this idea of deference to power or authority through what we call low power distance cultures and high power distance cultures the united states is very much a low power distance culture that is that nobody is inherently superior nobody is inherently better i mean your boss may have authority over you in certain contexts but that doesn't make them a better person overall or somebody that we should never question or challenge or even deem to speak to as opposed to other cultures where that is very much the case people at different levels of society are not people that we would sort of be allowed to speak to because of that high power distance culture relationship and and in terms of communication you just wouldn't cross that boundary so um so yeah um there's there's a difference there and that deference to the power authority there's also our comfort level with ambiguity or what we call uncertainty avoidance some cultures are very comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty other cultures are not in the united states we're not as comfortable with that we we don't like ambiguities much we want certainty and other cultures are much more comfortable with this sort of uh lack of clarity in communication that that's kind of baked in or built in achievement versus nurturing i mean you know in the united states we tend to heavily favor achievement um at least traditionally we have individual achievement and and and achievement as a country and that's very important to us as opposed to nurturing other societies are very much interested in nurturing as opposed to acclimations of achievement and then just another aspect is this view of time do we view time as this very specific what we call monochronic situation where people are you know time is money time is a resource times you show up on time things start on time things end on time or is a little more fluid in in context there in other cultures right in the united states we're very monochronic very much you know that specific regimented view of time whereas in other cultures it's a little more fluid it's a little bit you know things aren't quite as wrapped up in in time in the same way time's not considered this commodity than it is here in the united states so again none of these are right or wrong we have to remember that these are just differences in in the way that different cultures approach these things in a broader context and so as we approach any of this really from a large context from uh from a more narrow context of an individual or any of that we need to remember that culture is just different we need to have an appreciation for other cultures that there are other cultures and that they may have different viewpoints and different ways of doing things and that that's okay that we can adapt as as effective communicators part of our job is to adapt to those situations and and do the best we can to be more competent communicators even in these intercultural a contexts questions about intercultural communication or any other aspect of communication specifically as it relates to the media and which has caused a shrieking world of course we're encountering people from different cultures more than we ever have before and so if you have questions about any of this please feel free to email me and be happy to chat with you via email and discuss this even further in the meantime i hope that you will give you know first and foremost consideration to culture and think about how that might be impacting any communication situation that you are in that you find yourself in because i promise you culture is an undercurrent that exists in the context of communication regardless of the situation or scenario and is very much worthy of your consideration you